HEMIDEMISEMIQUAVER
Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2007 10:05 pm
• hemidemisemiquaver •
Pronunciation: he-mi-de-mi-se-mi-kway-vêr • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. (Classical British terminology) A four-flagged musical note played for 1/64 of the duration of a whole note. It lasts half as long as a thirty-second note (or demisemiquaver) and a quarter as long as a sixteenth note (semiquaver). 2. An almost infinitesimally small amount.
Notes: Today's Good Word is the equivalent of Polish sześćdziesięcioczwórka—in case you think the English word stands alone in its complexity. It's the kind of word musicians think up as they sit around discussing music and drinking late at night. We chose this word because it reflects all the variants of the English prefixes for "half": hemi-, demi-, and semi- and thought you might like to know why we have three of these little lexical critters (see Word History).
In Play: Today's Good Word might seem to be joined at the hip to the music world: "Moseley, I think you are pausing a hemidemisemiquaver at the beginning of each bar of this piece, which puts you noticeably behind the other members of the orchestra just a few bars down the road." However, the idea behind the word has caught on enough in England that hemidemisemi- has appeared as a prefix referring to things exceptionally small, such as: "I don't think Germaine has a hemidemisemi-idea of what this project is all about."
Word History: The bizarre load of prefixes meaning "half" at the beginning of today's Good Word is the result of borrowing variants of the same original word from several languages. Hemi- is a Greek form meaning "half", used only in combinations with other words. Semi- is the Latin version derived from the same Proto-Indo-European root. (Ancient Greek often reduced S to H at the beginning of words; another example is Latin super and sub which emerged in Greek as hyper and hypo.) Demi- is an Old French reduction of Latin dimidius "split in two", made up of dis- "apart" + medius "half". English, of course, couldn't resist borrowing them all.
Pronunciation: he-mi-de-mi-se-mi-kway-vêr • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. (Classical British terminology) A four-flagged musical note played for 1/64 of the duration of a whole note. It lasts half as long as a thirty-second note (or demisemiquaver) and a quarter as long as a sixteenth note (semiquaver). 2. An almost infinitesimally small amount.
Notes: Today's Good Word is the equivalent of Polish sześćdziesięcioczwórka—in case you think the English word stands alone in its complexity. It's the kind of word musicians think up as they sit around discussing music and drinking late at night. We chose this word because it reflects all the variants of the English prefixes for "half": hemi-, demi-, and semi- and thought you might like to know why we have three of these little lexical critters (see Word History).
In Play: Today's Good Word might seem to be joined at the hip to the music world: "Moseley, I think you are pausing a hemidemisemiquaver at the beginning of each bar of this piece, which puts you noticeably behind the other members of the orchestra just a few bars down the road." However, the idea behind the word has caught on enough in England that hemidemisemi- has appeared as a prefix referring to things exceptionally small, such as: "I don't think Germaine has a hemidemisemi-idea of what this project is all about."
Word History: The bizarre load of prefixes meaning "half" at the beginning of today's Good Word is the result of borrowing variants of the same original word from several languages. Hemi- is a Greek form meaning "half", used only in combinations with other words. Semi- is the Latin version derived from the same Proto-Indo-European root. (Ancient Greek often reduced S to H at the beginning of words; another example is Latin super and sub which emerged in Greek as hyper and hypo.) Demi- is an Old French reduction of Latin dimidius "split in two", made up of dis- "apart" + medius "half". English, of course, couldn't resist borrowing them all.
