This list may be of interest to some British-poets members. Sincere apologies if you are already aware of the existance of Word-Du-Jour. Forwarded by krumm <[log in to unmask]> ---------------- Original message follows ---------------- From: "Word Lover's Cafe" <[log in to unmask]> To: Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 00:38:27 -0800 (PST) Subject: WDJ: Kinderfeindlichkeit [3-2-98] -- March 2, 1998 Welcome to the Word Lover's Cafe, kids! APPETIZERS: "A child: one who stands halfway between an adult and a t.v. set." --Anonymous "She was able... to trace each new crack in [society's] surface, and all the strange weeds pushing up between the ordered row of social vegetables." --Edith Wharton (1862-1937), *The Age of Innocence* Last week, when we examined words related to sexual passion, one of the Appetizers was David Lodge's famous quotation "Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children; life is the other way round." There may be more truth to that statement vis-a-vis the English language than many others. While Anglophones have had little trouble culling numerous sturdy old English words when scribbling about sex, in writing about what follows naturally from it, children, they have often resorted to other European languages or the most obscure corners of the English lexicon. As we examine words related to children, childbirth, and the family, notice the international flavor of many of the selections. WORD DU JOUR: Kinderfeindlichkeit (KIN-der-FYND-lick-KITE) (n.) -Definition(s): roughly, a society-wide hostility to children -Samples: "Through the 1970s, the moviegoing public showed an unquenchable thrist for a new cinematic genre: the bad-baby horror film... an identical trend appeared in children's literature... [the] movement reached its apogee with books about abortion, adolescent cohabitation, teen lesbianism, child abuse, family-friend rapists, and suicide.... America's '70s-era *Kinderfeindlichkeit* reached across all adult generations, deep into daily family life." --Neil Howe & Bill Strauss, *13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?" -Side Dishes: It doesn't take a Wunderkind to deduce that Kinderfeind- lichkeit comes from German. *Kinder*, of course, means "child," as in *kinderfeind*, "a child-hater," *kindergarten*, "literally, `children's garden,' a child's first year of school," and the occasionally-used *kinderspiel*, "a dramatic piece performed by children." "`Blossom Time,' a pretty kinderspiel, was part of a delightful entertainment given... by the Sunday School children." --*Aberdeen Press & Journal*, 28 Feb. 1930 -Dessert: Along the same lines, from traditional Greek roots we have *misopedia* (MIS-uh-PEE-dee-uh), "hatred of children." *Paedo*, of course, is the Greek root for "child." In modern English, particularly in America, the ae construction usually becomes simply e. From the *p(a)edo* root we get *p(a)edophilia*, "sexual attraction felt by an adult toward a child," *p(a)ediatrics*, "the branch of medicine that deals with the care and treatment of infants and children," and the pedantic *paedia* (PEE-dee-uh) (in which the ae construction is preserved): 1. in ancient Greek society, education or upbringing 2. more generally, a society's culture 3. the sum of physical and intellectual achievement to which the human body and mind can aspire (a powerful meaning attributed to the word by academia). "Wisdom is a holy spirit of *paedia*, which, in opposition to materialistic (Epicurean) culture, is the disciplined observance of the law." --G.W.H. Lampe, *God as Spirit* Copyright 1998 Tim Bottorff __ Visit WDJ's home on the Web at http://www.rsl.ukans.edu/~garrett/wdj . Questions, comments, or suggestions may be sent to <[log in to unmask]>. To "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" to Word-du-Jour, send the appropriate command in the body of a message to [log in to unmask] ================================================================= %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%