2012 - Leximania

WOTD: sockdolager

19AugustLeximania.grLexicography, News, Onomasiology, Terminology

Merriam-Webster?s
Word of the Day
September 20

sockdolager \sock-DAH-lih-jer\ noun
Meaning: 1 : something that settles a matter : a decisive blow or answer : finisher | *2 : something outstanding or exceptional
Example Sentence: For a while I was completely stumped, but then, all of a sudden, I got a sockdolager of an idea.
Did you know? The verb “sock” (“to punch”) and the noun “doxology” (“a hymn of praise to God”) may seem like an odd pairing, but it is a match that has been promoted by a few word mavens when discussing the origins of the Americanism “sockdolager.” Don’t be too quick to believe the hype, however. When a word’s origin is simply unknown, as is the case with “sockdolager,” there’s a tendency for folks to fill in the gap with an interesting story, whether or not it can be verified. In the case of “sockdolager,” the “sock” part is plausible but unproven, and the “doxology” to “dolager” suggestion is highly questionable. The theory continues to have many fans, but it can’t deliver the knockout punch.

This word of the day, once more, is a very interesting word. I was particularly intrigued by the fact that its origins, much like those of “fatuous” are kind of hazy. So here is what I found about its etymology from online sources:

Boom! Hok! A Monkey Language Is Deciphered, New York Times 8/12/2009

19AugustLeximania.grEnglish Language, Language

By NICHOLAS WADE

Boom boom! (I’m here, come to me!)

Krak krak! (Watch out, a leopard!)

Hok hok hok! (Hey, crowned eagle!)

Very good — you have already mastered half the basic vocabulary of the Campbell’s monkey, a fellow primate that lives in the forests of the Tai National Park in Ivory Coast. The adult males have six types of call, each with a specific meaning, but they can string two or more calls together into a message with a different meaning.

Skxawng!, The New York Times, 4/12/2009

19AugustLeximania.grNews

By BEN ZIMMER

When James Cameron’s science-fiction opus “Avatar” comes to the screen this month, audiences will witness meticulously conceived alien characters — speaking a meticulously conceived alien language. To lend extra authenticity to the Na’vi — the tall, blue-skinned, vaguely feline humanoids living on the distant world of Pandora — Cameron enlisted the help of a linguist to construct a full-fledged language, with its own peculiar phonetics, lexicon and syntax. From the mind of Paul Frommer, a professor at the University of Southern California, was born a Na’vi language, with mellifluous vowel clusters, popping ejectives and a grammatical system elaborate enough to make a polyglot blush.

Speech Gene Shows Its Bossy Nature, New York Times 12/11/2009

19AugustLeximania.grNews

By NICHOLAS WADE

Of the 20,000 genes in the human genome, few are more fascinating than FOXP2, a gene that underlies the faculty of human speech.

All animals have an FOXP2 gene, but the human version’s product differs at just 2 of its 740 units from that of chimpanzees, suggesting that this tiny evolutionary fix may hold the key to why people can speak and chimps cannot.

FOXP2 came to light in a large London family, half of whose members have severe problems in articulating and understanding speech. All turned out to have a mutation that disrupted this vital gene.

Study shows unborn babies cry in their mother tongue, The Times 6/11/2009

19AugustLeximania.grNews

Hannah Devlin

Newborn babies mimic the intonation of their native tongue when they cry, indicating that they begin to pick up the first elements of language in the womb, a study suggests.

Scientists were already aware that babies are able to recognise certain sounds from birth, such as their parents’ voices, but they believed that infants were only able to imitate them from the age of about 12 weeks.