I closed my eyes and thought
about the alphabet,
the letters filing out of the halls of kindergarten
to become literature.
If the British call z zed,
I wondered, why not call b bed and d dead?
And why does z, which looks like
the fastest letter, come at the very end?
unless they are all moving east
when we are facing north in our chairs.
-Billy Collins, "The Long Day"
10 comments:
there is a very deep part of me that is not entirely convinced that abecedarian is actually a word. Dictionary.com says it is, of course, but it's one of those cases of intellectual assent, when at the core of my soul I'm just not so sure...
do the British really call z zed?
on second thought, I don't think I believe in abecedarian because it's root is in medieval latin, which is not a real language at all, it was just english speakers making things up that would only be understandable to other english speakers. it seems wrong to me that some monk somewhere latinized an english word when he had a perfectly good greek word which he could have latinized... he must have been a rural, relatively uneducated sort of monkwho did not have anything more important than the alphabet to write about. Or maybe at the moment he was writing he was distracted because the cat was getting into his supper and it just blew the word "alphabet" straight out of his mind.
What do you think?
Yes, the British really do call z zed. As do Canadians and Kiwis- any countries still emotionally rather allied with the throne. Most disturbing, they call the class I teach "maths." Sounds like a liturgical service to me...
I think he was merely a monk with a sense of whimsy...abecedarian is a lovely word...it was originally applied to children studying the alphabet, so can't you just see a monk wandering into the medieval equivalent of a kindergarten classroom, and affectionately greeting his little abecedarians? Much nicer than alphabetarians or alphabetters.
that is SUCH a nice picture.
Come now. All of you are using that word completely wrong. An Abecedarian is one "who affected an absolute disdain for all human knowledge, contending that God would enlighten His elect interiorly and give them knowledge of necessary truths by visions and ecstasies." Hence, they were Anabaptists. For them, to be saved, one must even be ignorant of the first letters of the alphabet.
On the other hand, some suggest that the abecedarian is an ancient poetic form guided by alphabetical order. For example, Psalm 119.
But clearly, it has nothing to do with monks... unless... they were Anabaptist monks!?!
Mikr, I'm impressed by your theological knowledge and all, and it does seem fitting for someone who is haughtily uneducated to be called by a name that comes from latinized english. But on the other hand, I just can't convince myself that Billy Collins was talking about Anabaptists. Nor does he seem to be showing excessive contempt for the alphabet. Nor is someone who disdains the alphabet likely to call himself by a latinized english name, so there must have been a rural monk involved somewhere in the etymology of the thing. Although, perhaps he was a monk converted to Anabaptism and thus an Anabaptist monk (sort of)?
BUT, so as not to disagree with you on absolutely everything, I must that Wikipedia is indeed a wonderful source of knowledge on all things Anabaptist, Abecedarian, and otherwise.
Wikipedia might be a wonderful source of knowledge, but in this case they are participating in pretty blatant plagiarism. I was quoting the Catholic Enclyclopedia. Wikipedia just seems to have changed a word here and there, like "interiorly" into "within themselves", and "pretended" into "claimed."
Having said that, though, as I look at the definition, surely this would have been something we would have talked about in class. So why have I never heard of this? I've done some researching, the word is not in our catelog as a religious term. It only comes up in a discussion on how various different groups refer to learning their abc's (the Latin's had two ways, the second half being their elementum (LMN)).
I did find a theological dictionary, but its definition might as well be cribbed from the Catholic Encyclopedia as well.
Now I need to find Nicholas Storch (the so-called leader of this group).
so sorry to have underestimated your sources. I was honestly just entirely surprised to find your definition almost verbatim in Wikipedia.
Assuming that Wikipedia can be trusted though, Nicholas Storch sounds like a character. Being driven out of Wittenberg by Martin Luther and starting the Peasant's War seem particularly exciting...
This does not have anything to do with any of the above, but I've been meaning to tell you that my pastor at Bethel commutes to Westminster every Tuesday to teach a class. (He is possibly the most high energy person I have ever met.)
I think it highly likely that Nicholas Storch was one of my jolly monk's wayward pupils...too busy throwing spitballs and teasing little Marty Luther to learn his ABC's.
But Mikr - your research is incomplete. You mentioned the Abecedarian heresy and Abecedarian Psalms...but what about Abecedarian insults?
"Sir, you are an apogenous, bovaristic, coprolalial, dasypygal, excerebrose, facinorous, gnathonic, hircine, ithyphallic, jumentous, kyphotic, labrose, mephitic, napiform, oligophrenial, papuliferous, quisquilian, rebarbative, saponaceous, thersitical, unguinous, ventripotent, wlatsome, xylocephalous, yirning zoophyte." (Peter Bowler, The Superior Person's Book of Words)
I suspect this is what Martin shouted at Nicholas as he drove him out of Wittenberg.
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