I knew this was wrong immediately, but couldn't figure out why for a minute. The ending, of course, was wrong: It is not pronounced that way, but I knew that the intermediate Latin word was lacrimosus, "full of tears" and that the -osus ending (meaning "full of...") becomes "-ous" in English (so gloriosus becomes "glorious" and curiosus becomes "curious"). Unless, of course, it becomes "-ose", as "otiose" from otiosus, "full of leisure." So, the ending I could change. But, then, how was the rest spelled? A particularly well-read student gave me the correct spelling to write up, but then I was confused: Whence the -y-? Why the -ch-? As far as I knew, the English was derived from this word, not from Greek (and I could not think of a Greek candidate, anyway).
So, as I usually do at this sort of juncture, I turned to etymonline, which is perhaps one of the best and most useful resources for etymology on the web. It is a marvelous source, simple to use and remarkably intelligent, and full of the excitement in learning and curiosity with which I am infected and which I would like to see in my students. I cannot see how its creator, Douglas Harper, has, in a little more than a decade, found the time to record the histories of almost every word in which I am interested. Nor did he disappoint me on this. Here is the entry:
lachrymose (adj.) 1660s, "tear-like," from Latin lacrimosus "tearful, sorrowful, weeping," also "causing tears, lamentable," from lacrima "tear," a dialect-altered borrowing of Greek dakryma"tear," from dakryein "to shed tears," from dakry "tear," from PIE *dakru- (see tear (n.1)). Meaning "given to tears, tearful" is first attested 1727; meaning "of a mournful character" is from 1822.
The -d- to -l- alteration in Latin is the so-called "Sabine -L-"; compare Latin olere "smell," from root of odor, and Ulixes, the Latin form of Greek Odysseus. The Medieval Latin practice of writing -ch- for -c- before Latin -r- also altered anchor, pulchritude, sepulchre. The -y- is pedantic, from belief in a Greek origin. Middle English hadlacrymable "tearful" (mid-15c.).
Perfect! Here was a Latin root which had turned Greek through contact with the intellect of those who spoke it. The "Sabine L-" was new to me, and at last solved the Odysseus-Ulysses problem. So much to share with the kids, and I did so with such enthusiasm that some of them even forgot to frown.
But that was not all. The word brought to mind one of my favorite passages from the prose of A. E. Housman, from his introductory lecture as professor of Latin at University College in London (full text helpfully published here). His theme in that lecture is why we learn, or, rather, why we want to learn, and in the process of coming to his answer (which, basically, is that it is a human desire which, like any other, wants satisfaction; and that, as it can never really be satisfied, and as the attempt to satisfy it can, unlike the desires of the body, bring pleasure instead of pain in old age) he mentions, in order to dismiss them, several of the myths already prevalent in his day as to the power of a Classical education and its purpose. Studying that Classics, he insists, will not make a poor critic any better, especially in matters outside his field of study. The reverse of that assumption, he goes on to say, is also false:
And while on the one hand no amount of classical learning can create a true appreciation of literature in those who lack the organs of appreciation, so on the other hand no great amount of classical learning is needed to quicken and refine the taste and judgment of those who do possess such organs. Who are the great critics of the classical literatures, the critics with real insight into the classical spirit, the critics who teach with authority and not as the scribes? They are such men as Lessing or Goethe or Matthew Arnold, scholars no doubt, but not scholars of minute or profound learning. Matthew Arnold went to his grave under the impression that the proper way to spell lacrima was to spell it with a y, and that the words andros paidophonoio poti stoma kheir' oregesthai meant `to carry to my lips the hand of him that slew my son.' We pedants know better: we spell lacrima with an i, and we know that the verse of Homer really means `to reach forth my hand to the chin of him that slew my son.' But when it comes to literary criticism, heap up in one scale all the literary criticism that the whole nation of professed scholars ever wrote, and drop into the other the thin green volume of Matthew Arnold's Lectures on Translating Homer, which has long been out of print because the British public does not care to read it, and the first scale, as Milton says, will straight fly up and kick the beam.I couldn't resist reading the whole paragraph to my students, at the risk of boring them, because it is very much the essence of Housman, who can bring the dry-as-dust to life in metaphor as no one else. Once more, the excitement, the bringing of what should be the stuff only of minute learning in the dusty office into our brighter, broader world in which the fight between prejudice and genuine and patient understanding is always waged. What's more, I could share my own excitement at having at last understood how Matthew Arnold could misspell lacrima: he had simply formed it from the Latin (as I had--hooray for me!).
Perhaps most of it was lost on all my students, and certainly all was lost on some. What I hope they got from all of that was my excitement and Housman's and Harper's, similar to the scientist's at finding the connection between this or that gene to this or that disease, or the musician's at having found the right melody for these words or the right harmony for that melody. I imagine that most of them have had that joy somewhere in their lives; I wonder if they were surprised that it can exist in mine.
