Thursday 15 July 2021

Making a case for making up words

To the three people in my DMs who pointed it out – yes, I’m not a huge fan of calendars. I don’t have a “posting schedule”, neither does it seem likely I ever will. I am however, characteristically hypocrite. And if it isn’t already apparent, my love for “calendars”, I’m going to make it so by squeezing another write-up out of it.


“Calendar”, as we saw, is derived from the PIE “kele-”. One meaning of it is “to shout”, out of which we got a word like “calendar”.


A Roman Caldarium, in Bath, England. Yes, the city is named after the Baths found there. 

The other meaning that “kele-” has, is “to warm”. So, if you have come across the “how long do you have to yell at a cup of coffee to heat it up” experiment, you now know PIE did it first.


“kele-”, when seen in the context of heat, is spelt as “calare” or “calor” in Latin. Hence, the amount of heat that is required to raise the temperature of a glass of water by one degree Celsius, is “Calorie”. To measure it, you can use a “calorimeter” (“meter-” means to “measure” in Latin).


Like “calendarium”, on the hot side of the “kale-” family, we have “caldarium”. If the former was where “all the calling-outs were stored”, the latter is where “all the hot (water) was stored”, So, a caldarium, is a hot-bath. This water may be warmed up in a “cauldron”. If you take too hot a bath though, you can get a “scald” (It’s broken down as “ex + cald”, something you get “out of a hot water”).


My favourite word to come out “kele-” though, is the opposite of “calare”. A “non” “calare” if you will. If you put those two roots together, and add any of the usual suffixes that English words end with, you will find “non-calare-ant”. Now add some 1066 Norman finesse, and you have “non-chalance” – literally “no heat”, or “indifference”.


Yes. All words are made up.