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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
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