Judith in Newbury Park, California, shares a funny story about how she used to mispronounce the word grotesque with three syllables. This term, meaning strange or unnatural or absurdly exaggerated, goes back to Italian grottesca, having to do with caves, and refers to fantastical subterranean murals discovered in Roman ruins featuring strange and exaggerated figures. Thus grotesque is a linguistic relative of the word grotto. Another English term associated with those bizarre paintings is the word antic, from Italian antica, meaning old, and a relative of the English word antique. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Antic Antique, Grotesque Grotto”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello there, this is Judith Burns. I’m calling from Newberry Park, California.
Hi, Judith. How you doing?
Hi, Judith.
When I was very young, beginning in elementary school, I was a voracious reader, and just read, read, read, read, read, which is great. That’s how you learn words and new things, and so that was super. But this was well before audiobooks and things like that, so I didn’t always have the benefit of hearing words out loud.
One summer day, I’m walking with my aunt, who of course happens to be a master’s degree educator, and we came upon a tree with a huge, gnarly growth on it. And I just looked at it, and I haughtily replied, oh, that is grotesque. Not realizing that the word was actually pronounced grotesque.
Oh, no.
I think you’re not alone in that, just so you know. I think that’s a common error.
Grotesque.
I’ve never heard that one, but I actually like that word a lot.
Yeah.
I know. It sounds nicer, but that’s how it looked to me from reading it, and I intentionally chose that. I thought, oh, I’m going to impress my aunt. I was probably sixth grade, and I just pulled that word out as if I was, you know, the bee’s knees. And once she could breathe again from laughing so hard, she told me that, no, no, it was grotesque.
That’s that for you, but tell me, how did that word come to be in our daily lives?
Oh, well, I’m glad you asked that because that has a great story behind it. Back in the Renaissance, when Italians started exploring the ancient Roman ruins around them, they discovered all these murals in places like, I believe it was one of Nero’s palaces. They discovered all these strange murals that combined human and animal and vegetable forms, these strange flowers and things like that. And because they were found in what they considered caves, grotte is the Italian word for caves, they called them grotesca.
And eventually that word found its way into English as meaning something that’s sort of strange looking or fantastical. And what’s also super cool about this, you get two etymologies for the price of one here. These murals were so old that in Italy they were called antichi, which means ancient things. And so any behavior or dress that was associated with these kinds of images on the old mural walls were called antiki because they were really old. And eventually that came into our language as antic. So meaning strange and acting funny.
Yeah, yeah.
Originally grotesque or bizarre and then later just kind of playful, funny or absurd. So grotesque and antic both go back to the idea of these old, funny-looking murals. Walls in Italy. So their word for cave then is like our word grotto, which we also get from Italian.
Right. Which makes perfect sense, although my assumption was that grotesque was French just because of the E-S-Q-U-E.
Yes, it did find its way from Italian into Middle French and then into English that way. So yeah, that has the French influence there. Although I do like your pronunciation of it, grotesque. It sort of sounds like what it is.
It sounds like bad barbecue.
It’s even better coming from a 12-year-old who thinks he’s all that.
Well, yeah, that’s the great part of that story, right? You thought you were the bee’s knees. But the other great part, in all seriousness, is that you were reading ahead of your own intelligence, which is what children should be doing. They should always be pressing themselves just a little bit, and you were doing that. And sometimes we make mistakes when we do that.
That’s right, Judith. I will confess to you that when I was in fourth grade, I got up to read a story to my class, and I kept talking about this character named Penelope. And only later realized that it was Penelope. So you’re not alone. And the number of people in the world who pronounce the word misled as mizzled is vast.
Oh, oh.
I like Penelope. I may copy that.
Yeah, it’s not gratis cue.
Judith, thank you for your call. We appreciate it.
Thank you.
I sure enjoy you both.
Thank you so much.
Take care.
All righty.
Bye-bye.
All right.
Bye-bye.
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