Transcript of “Conclave, Enclave, Clavicle, and Clef”
For some reason, I’ve been running into the word conclave a lot lately and not just because of the selection of the new pope or the wonderful movie called conclave.
And I went and looked it up because I was curious about the origin of this word.
And it goes back to two Latin words that mean together and key.
Clavis is key in Latin, C-L-A-V-I-S.
And together those words originally meant a room that can be locked up.
And that’s how the word came to mean a private meeting or secret assemblies that occur within a locked room.
And I realized that conclave is actually related to a lot of other words involving keys or closing up, like the word enclave, which comes from French enclave, which means to enclose.
And then there are all these key words like clavier, which is a keyboard instrument, or clavicle, which is a bolt-like bone in your shoulder.
And in antiquity, keys looked like that in ancient Greece.
And the Latin word for key, clavis, also gave us via French the word clef, as in treble clef or bass clef.
That’s a symbol on a music staff that indicates pitch.
It’s a key to what notes you’re going to play.
And then it’s also related to the French borrowing in English, Romana Clay, which is a work of fiction with thinly veiled depictions of real-life people or events.
Like, for example, The Devil Wears Prada.
You know that it’s about Anna Wintour and Condé Nast, even though they don’t really say that.
And it’s literally translated from the French, Romana Clay, which means a novel with a key.
All of those words are related, going back to Latin clavis.
And that Romana Clay ends with C-L-E-F.
You can’t hear that F because of French, but it’s there, right there.
Correct.
The word key at the end.
Yeah, novel with a key.
For me, for some reason, it reminds me of something that I found out about when I moved to New York City 30-some-odd years ago.
And experienced the Irish bar lock-in, which is, even though you were supposed to close the bar because of the laws of the city, they would close the bar, but they would lock in the patrons.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
So the bartender’s like, I’ve got nowhere better to be.
And he’s like, I’d rather be here with you, taking your money and your tips.
So he would just technically, he closed the bar, but the patrons were still inside.
So I guess that was a conclave, huh?
Yeah, a conclave of jinkers and pool players, I guess.
