Eleemosynary is the title of a play by Lee Blessing. The play celebrates this and other unusual words, including sortilege, charivari, ungulate, favonian, and logodaedaly. Martha saw a production at San Diego’s Moxie Theater, and takes the opportunity to discuss those words, plus the fizzy roots of moxie. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Unusual Words from Eleemosynary”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
Elemosinary.
Elemosinary.
Elemosinary. Now there’s a word you can lift your hat to, right?
And my spelling too. How do you spell that?
It’s E-L-E-E-M-O-S-Y-N-A-R-Y. Elemosinary.
What a strange word.
It is a really weird word. And it means of, or relating to, or dependent upon charity.
It comes from the Latin. It’s related to the word alms. That’s how you can remember it.
Grant, I was thinking of this word recently because I saw a production of a play by that very name, Elemasanary, here at Moxie Theater in San Diego.
This play is written by Lee Blessing, and I love it in part because it’s a celebration of language itself.
Very good.
It’s about three generations of women, including an eccentric grandmother, her repressed daughter, and her granddaughter who wins the National Spelling Bee by spelling correctly that word Elemocenary. But she talks a lot in the play about the very deliciousness of words, and I want to read you just a little bit from the script. I fly with words. Oh, I know it sounds stupid to say, but it’s true. Certain words literally lift me up to a private altitude. Sortilage, sherevery, ungulate, Favonian.
And the word that means playing with words.
Lagadattily.
Isn’t that a great one?
Lagadattily.
It’s a one-word yodel.
I love that.
Lagadattily.
Nice.
I love that.
And I won’t go through now the meanings of all those words, although I do love Favonian.
What is Favonian?
It means mild, and it comes from the Latin word for the west wind, which was known for being particularly mild.
But, you know, Grant, the other word that I was thinking a lot about that night because I was sitting in the theater called Moxie Theater is the word moxie.
Now, that has a great origin, right?
Sure, yeah.
It is a soft drink, I think.
Yes, yes.
Back in 1884, a guy up in New England marketed something called moxie nerve food, which was kind of a nostrum that helped you with all kinds of physical ailments.
But this was one of the first soft drinks in the United States.
And it was kind of bitter, but it was known for giving you pep and vigor and energy.
And, you know, people would say, oh, that person has a lot of moxie, meaning they have a lot of courage and gumption, that kind of thing.
It’s a perfect name for what theater should be for you.
You know, it should be bracing like a tonic for your mind.
Vigorous.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Vigorous.
Very nice.
So I was thinking about both those words, elemasaneri and moxie.
Okay.
Super duper.
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