Verge

[Dr. Goodword]

• verge •

Pronunciation: vêrj • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun, verb

Meaning: 1. (Noun) Brink, border, edge, the time just before the beginning. 2. (Verb) To be on the brink, border, edge, come close to, border on, to be just before. 3. (British) The shoulder of a road.

Notes: We have two qualitative nouns for this word, vergence and vergency, which have, unusually, two different meanings. Vergence is used mostly in ophthalmology to indicate the simultaneous movement of the eyes toward or away from each other as objects they are focused on move closer or father away. Vergency refers to the condition of verging on or inclining toward.

In Play: People are often on the verge of something: "Fred was on the verge of asking June McBride to marry him when he suddenly remembered his wife." All of us may be on the verge of things simultaneously: "Artificial intelligence puts mankind on the verge of incredible new power at a time when we are also on the verge of destroying the planet we live on."

Word History: Most etymologists argue that today's Good Word was borrowed from French verge "stick, cane, rod" but are left without an explanation of the semantic shift. I prefer an origin in Latin vergere "to bend, turn, incline" with the intervening stages lost in the dust of history. The Latin verb came from PIE wer-/wor- "to turn, bend" + a suffix -g. The problem here is the paucity of IE languages that have this suffix in the face of thousands that have come with -t. I would propose that wer-/wor- blended or compounded with ger-/gor- "to wind, twist". Then we have from wer-/wor- Sanskrit vartatate "turns around, rolls", Greek rhatane "ladle (stirrer)", Russian vorotit' "to turn back, return" and vorotnik "collar", Serbian vratiti "to return", and Lithuanian versti "to turn, translate". From ger-/gor- we find Greek gerron "wicker-work", Serbian grč "cramp", Swedish krage "collar", German Kringel "curl, ring", and English crook. (Let's now thank our old South African friend Christ Stewart for his suggestion of today's fascinating Good Word.)

[bbeeton]

What about "converge"? Two (or more) verges (edges) coming together?

[Slava]

I was wondering about verger, the guy who holds the verge, which according to dictionary.com is "a rod, wand, or staff, especially one carried as an emblem of authority or of the office of a bishop, dean, or the like."

[Debbymoge]

"Artificial intelligence puts mankind on the verge of incredible new power at a time when we are also on the verge of destroying the planet we live on."

I would say that AI is an horrific new power that will hasten the destruction of the planet we live on.

Another case of profit over people.

Debby M.

[George Kovac]

I was wondering about verger, the guy who holds the verge, which according to dictionary.com is "a rod, wand, or staff, especially one carried as an emblem of authority or of the office of a bishop, dean, or the like."

Spot on, Slava. In Anglican and Catholic practice, the verger leads ecclaistical processions. The job is strictly ceremonial these days. (Somerset Maugham wrote a notable short story called "The Verger.") The practice arose in medieval times, when the verger had to clear the road of sheep or other livestock (poking them to the verge) as the advance man for the chief prelate in an outdoor procession. Perhaps the verger is needed today to clear a path through all the "emotional support" animals that are an essential feature of 21st century neuroses.

While the verger is a charming and benign relic in religious observance today, more controversial is the return of the "cappa magna," a long (say 50 feet!) scarlet cape worn by some cardinals. The garment had fallen out of fashion generations ago (especially after the "modernizing" reforms of Vatican II), but with the wave of rear-guard conservatism now seen in some Catholic circles, the cappa magna has reappeared. The garment was originally intended to provide dignity to a cardinal on horseback in procession (to cover the shamefulness of a naked horse), but today cardinals are not usually seen mounted, and so the cappa magna trains awkwardly behind the prelate as he makes a grand entrance into a cathedral. One priest, with a wicked sense of humor, recently described the cappa magna as a garment to cover a horse's ass.

[Slava]

The verger verged on verging the vicuña to the verge with his verge?