[Original post contains a picture of a block of text, reading: ‘“Quite”: an adverbial modifier that shades the meaning of a statement. Americans use “quite” to amplify their enthusiasm for the adjective, in the way they would use “really”, “very” or “totally”. By contrast, if a Brit volunteers…
What about “rather?”
Hmm. ’Rather’ sounds pretty posh however you use it, except as a word of comparison (e.g. ‘Would you rather do X or Y?’). It hasn’t got much currency nowadays, at least as far as I’m aware.
I think it’s perhaps a bit like the second sense of ‘quite’: it isn’t as strong as ‘very’ but it’s more positive than no adverb at all. A lot of the time I think it has a hint of ‘surprisingly’ or ‘actually’, as if the ‘rather attractive’ person is someone you might not have expected to be particularly attractive. This links it back to the older comparative meaning of the word, since there’s an implied contrast with the expected state of affairs.
I don’t think it really has the sense of the first ‘quite’ (to indicate a lesser degree of enthusiasm than someone else has, or than might be expected). I can’t recall having heard or seen it used like that (except for deliberate understatement).
As with ‘quite’ there’s an older layer, which is strictly comparative and would usually be used to explicitly contrast two options (e.g. ‘The blood I drop is rather physical / Than dangerous to me’ (Coriolanus 1.5)).
I’m not entirely sure when you first start getting ‘rather’ used as a (mild) intensifier. I’ve found it in Frankenstein (1818) and Belinda (1811) but not in Gulliver’s travels (1726) or Marchmont (1796). There are one or two examples in The mysteries of Udolpho (1794). There are also a few in The school for scandal (1777) and She stoops to conquer (1773), which suggests it was in conversational use by that time (plays, and especially comedies, tending to use more colloquial language than other literary texts) although it may not have become acceptable in literary prose until the next generation.
Interestingly I haven’t found anything resembling a transitional usage. I’d expected that when it first started appearing as a word similar to ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’, there would be an implicit contrast with an alternative. That would make sense as a stepping-stone between the explicitly contrasting usage and the more modern usage. But the examples in Udolpho, She stoops to conquer, and The school for scandal don’t seem to have any implicit alternatives: they look very much like the modern form.
Like ‘quite’, ‘rather’ can also be used as an old-fashioned posh one-word exclamation, but in this case a much more straight-forward one expressing emphatic agreement. For some reason when used in this way it tends to have the emphasis on the second syllable, not the first: ‘ra-THER!’. A very Bertie Wooster thing to say.
How does all that compare with North American ‘rather’?
(Source: tigerfeel)
![[Image is a picture of a necklace but that isn’t really important at this stage.]
My post below is really long and is about the usage and etymology of words like ‘yonic’, ‘phallic’, ‘penis’, ‘vagina’, &c. You have been warned.
peanutbutterandjamzee:
nekogakawaku:
uncutting:
supchristine:
What’s the opposite of phallic ?
Though not nearly as common in use, “yonic” is the word for that.
I’m pretty sure that can’t be right. ”Phallic” comes from “phallus,” via Latin and Greek (which eventually evolved into “penis”), whereas “yonic” would come from “yoni,” which is Sanskrit. The Latin counterpart to “phallus” is “vagina,” which hasn’t changed in modern English, while the Sanskrit counterpart to “yoni” is “lingham.” It’s highly doubtful that the appropriate descriptive counterpart would come from a completely different language, meaning the correct (albeit somewhat sillier-sounding) counterpart would probably be “vaginic.”
Actually, it would work perfectly well with Sanskrit. Sanskrit is Indo-European just like Latin is. Nothing wrong with that.
Nekogakawaku,
Your argument seems to be that it’s illogical for the antonym of an English word with a Greek root to be an English word with a Sanskrit root, therefore this cannot be (or at least is unlikely to be) correct. This relies on an unstated assumption that English is logical. As to which: rofl.
Secondly, I’m no linguist, but I’m fairly certain that what makes something an English word is its usage in English by speakers and writers of English. If it’s used (to a certain threshold, about which I dare say there’s room for disagreement) to mean a thing, then it’s the word for that thing, regardless of logic or consistency.
I hadn’t heard ‘yonic’ before this post, but Wikitionary cites two examples from ordinary use, and a quick google reveals many more (for example, this online dictionary of literary terms, this published work on literary writing, and indeed the very subtitle of this published book about English words and etymology). Whereas a google of ‘vaginic’ reveals almost no examples of the word being used in the way you propose.
Of course this doesn’t stop you arguing that ‘yonic’ shouldn’t be the corresponding term to ‘phallic’ and that ‘vaginic’ should be, but I think it more or less does stop you credibly arguing that yonic isn’t the word.
But even by your own logic, ‘vaginic’ should definitely not be the corresponding word to ‘phallic’.
‘Phallic’ doesn’t come from Latin. There is a Latin word ‘phallicus’ but it means a line of verse that goes long-short-long-short-long-anceps. There is also a Latin word ‘phallus’ but it’s extremely rare and is used to mean exactly the same thing as the Greek word ‘phallos’.
The Greek word ‘phallos’ does not mean ‘penis’. It means a ritual image of a penis. There are various ancient Greek words for an actual, non-symbolic penis (the most common is ‘peos’), but ‘phallos’ is not one of them.
(Also, the Latin word ‘penis’ does not derive from ‘phallos’. The two words are completely unconnected. And the idea that ‘phallos’ ‘eventually evolved into “penis”’ is not only wrong but makes no historical sense because ancient Greek and Latin were contemporary languages, and how can a word from one of language ‘eventually evolve’ into a different word in another language that is being spoken at the same time? But I digress.)
Now, consistently with the meaning of ‘phallos’, the core meaning of the English word ‘phallic’ is ‘symbolic of a penis’. Not ‘like a penis’ or ‘resembling a penis’ (though those are nowadays more popular usages) but ‘symbolizing a penis’ (especially in a ritual context).
So to find (according to your own logic) the word that ought to correspond to ‘phallic’, you need to find a root in ancient Greek, not in Latin (because ‘phallic’ comes from Greek and not from Latin), and that root needs to mean not ‘vagina’ but ‘image of a vagina’ (preferably ‘ritual image of a vagina’).
But even if the correct language were Latin and not Greek, and even if the correct root were a word meaning ‘vagina’ and not a word meaning ‘image of a vagina’, your theory would still founder on one final but rather jagged rock: ‘vagina’ is not the Latin word for ‘vagina’. It’s the Latin word for ‘scabbard’ or ‘sheath’. It was occasionally used by Plautus as a sexual euphemism… for the anus. It was never used, even metaphorically, to mean the vagina. The word for a vagina was ‘cunnus’.
(The word for a penis, in case you’re wondering, was ‘mentula’, although the word ‘penis’, which literally means a tail, was sometimes used metaphorically to mean a penis. And yes, it is a mildly interesting fact that the Latin word for a penis is feminine and the Latin word for a vagina is masculine.)
So the word is actually ‘cunnic’. Except that it isn’t, because it’s a word derived from ancient Greek rather than Latin and its root is a word meaning ‘image of a vagina’ rather than ‘vagina’. Except that it isn’t, because none of those words is used in English, whereas ‘yonic’ plainly is.
Which is appropriate, actually, because from what I gather ‘yoni’ also means a ritual image of a vagina.
_______________
Sources (in no particular order):
The Oxford Latin dictionary (combined edition, reprinted with corrections 1996);
Liddell & Scott, A Greek-English lexicon (searchable on Perseus);
Lewis & Short, A Latin dictionary (searchable on Perseus);
The Online etymology dictionary;
Arnobius, Adversus natiónés 5.19.2;
Adams, The Latin sexual vocabulary (1982, Duckworth).](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6l6htBB3L1qbquivo1_100.jpg)
