Are You Immodest?

Margaret White, the psycho mother of Stephen King’s Carrie, immortalized in the film

by the ever-wonderful Piper Laurie, has this wonderful/creepy speech in the middle of the movie in which she describes the night Carrie was conceived:

I should’ve killed myself when he put it in me. After the first time, before we were married, Ralph promised never again. He promised, and I believed him. But sin never dies. Sin never dies. At first, it was all right. We lived sinlessly. We slept in the same bed, but we never did it. And then, that night, I saw him looking down at me that way. We got down on our knees to pray for strength. I smelled the whiskey on his breath. Then he took me. He took me, with the stink of filthy roadhouse whiskey on his breath, and I liked it. I liked it! With all that dirty touching of his hands all over me. I should’ve given you to God when you were born, but I was weak and backsliding, and now the devil has come home. We’ll pray.

One of the things Carrie’s mama was upset about was how her prom gown let the boys glimpse her “dirty pillows.” Clearly she would have benefited from one of the more modest clothing lines now being marketed to women. (Odd how it’s never men who are immodestly putting their wares on display, isn’t it?)

Here, for example, is a line of bathing suits from a company called WholesomeWear. Their Culotte Swimmer, which is apparently styled after turn-of-the-(20th)-century “bathing costumes,” is “modest swimwear for the more active swimmer. This design has a body fitting undergarment made of Spandex for maximum flexibility. And the looser fitting taslan scoop-necked romper outer garment gives a stylish modest look.”

Then there’s Tsunis.com, marketed primarily to Orthodox Jews, for that fashionable Old World look. Now you too can look like a Fiddler on the Roof cast member! Of course, many gentiles likewise feel that a woman in a pantsuit is too slutty for words (I guess they won’t be voting for Hillary). Here is one testimonial from the site:

I am a Roman Catholic mother of three children who is trying to follow (largely-ignored) Church teachings regarding modesty and purity. But I don’t want to look “frumpy” or like I live on the prairie! So even though I am not an Orthodox Jew, I know your site is one that I can “count on” for high-quality, feminine modest apparel. Keep up the good work, and I am looking forward to seeing everything stocked again!

Not everyone is quite as pleased, however. Sara from Missouri thinks their designs still aren’t wholesome enough:

I feel that this skirt is rather immodest for a site that praises itself for its modesty. It is quite high slit and I feel it exposes much too much of my legs. I feel as if people are judging me as a promiscuous woman when I wear this skirt. Also for the price of 20 dollars you do not receive nearly enough material for it to be worth the price. Although I do love the hints of classic wear of latter days in the rodeo theme.

I suggest that Sara check out Handmaid of the Lord Designs:

A man who is looking for a mate who is pure in her heart and serving God with her life would be drawn to one who dresses with modesty in mind. Her clothes would not draw attention to her chest or her buttocks or her legs, because the young woman who chooses clothes to please the Lord wants to direct others to Jesus and His love. Our faces are to be the focal point in what we wear. Some heave found scarves to be great tools for drawing attention to the face. They allow you to use lots of creativity in the choice of colors and the way you tie them around the neck. Of course, scarves would not be appropriate for every occasion. A short necklace can also be the perfect piece to complete an outfit. There is an array of broaches and pins for sale today, which can be used with a dressy outfit or a casual one. You would wear these pieces near your face. If they, or any other eye-catching accessory, is worn some place other than near the face, it will cause people’s eyes to be drawn away from your face. Keeping this in mind, you can see how patterned hose, or excessive decorations on shoes can be distracting to the eyes. Even wearing clothing that is too loose or too tight will work against the testimony a young woman can have among the people around her.

So, now check out your wardrobe at home. Does it reflect that of one who has dedicated herself to a life of purity to Christ? Adjust some outfits to make them modest. Throw away others, which cannot be made better. Add those garments, which would help build a more Christ-like testimony to your wardrobe. Ask the Lord to guide you and provide clothes that would honor Him. He will bless your efforts.

Personally, I’ve just ordered the Extended Slimming version of the WholesomeWear swimsuit. Although it does concern me that my ankles will still show. You know how men are.

The Gods of Jeopardy!

Playing Jeopardy! together is a nightly ritual for Mom and me. One of the categories on last night’s Jeopardy! (a repeat from last year, I believe) was on the Greek gods.

And I wondered aloud if the Greek name Zeus was in any way related to the Latin word for God, Deus.

Mom just rolled her eyes at me and said, sardonically, “You know you’re just going to look it up on the Internet, so why ask me?”

So I looked it up on the Internet.

Homer’s Iliad calls him “Zeus who thunders on high” and Milton’s Paradise Lost, “the Thunderer,” so it is surprising to learn that the Indo-European ancestor of Zeus was a god of the bright daytime sky. Zeus is a somewhat unusual noun in Greek, having both a stem Zēn- (as in the philosopher Zeno’s name) and a stem Di- (earlier Diw-).

In the Iliad, prayers to Zeus begin with the vocative form Zeu pater, “O father Zeus.” Father Zeus was the head of the Greek pantheon; the Romans called the head of their pantheon Iūpiter or Iuppiter—Jupiter. The -piter part of his name is just a reduced form of pater, “father,” and Iū- corresponds to the Zeu in Greek: Iūpiter is therefore precisely equivalent to Zeu pater and could be translated “father Jove.”

Jove is itself from Latin Iov-, the stem form of Iūpiter, an older version of which in Latin was Diov-, showing that the word once had a d as in Greek Diw-. An exact parallel to Zeus and Jupiter is found in the Sanskrit god addressed as Dyauṣ pitar: pitar is “father,” and dyauṣ means “sky.” We can equate Greek Zeu pater, Latin Iū-piter, and Sanskrit dyauṣ pitar and reconstruct an Indo-European deity, Dyēus pəter, who was associated with the sky and addressed as “father.”

Comparative philology has revealed that the “sky” word refers specifically to the bright daytime sky, as it is derived from the root meaning “to shine.” This root also shows up in Latin diēs “day,” borrowed into English in words like diurnal.

Closely related to these words is Indo-European deiwos “god,” which shows up, among other places, in the name of the Old English god Tīw in the modern English Tuesday, “Tiw’s day.” Deiwos is also the source of Latin dīvus, “pertaining to the gods,” which is where we get the English word divine and the Italian operatic diva, and deus, “god,” the source of the word deity.

Another interesting tidbit (all right, interesting to me, though not necessarily to readers who aren’t word nerds) is that Deiwos probably came from the Old Persian word daiva- and the Sanskrit deva-, which denote “a god” or “a shining one” (as it does in Hinduism and Buddhism), though it can also mean an order of evil spirits (as it does in Zoroastrianism).

In the Findhorn material, the term refers to archetypal spiritual intelligences behind a species, that is, the “group soul” of a species. But elsewhere the term is used to designate any elemental or nature spirit, the equivalent of fairies.

By Jove, the things you learn on the Internet!

An Ignominious Return

A friend who shall remain nameless has been nagging me mercilessly about how I don’t blog anymore. Well, not mercilessly. And perhaps “nagging” is too strong a word. She gives me a gentle nudge every few weeks. It’s just my guilt that has blown it into titanic proportions. Until this week I had written nothing since last December, and even then the last few posts were interesting things I had found here or there; I wasn’t actually writing anything.

I want to write about my mother, who is dying by inches. I want to talk about how her mind, or rather her Mind (to put it in a Buddhist context), is keeping her from getting better, keeping her from enjoying life, despite the counsel and clear statements of several physicians. She was always a pessimist; now she’s teaching me how one’s mindset utterly controls one’s health and well-being. I want to talk about her anhedonia, a beautiful word for a soul-sucking condition where you don’t find pleasure in anything. It’s like apathy but sadder.

But instead of writing about my mother, today I am choosing to write about my love of etymology. I have always loved words. Mostly English words, but back when I was studying Greek and Hebrew, a friend saw me with a book on the derivation of Greek words used in religious scholarly texts. He said, “Boy, I’ll bet that’s pretty dry!” I laughed; I actually used it as pleasure reading. I devoured arcane etymological discussion like popcorn.

The other night Mom and I were talking, for reasons that escape me now, about pumpernickel bread. She asked where the word “pumpernickel” comes from, so I did some research.

True pumpernickel,

which is made from whole rye flour and rye berries with a sourdough starter, and is traditionally baked for a long time in a slow oven to produce its dark color, is from the Westphalia region of Germany.

The name comes from Pumpen, the High German slang word for “fart.” And Nickel was short for Nicholas, a vernacular name for the devil (that’s where we get “Old Nick” as a synonym for Satan). So pumpernickel literally means “the devil’s fart,” and probably refers to the flatulence that many people experience after eating it.

Mom chuckled, and immediately asked for a cream cheese, olive, and devil’s fart sandwich. At least she still has a sense of humor.

This prompted me to wonder how “Nick” came to refer to Satan. It’s been variously ascribed to the Dutch word nikker, the hangman, and by extension to the Devil as final executioner; from the German nix (not nichts) or Icelandic nykr, a goblin or spirit that draws its victims into its underwater home; or, rather fancifully, to an alteration of “an ick,” that is, a touch of a Druid’s wand, which according to one etymology “gave rise to the phrase, ‘Old Nick will carry you away should you dare to break the sacred circle.'” Can’t say I’ve ever heard the phrase, though.

Many etymologies make a connection between “Old Nick” and “Old Scratch.” In the last century it was widely used in the eastern United States, especially in New England, as is evident from the Devil’s name for himself in the Stephen Vincent Benét short story, “The Devil and Daniel Webster.” Now the term has been regionalized to the South. Old Scratch is attested in the Oxford English Dictionary from the 18th century onward in Great Britain as a colloquialism: “He’d have pitched me to Old Scratch” (Anthony Trollope, 1858). The source of the name is probably the Middle English word scrat, a hermaphroditic goblin (!), which in turn comes from Old Norse word skratte, meaning a wizard, goblin, monster, or devil.

Odd that monsters, spirits, and wizards get all mixed up together. Or that people have thought enough about goblins to visualize their sexual organs.

Sexual organs! Now, there are some interesting etymologies for you. . . !