Economists worry these days about inflation: price increases that reduce the buying power of money. One concern has been all of the government borrowing we’ve been doing since 2008.[1] Another concern is the economic effects of the pandemic, which include increased demand for goods by people who accumulated savings while locked down, the scarcity of goods caused by supply-chain issues, and by what some term a labor shortage.
This last factor has led to this week’s new-to-me term: skimpflation, which I learned from an NPR report that Friend Luke pointed me to. With skimpflation, prices for services stay the same, you just get less. You pay for a hotel room, but instead of the “free breakfast buffet,” you get a bag with a Danish and an apple, and sorry, no maid service. The prices at Target are the same, but the lines are longer because there are fewer cashiers. Bus fares are the same, but cities have cut back on routes. In other words, businesses are skimping.
The word skimpflation joins a collection of other economic -flation words. In classic inflation, prices go up across the board. In shrinkflation, your money buys less because quantities get smaller (candy bars shrink). In stagflation, the economy is stubbornly stagnant: prices go up, economic growth slows, and unemployment is high. There’s also deflation, the opposite of inflation, in which the purchasing power of money goes up.[2]
Some of these terms have technical definitions about how much an increase or decrease is, how long it goes on for, etc. Some of these don’t have formal definitions. In fact, the discussion about skimpflation is that this reduction in the quality of services isn’t accounted for in the models that economists use to gauge the economy—but it should be, because we’re sure feeling it.
Oh, boy, nothing like taking a little dip into the gloom and doom of economics! Let’s move on.
Today’s origins concern that fearsome member of the spider family: the tarantula. I kind of knew that the word tarantella, the name of a dance, was related to tarantula, but I didn’t know what the exact relationship was or where either name had come from.
Here’s a surprise: tarantula is a toponym, a word based on a placename. A particular wolf spider is common in the area around the town of Taranto in the heel part of Italy. Residents of the area going back to Latin-speaking days referred to the spider as a tarantola or tarantula, based on the name of the town. (As an aside, the city of Taranto was founded around 700 BC by Spartans, who named it Taras, either after one of Poseidon’s sons or from a Greek work that meant “oak.”)
When Linnaeus was naming all the species, he assigned the name Aranea tarantula (“spider of Taranto”) to the spider. Later the spider was reclassified as part of the wolf spider family and was given the new name Lycosa tarantula; Lycosa refers to “wolf,” as in lycanthrope, i.e. werewolf.
So there’s the tarantula, which originally referred to this one species. As we know, though, tarantula is used commonly to refer to other species, including spiders found in the Americas. This seems to have just been an extension of the toponymic term tarantula somewhat indiscriminately to any really big, hairy spider. (Where “hairy” has multiple meanings, haha.) In fact, in today’s taxonomy, a tarantula refers to spiders in the order Theraphosida, which doesn’t include wolf spiders. So a little bit ironically, the original tarantula technically isn’t in the family of tarantulas at all.
Then there’s tarantella, a fast folk dance, and as I learned, tarantism, which refers to a “mania characterized by an uncontrollable impulse to dance.” These activities come from the Middle Ages in Italy. The popular-slash-folk explanation is that tarantism is the effect of the bite of a tarantula, and a tarantella is the dance that people do to cure themselves of the spider bite.
But the bite of the original tarantula, while venomous, is mild. It’s possible, some say, that tarantism is caused by a different spider, “although,” says Wikipedia, “no link between such bites and the behaviour of tarantism has ever been demonstrated.”
A more intriguing theory is that tarantism and the tarantella reflect a kind of Bacchanalian frenzy. People in all ages have performed ecstatic rites involving music and dance. Perhaps in a place and in an era when there was no socially acceptable outlet for this type of behavior, people came up with an explanation for their wild dancing that blamed the bite or “sting” of a spider. Anyway, that’s one possible explanation. The more mundane origin for tarantella is that it’s a dance (and music) that originated in the area of Taranto. Whatever the explanation, it seems clear that the words tarantula, tarantism, and tarantella really did all come from the town named Taranto.
Like this? Read all the Friday words.
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[1] Borrowers benefit from inflation, because they can pay back debt using devalued money. Periods of hyperinflation, as with Germany in the 1920s, have often been the result of extreme government debt (is a theory). [^]
[2] While deflation is great for consumers, it’s bad for borrowers and can also push down wages. [^]
yeah after covid inflation rate increase in 3rd world countries.