Digenis.org

While browsing through NPR’s podcasts, I came upon a great column by American poet, translator, and etymologist John Ciardi. Mr. Ciardi passed away in 1986, but in the last 8 years of his life he hosted a segment on NPR called On Words. The program explored etymologies of words and phrases, one of Ciardi’s greatest passions. Last year NPR began making the audio available as a weekly podcast.

This was a great discovery for me, as word etymologies can keep me up at night. I really enjoyed the recent program on the origin of hodge-podge:

Let’s start with Spanish olla podrida, literally ‘rotten pot’. From olla (pot, stew pot) and podrida (rotten). In effect, olla podrida is a folk name for a thick stew made of mixed up everything: fish, flesh, foul, and vegetable all hashed up together. In translation, olla podrida became French potpourri, which also means ‘rotten pot’ and also describes a stew made up of everything inside. But it also has come to mean, as potpourri does in English, ‘any miscellanious gathering’, for example: a potpourri of stories, poems, and literary fragments.

In Scottish, this stew began as a hotchtpot. Hotch here is a variant of hatch, hatched, hash, ergo a pot into which everything has been hashed up together. Whereupon the word became a language form known as a reduplication, and so: hotch-potch. Or, in the more common American variant, hodge-podge.

Interesting. Especially how potpourri might be more likely now to refer to a pleasant fragrance of dried flowers, when it really comes from the idea of rotting. By the way, apparently the closest concept to hodge-podge in Russian is either ?????? or ????????; though they refer to a miscellany and have nothing to do with stew, as far as I know. Russians can use ??????? in the same sense that we do too. Oh, and you can read more about reduplications at Wikipedia if you’re interested.

I’ve also been checking out some of Ciardi’s poetry. Here’s my favourite so far:

True or False
Real emeralds are worth more than synthetics
but the only way to tell one from the other
is to heat them to a stated temperature,
then tap. When it’s done properly
the real one shatters.
I have no emeralds.
I was told this about them by a woman
who said someone had told her: True or false,
I have held my own palmful of bright breakage
from a truth too late. I know the principle.