{"id":15540,"date":"2017-06-16T08:03:10","date_gmt":"2017-06-16T15:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/neology\/2017\/06\/16\/litter-welter-miasma.html"},"modified":"2017-06-16T08:03:10","modified_gmt":"2017-06-16T15:03:10","slug":"litter-welter-miasma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2017\/06\/16\/litter-welter-miasma\/","title":{"rendered":"litter, welter, miasma"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>This morning, out of the welter of vague half-formed thoughts that ran through my head as I woke up, the first coherent one was something like this:<\/p>\n\n<p>Is <em>litter<\/em> as in trash cognate with <em>litter<\/em> as in a bunch of puppies born at once?<\/p>\n\n<p>I decided to look it up, and then I began composing this entry in my head, and then I thought:<\/p>\n\n<p>&#8230;and while I&#8217;m at it, what&#8217;s the origin of <em>welter<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n<p>And then I thought:<\/p>\n\n<p>&#8230;and if <em>welter<\/em> isn&#8217;t the word I mean, then what about <em>miasma<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n<p>So I opened my MW11 dictionary app, and here&#8217;s what I found:<\/p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>All of the meanings of <em>litter<\/em> (including two I hadn&#8217;t thought of: a mobile chair for carrying a passenger, and the material that goes in a cat&#8217;s litter box) derive &#8220;from Anglo-French <em>litere<\/em>, from <em>lit<\/em> bed, from Latin <em>lectus<\/em>.&#8221; So what all of those things have in common is beds, of one sort or another.<\/p><\/li>\n<li><p><em>Welter<\/em> was indeed the word I wanted: &#8220;a chaotic mass or jumble.&#8221; It&#8217;s from &#8220;Middle English; akin to Middle Dutch <em>welteren<\/em> to roll,&#8221; and is related to <em>voluble<\/em> in that both are connected to Latin <em>volvere<\/em>, to roll.<\/p><\/li>\n<li><p><em>Miasma<\/em> isn&#8217;t really the word I wanted, but it&#8217;s still a great word. It goes back to Greek <em>miasma<\/em>, &#8220;defilement, from <em>miainein<\/em> to pollute.&#8221;<\/p><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This morning, out of the welter of vague half-formed thoughts that ran through my head as I woke up, the first coherent one was something like this: Is litter as&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etymology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}