I ran across a word recently that I think is actually new-new, for a change, and not just an old word that I happened not to know. The word was invented by the science-of-food writer Harold McGee, who is famous for works like On Food and Cooking.
McGee recently wrote a book (Nose Dive) about the world of smells, or as he’s termed it, the osmocosm. This is a great term. The -cosm part is on analogy with words like microcosm and macrocosm. It’s the same stem as the word cosmos, which refers both to the world (in a large sense) and to “an orderly, harmonious system.” (One might read a level of optimism into the idea that these were considered synonymous.)
The osmo- part comes from a Greek word for smell (osmi). You might have a hard time thinking of related terms (I did), but among them are the words odor (not obvious), olfactory (also not obvious), ozone (because it has a sharp smell), and the perhaps newly interesting anosmia (“loss of sense of smell”).
I like osmocosm because I believe we don’t have a word like this in English already. Although McGee is writing about the human experience of the osmocosm (I think? I haven’t read the book), I can’t help but wonder of what the osmocosm must be like for cats and dogs, or even sharks and moths.
The way that McGee put the word together—the choice of constituent parts—is also satisfying to me. We have surprisingly few words based on the cosm root; I count just 6 in the OED: loxocosm, macrocosm, megacosm, mescocosm, microcosm, and pantacosm. Except for microcosm, these are all rare or technical (mesocosm). A new -cosm word is therefore a welcome addition.
Some people believe that words made out of classical roots should not mix languages, like the word television, which is based on both Greek (tele) and Latin (vision). (The editor Stan Carey examines—and pokes a little fun at—this attitude in his blog post The monstrous indecency of hybrid etymology.) It’s possible that in crafting a word from purely Greek roots, McGee is honoring the idea of having homogeneous etymology.
On to origins for real. I was putting dishes away the other day and realized that I had no idea why certain glasses are called tumblers. I poked around and discovered that I was not the first person to wonder about this.
The OED has a single theory: “A drinking cup, originally having a rounded or pointed bottom, so that it could not be set down until emptied.”[1] That is, if you set the cup down, it would tumble. The evidence for this theory is in the cites that are included with the definition:
(1865) Rings of pottery..evidently intended to serve as supports for these earthenware tumblers.
(1876) The guests were supplied with tumblers, or glass vessels, which, being rounded at the base, could not stand upright, and must, therefore, be emptied at a draught.
There are other cites that are less revealing, including one from the prolific diarist Samuel Pepys in 1664, noting that he’d bought some silver Tumblers, though there’s nothing to suggest anything about their shape.
So that’s one theory. In an article, the writer James Holloway examines this theory, but he also has another one: tumblers were named that because they had a heavy bottom that would help them right themselves if they were tipped. This theory squares (haha) with what our tumblers are like today, namely glasses with solid bottoms. He also notes that extant examples of old tumblers did indeed have roundish bottoms, but seem to sit pretty steady. (Sad that Pepys didn’t post a picture of his new silver tumblers on Instagram.)
I wonder about the OED’s definition, given that the cites that illustrate a “can’t put it down” glass were nearly contemporaneous with when the dictionary was first being written. Is it possible that the round-bottomed tumbler was some sort of Victorian fashion, and that the definition writer was influenced by then-contemporary usage? I feel daring even just asking the question. At this point, I’ve reached a point where I can safely say “More research is indicated.”
Like this? Read all the Friday words.
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[1] There are of course other definitions of tumbler (for example, “an acrobat”), including this one, which I am slightly ashamed to say made me laugh out loud: “An inexperienced window-cleaner.” [^]