Leonardo's Foot

by Carol Ann Rinzler

  But which early nineteenth century American seaman, whaler, naturalist, or just plain citizen first used the word pod to describe a small group of animals, most commonly whales or seals, and why he (or she) chose to do so is lost to history. So is how it came to mean, as my usually reliable Webster’s Seventh Collegiate Dictionary—the one I found upstairs at Manhattan’s Argosy Bookstore when the earlier edition that got me through college fell apart in my hands—notes, a “bit socket in a brace or a straight groove or channel in the barrel of an auger.” Podzol—sometimes spelled podsol—is a complete mystery. Unless, that is, you speak Russian in which case you would know that pod means under, zol means ash, and when you put the two together you get a word that means leached soil, the pale dirt from which soluble particles have been washed away. And, except for the fact that you stand on the ground, the word has nothing at all to do with your feet.

  Last but not least, there are words that begin with the letter “p,” say something about your feet, but have no relationship to either pes or pais or pod. One good example is pace, which can be either a noun (a step) or a verb (to step). This one comes from passus, the Latin word for step.

  How to identify the root of any ped, pais, pod word and therefore decipher its meaning? You could guess. Or you could leaf through one of the Webster’s, or you can click onto the excellent Online Etymology Dictionary whose list of sixty-seven sources includes dictionaries in Arabic, French, German, Greek, Icelandic, Latin, Nahuatl (the language of the Aztecs), Norse, Persian, Sanskrit, and Slang—American, British, and Buckish, the last a nineteenth century British word meaning dandified or foppish, which in turn means excessively refined and fastidious.

  From time to time, words disappear from our collective vocabulary, so for special ones like podocarp, which seems to be gone from contemporary dictionaries for lay audiences, there’s always the 3,210-page, 16-pound, 1941 edition of the Webster’s New International Dictionary, which defines podocarp as the stemmed (i.e., footed) fruit (from the Greek word karpus) of an evergreen tree or shrub belonging to the genus Podocarpus.

  Identifying these differences in pais, ped, and pod is a lovely parlor game, but language itself is not trivial. Ralph Waldo Emerson called it “the archives of history.” Jonathan Swift wrote that “proper words in their proper places make the true definition of a style,” and William James, that they “make a difference in our moral life.” Lewis Carroll’s sly dismissal of linguistic standards is a warning to use words carefully to say what we truly mean, and truly mean what we say lest reality crack into pieces like Humpty Dumpty himself.

  Our feet are unique, but so is our language, distinguishing us from all the creatures of the earth. Birds sing, wolves howl, and even the lowly male cricket chirps (although with his wings, not a voice box). Dogs bark and cats purr and both position their ears to sends specific signals, one to another. But only human beings have the physical and intellectual equipment required to speak their words and thoughts.

  And to complete the link between foot and tongue—the language, of course, not the muscles in your mouth—in 2011, a group of psychologists at the University of Auckland in New Zealand reported in the journals Science and Nature that, based on their analysis of languages from every corner of the globe, we spoke up first where we stood up first, in Africa where Raymond Dart found his wonderful Taung Child.

  SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Note: The Internet sources cited in this bibliography were accessed online between September 2011 and October 2012.

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