Moist

Moist (pronounced moyst)

(1) Moderately or slightly wet; damp.

(2) Tearful.

(3) Accompanied by or connected with liquid or moisture.

(4) Prevailing high humidity.

(5) In informal (though not infrequent) use (1), of the vagina: sexually lubricated due to sexual arousal & (2) of a woman: sexually aroused, turned on.

(6) In medicine, characterized by the presence of some fluid such as mucus, pus etc; of sounds of internal organs (especially as heard through a stethoscope): characterized by the sound of air bubbling through a fluid.

(7) Historically, in science (including alchemy), pertaining to one of the four essential qualities formerly believed to be present in all things, characterized by wetness; also, having a significant amount of this quality.

1325-1375:  From the Middle English moist & moiste which has the senses of (1) damp, humid, moist, wet, (2) well-irrigated, well-watered, (3) made up of water or other fluids, fluid, (4) figuratively) (of ale), fresh, (5) carnal, lascivious; undisciplined, weak & (6) in alchemy, medicine, physics: dominated by water as an element.  It was from the Anglo-Norman moist, moiste & moste, from the Middle French moiste and the Old French moiste (damp, wet, soaked) & muste (damp, moist, wet (which endures in the thirteenth century modern French moite, perhaps from the Vulgar Latin muscidus (moldy) & mūcidus (slimy, moldy, musty), from mucus (slime).  Doubts have always surrounded the alternative etymology which suggested a link with the Latin musteus (fresh, green, new (literally “like new wine" from mustum (unfermented or partially fermented grape juice or wine, must).  The noun was derived from the adjective.  The noun moisture (diffused and perceptible wetness) dates from the mid-fourteenth century, from the Old French moistour (moisture, dampness, wetness (which endures in the thirteenth century modern French moiteur), from moiste.  The verb moisten (make moist or damp) emerged in the 1570s, from moist, which until the mid-fourteenth century was used as a verb.  Moist is a noun, adjective & (mostly obsolete) verb, moisten is a verb, moistened & moisty are adjectives, moistener is a noun and moistly an adverb; the verb moistify is classified as a jocular creation of Scottish origin.

Making moist look good: Lindsay Lohan, hot and damp in white bikini at the swimming pool, Los Angeles, 2009.

In general use it was from the fourteenth century applied to the tearful or eyes wet with tears, due either to crying, illness or old age; since the mid-twentieth century use in this context has increasing been restricted to literature or poetry, probably because of the influence of the increased lining of the word with the bodily fluids associated with sexual arousal.  As a poetic device, between the fourteen and eighteenth centuries, moist (sometimes as “the coming moist”), was used to suggest impending rain and a gathering storm was “the moist”.  Some older usage guides suggested moist was mostly used for agreeable or neutral conditions (moist chocolate cake; moist garden) while damp was applied to something undesirable (damp clothes; damp carpet) but this seems dated, given the current feelings of linguistic disapprobation.  The synonyms depend for meaning on context and can include (of the eyes) dewy-eyed, misty, teary, weepy, wet, (of the weather) damp, muggy, humid, rainy, & (of the built environment) wet & dank.

The language’s most hated word.

Moist appears to be the most disliked word in the English language.  In 2012 The New Yorker asked its readers to nominate a word to scrub from the English language and an overwhelming consensus emerged to ditch "moist".  Even in surveys where it doesn’t top the disgust list, moist seems always to score high (or low depending on one’s view) and most of the words with which it competes have about them some quality of moistness including pus (a white to yellowish liquid formed on the site of a wound or infection), phlegm (a liquid secreted by mucous membranes), seepage (the slow escape of a liquid or gas through small holes or porous material), splooge (an abrupt discharge of fluid, fester (of a wound or sore that becomes septic; suppurate), mucus (a slippery secretion produced by and covered by mucous membranes), ooze (fluid slowly trickle or seep out of something), putrid (organic matter decaying or rotting and emitting a fetid smell) & curd (a dairy product obtained by curdling milk (or soy).  Others have conducted similar surveys and found other words which attracted little fondness (not all of which literally involved any sort of wetness but had a spelling or pronunciation which seemed to hint at moistness) included festering, lugubrious, smear, squirt, gurgle, fecund, pulp and viscous.  Surprisingly perhaps, "rural" often rates a high disapprobation count, perhaps reflecting the urban bias of surveys (something presumably true of The New Yorker's erudite readership).  

Practitioners of structural linguistics provided another layer of interest, noting some correlation between the offending words and their use of the "phonetically abrasive" letters (“b”, “g”, “m”, “u” & “o”).  That would seem tom make “gumbo” at least a linguistic micro-aggression but it deserves to be defended.  Gumbo is a soup or stew (depending on how it’s prepared) especially popular in Louisiana and made with an intense stock, meat or shellfish, a thickener (historically always okra), and the so-called “holy trinity” of celery, bell peppers and onions; it’s said to be delicious.  The origin of the use of the word gumbo to describe the dish is uncertain but it was first recorded in 1805 as a part of Louisiana French and etymologists conclude it was probably from the Central Bantu dialect.  In the associative way such things work, Gumbo was used also of the creole patois of Louisiana; that use dating from 1838.  A patois is one of the layers of language and while a creole is recognized as a stand-alone language, a patois is considered a variation of a “real” language.  It’s a highly technical aspect of structural linguistics and the mechanics of differentiation used by linguists to distinguish between creoles, patois, and pidgins (many of which remain permanently in flux) are intricate and understood by few, the rules (about which not all agree) including arcane discussions about the situations in which patois is properly capitalized and those in which it’s not.  Less controversial is the use of gumbo in hydrology where it’s used of “fine, silty soils which when wet becomes very thick and heavy” (a use obviously redolent with moistness and thus likely to elicit disgust from delicate types).  For those who wish further to be disgusted, a usually reliable source (Urban Dictionary) has several pages of real-world definitions of gumbo, many of which rate high on the moistness index.   

Researchers from Oberlin College in Ohio and Trinity University in San Antonio ran three different experiments to figure out how many people hate the word "moist" and work out why.  They found more than one person in five loathed moist and it seems people associate it with bodily functions, whether they realize it or not.  The researchers said their subjects’ responses were typified by an answer such as “It just has an ugly sound that makes whatever you’re talking about sound gross”.  The younger (or more neurotic) the study participants were, the more likely they were to dislike the word and the more disgust bodily functions provoked, the less they liked moist.  Still, although the researchers didn’t try to prove it, it’s doubtful many would have declined a slice of a nice, moist chocolate cake.

Moist dark chocolate cake

Using dark chocolate makes for the ultimate moist chocolate cake and it’s ideal to serve with brandy infused cream.  The preparation time is between 30-40 minutes, cooking takes 60-90 minutes and it’s ready to serve as soon as cooled.  This recipe will yield a cake of 12-14 slices.

Ingredients (chocolate cake)

200 g dark chocolate (about 60-75% cocoa solids), chopped
200 g butter, cubed
1 tablespoon instant coffee granules
85 g self-raising flour
85 g plain flour
¼ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
200 g light muscovado sugar
200 g golden caster sugar
25 g cocoa powder
3 medium eggs
75 ml buttermilk
50 g grated chocolate or 100 g curls, to decorate

Ingredients (ganache)

200 g dark chocolate (about 60% cocoa solids), chopped
300 ml double cream
2 tablespoons golden caster sugar

Instructions

(1) Heat oven to 160C (fan-forced) / 140C (gas level 3).  Butter and line a 300 mm round (75 mm deep) cake tin.

(2) Put 200g chopped dark chocolate in medium pan with 200g butter.

(3) Mix 1 tablespoon instant coffee granules into 125 ml cold water and pour into pan.

(4) Warm over a low heat just until everything is melted (DO NOT overheat). Alternatively, melt in microwave (should take 3-5 minutes), stirring after 2 minutes.

(5) Mix 85 g self-rising flour, 85 g plain flour, ¼ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda, 200 g light muscovado sugar, 200 g golden caster sugar and 25 g cocoa powder; squash mix until lump-free.

(6) Beat 3 medium eggs with 75 ml buttermilk.

(7) Pour melted chocolate mixture and egg mixture into the flour mixture and stir everything to a smooth (quite runny) consistency.

(8) Pour this into tin and bake for 85-90 minutes.  To test, push a skewer into the centre and (1) it should come out clean and (2) the top should feel firm (surface cracking is normal and indicates perfectly cooked).

(9) Leave to cool in tin (during this, it will likely dip a little), then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely. Cut cold cake horizontally into three.

(10) To make the ganache, put 200 g chopped dark chocolate in a bowl. Pour 300 ml double cream into a pan, add 2 tablespoons golden caster sugar and heat until mix is at the point of boiling.

(11) Immediately remove mix from heat and pour it over the chocolate.  Stir until the chocolate has melted and the mixture is smooth.  Cool until it becomes a little cooler but remains pourable.

(12) Sandwich the layers together with just a little of the ganache. Pour the rest over the cake letting it fall down the sides; smooth over any gaps with a palette knife.

(13) Decorate with 50 g grated chocolate or 100 g chocolate curls. The cake will keep “moist and gooey” for 3-4 days.

Dank

Dank (pronounced dangk)

(1) Unpleasantly moist or humid; damp and, often, chilly.

(2) In slang, as dank weed, excellent; high quality marijuana.

(3) In slang, as a critique of an internet meme) passé or clichéd, out of touch; having missed the cultural moment.

(4) In slang, an adjective of generalized approval or disapproval depending on the practice of the user, the former using dank ironically, the latter literally.

(5) A small silver coin formerly used in Persia

(6) As the acronym DANK, the Deutsch Amerikanischer National Kongress (German American National Congress).

(7) As an intransitive verb, to moisten, dampen; used of mist, dew etc (obsolete).

1350-1400: From the Middle English danke (wet, damp; dampness, moisture), probably from the North Germanic and related to the Swedish dänka & dank (marshy spot), the Norwegian dynke (to moisten), the Icelandic dökk (“pool”), the Old Norse dǫkk (pit, depression; water hole), from the Proto-Germanic dankwaz (dark).  The alternative etymology traces it to the a West Germanic source such as Dutch damp (vapor) or the Middle High German damph, both ultimately from the Proto-Germanic dampaz (smoke, steam, vapor).  Dank is an adjective & noun, dankly is an adverb, dankness is a noun and danker & dankest are adjectives.  The noun plural is danks.  Dank’s niche in the language is unique but words associated with the idea include chilly, damp, humid, muggy, steamy, sticky, wet, clammy, dewy, dripping, moist, slimy & soggy

In other languages the evolution differed.  In Modern Dutch, dank (gratitude, a showing or token of recognition; reward, recompense) is from the Middle Dutch danc, from Old Dutch thank, from the Proto-Germanic þankaz.  In German, dank (thanks to, because of) was cognate with danken and the Dutch dank (and related to the Latin grātia) while in Lower Sorbian it came to mean "tax, fine, levy, duty".  In one Germanic quirk, in Luxembourgish, dank evolved as the second-person singular imperative of danken (to thank), from the Old High German thankōn, from the Proto-Germanic þankōną and cognate with the German danken, the Dutch danken, and the English thank.

Dank is also a surname.  Diana Dank (b 1989) is a Russian actress and graduate in international management from the Russian Foreign Trade Academy (Moscow).

Dank is not, as is sometimes supposed, a blend of “damp” and “dark” although, most associated with describing damp, dark basements, it’s a practical working definition although dank places are often thought of as humid too.  The seemingly curious evolution of dank as a slang term meaning either “very good” or “very bad” is actually derived from the literal meaning in the sense of “moisture” which can be bad (rising damp etc) or something good (nice moist buds of weed).  Dank weed, the much admired strain of marijuana is said to be really potent, the recommended processing involving a slow drying of the harvested plant material in a paper bag with the top folded and placed in another bag, thereby reducing exposure to light & air.  When retrieving, aficionados check to ensure it remains moist, green and sticky, the resin glands still intact and “sweating” (slightly excreting).  Dank is the sense of things in general which are good developed from here, much as “filth” as a term of approbation emerged from the sense of “dirty bitch”.

Ooze

Ooze (pronounced ooz)

(1) Of moisture, liquid etc, to flow, percolate, or exude slowly, as through holes or small openings.

(2) To move or pass slowly or gradually, as if through a small opening or passage:

(3) The act of oozing, to make by oozing; to exude (moisture, air etc) slowly.

(4) Something that oozes; the product or the result from oozing.

(5) In geology, the technical word for a calcareous or siliceous mud composed chiefly of the shells of one-celled organisms, covering parts of the ocean bottom; a soft thin mud found at the bottom of lakes and rivers

(6) In commercial tanning, an infusion of vegetable matter, such as sumach or oak bark.

(7) Secretion, humor (said now to be rare).

(8) Juice, sap (obsolete except when used as a verb describing process).

(9) Of something abstract, such as information or confidence, to appear or disappear slowly or imperceptibly (often followed by out or away).

Pre 900: The noun wass from the Middle English wose (sap), from the Old English wōs (sap, froth, juice, moisture) and wāse (soft mud, mire), from the Proto-Germanic wōsą & wosan (related to the Middle Low German wose (scum), the Old High German wasal (rain) and the Old Swedish os & oos), from the primitive Indo-European wósehz (sap) (related to the Sanskrit वसा (vásā) (fat)).  Also of influence was the Old English wāse (mud), related to the Old French wāse and the Old Norse veisa.  The other Proto-Germanic link was waison (source also of the Old Saxon waso (wet ground, mire) and the Old Norse veisa (pond of stagnant water), probably from a primitive long-lost Indo-European root meaning "wet".  The modern spelling is from the mid-1500s.  The verb form meaning (1) "to flow as ooze, percolate through the pores of a substance" (intransitive) and (2) "to emit in the shape of moisture" (transitive) emerged in the late fourteenth century.  Wosen (the Old English verb was wesan) was a verbal derivative of the Old English noun wos (sap, froth, juice, moisture)," from Proto-Germanic wosan from same source as the noun ooze (n.).  The modern spelling is from the late sixteenth century.  Ooze is a noun & verb; oozed, oozle & oozing are verbs and oozy is an adjective; the noun plural is oozes.

Kim Jong-un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK (North Korea) since 2011) watching industrial lubricant ooze into a 209 litre (the old 44 gallon (Imperial)) drum.

Lindsay Lohan having just had her T-shirt oozed upon in Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005).

The adjective was oozy which existed in Old English as wosig (juicy, moist) but the original sense is long obsolete, the meaning "containing or resembling fine soft mud; having the consistency of wet mud or slime" is from 1560s and the related form, ooziness, though rare, remains in occasional use.  Ooze and its derivatives are, to some degree, associated with words such as slime, mud, muck, sludge, marsh, bog, goo, silt, gunk, drain, seep, leak, dribble, percolate, trickle, exude, bleed, mire, fluid, gook, glop & alluvium yet none of them appear to evoke the same distaste as what is said to be the most disliked word in English: “moist”.

Calcareous-siliceous sediment distribution: The worldwide distribution of ooze.

Slime

Slime (pronounced slahym)

(1) Soft, moist earth or clay, having an adhesive quality; thin, glutinous, viscous mud; any substance of a dirty nature that is moist, soft, and adhesive; bitumen; mud containing metallic ore, obtained in the preparatory dressing.

(2) Any mucilaginous substance; or a mucus-like substance which exudes from the bodies of certain animals (typically fish, snails or slugs) or vegetable (eg fungi); any ropy or viscous liquid matter, especially of a foul kind.

(3) In slang, as slimeball, an informal, derogatory term for a sneaky, unethical, repulsive or otherwise despicable person.

(4) In video gaming, a monster appearing as a slimy blob or in some other way slimy.

(5) Human flesh, seen disparagingly (an obsolete figurative use).

(6) In slang as “Jew’s slime”, bitumen (offensive and obsolete).

(7) In the African-American vernacular (more recently adopted in MTE (my thoughts exactly) slang)), a friend; “a homie”.

(8) In biology, as the acronym SLIMEs (also as abbreviated SLMEs & SLiMEs), subsurface lithoautotrophic microbial ecosystems, a type of endolithic ecosystems which manifest as agglomerations of bacteria and fungi which inhabit pores in the interlocking mineral grains of igneous rock beneath Earth's surface.

(9) In biology, as slime-mold, a broad term often referring to roughly six groups of Eukaryotes (organisms the cells of which contain a nucleus).

(10) In computing, as the acronym SLIME (Superior Lisp Interaction Mode for Emacs), an Emacs mode for developing Common Lisp applications.

(11) To cover or smear with or as if with slime.

(12) In industrial processing, to remove slime from, as fish for canning (technically a clipping from de-slime so slime can be both a synonym and antonym of de-slime).

Pre 1000: From the Middle English slime, slyme, slim & slym from the Old English slīm.  The Old English slīm may be from the Old English lim (birdlime; sticky substance) but is probably from the Proto-Germanic slīmą, from the primitive Indo-European sley- (smooth; slick; sticky; slimy), the source slao of the Old Norse slim.  The English forms were related to a remarkable number of similar words in many languages including the Dutch slijm (phlegm), the Danish slim, the Old Frisian slym, the Old Norse slīm, the German Schleim (mucus, slime), the Saterland Frisian Sliem, the Latin limus (alime, mud or mire), the Sanskrit linati (sticks, stays, adheres to; slips into, disappears), the Russian slimak (snail), the Ancient Greek λίμνη (límnē) (marsh), the Old Church Slavonic slina (spittle), the Old Irish sligim (to smear) & leinam (I follow (literally "I stick to")), the Welsh llyfn (smooth), the Greek leimax (snail), limne (marsh, pool, lake) & alinein (to anoint, besmear), the Old High German slīmen (to smooth), and the Latin līmax (snail).  The main influence on the changes in spellings noted in the Medieval period is thought to have been the Latin limus (slime, mud or mire) & linere (to daub, besmear, rub out, erase).  Slime & sliming are nouns and verbs, slimed is a verb, slimy is a noun & adjective and slimily is an adverb and slimier & slimish are adjectives; the noun plural is slimes.

Slime is available in designer colors.

Slime was used as an insult to a person from the early-fifteenth century when the phrase “to cover with slime" appeared (apparently the first use of slime as a verb) although slimeball appears not to have appeared until the twentieth and, unusually in English, hyphenation is rare.  Similar words in English include sludge, mud, goo, gunk, mucus, mire, scum, ooze, fungus & glop and, ever inventive, English has a wide range of alternatives for slimeball as an insult.  In biology, the slime-mold dates from 1880 and those with a morbid fear of slime are said to be suffering from blennophobia, from the Ancient Greek βλέννος (blénnos) (mucus, slime) + -phobia.  The suffix -phobia (fear of a specific thing; hate, dislike, or repression of a specific thing) was from the New Latin, from the Classical Latin, from the Ancient Greek -φοβία (-phobía) and was used to form nouns meaning fear of a specific thing (the idea of a hatred came later).

Slime is a popular motif in political satire, used here by Glenn McCoy (b 1965) to sum up crooked Hillary Clinton's (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) past and the 2016 presidential campaign between her and Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021).  The use of "slime" in this context plays on the almost universal human revulsion to such substances.  

An unverified representation of the Earth’s human population as a slimeball, plonked in New York’s Central Park (a place that’s seen not a few slimeballs).  This is actually a revival of the word "slime" in the now obsolete way it was used as a disparaging reference to human flesh.  At the time it was rendered, total population was some 7.88 billion souls and the calculation used was a human density of 985 kg/m³ (2172 lb/35 cubic foot) at an average human body mass of 62 kg (137 lb).  This would create a slimeball just under 1 km (820 yards) wide but the Earth’s population may just have reached 8 billion so the slimeball’s mass will have increased by 0.010152%.

Slimeballs are where one finds them:  Crooked Hillary Clinton with Harvey Weinstein.  In some places, “slimebucket” is used to convey the same meaning.

A depiction of Laura Croft, of Tomb Raider fame, being slimed.

Deliquesce

Deliquesce (pronounced del-i-kwes)

(1) In physical chemistry, to become liquid by absorbing moisture from the atmosphere and dissolving in it (best illustrated by the behavior of certain salts).

(2) To melt away; to disappear (used literally & figuratively).

(3) In botany, branching so the stem is lost in branches (as is typical in deciduous trees).

(4) In mycology (of the fruiting body of a fungus), becoming liquid as a phase of its life cycle.

1756: From the Latin dēliquēscere (to become liquid), the construct being dē- + liquēscere (to liquefy; liquescent).  In scientific literature, the adjective deliquescent (liquefying in air) is the most commonly used form.  It was from the Latin deliquescentem (nominative deliquescens), present participle of deliquescere (to melt away), the construct being de- + liquesco (I melt) and familiar in French also as déliquescent.  The de- prefix was from the Latin dē-, from the preposition dē (of, from (the Old English æf- was a similar prefix).  It imparted the sense of (1) reversal, undoing, removing, (2) intensification and (3) from, off.  In French the dé- prefix was used to make antonyms (as un- & dis- function in English) and was partially inherited from the Old and Middle French des-, from the Latin dis- (part), the ultimate source being the primitive Indo-European dwís and partially borrowed from Latin dē-.  The figurative sense of “apt to dissolve or melt away” was in use by 1837 while the verb deliquesce appears not to have been used thus until the late 1850s.  In scientific literature, the adjective deliquescent (liquefying in air) is the most commonly used form.  It was from the Latin deliquescentem (nominative deliquescens), present participle of deliquescere (to melt away), the construct being de- + liquesco (I melt) and familiar in French also as déliquescent.  The figurative sense of “apt to dissolve or melt away” was in use by 1837 while the verb deliquesce appears not to have been used thus until the late 1850s.    Deliquesce, deliquesced & deliquescing are verbs, deliquescent is an adjective, deliquescence is a noun and deliquescently is an adverb; the noun plural is deliquescences.

Deliquesce 1, oil on canvas by Tammy Flynn Seybold (b 1966).

This was the first in the Deliquesce Series, a group of works exploring the themes of transformation and conservation of energy in human forms, the artist noting being intrigued by the deceptively ephemeral nature of materials: “We think of objects - human forms included - as decaying, degrading or ‘disappearing’ but, as we know from the laws of thermodynamics, all energy is conserved - like matter, it is merely transformed from one form to another.  This work, painted with pastel-hued oils was made directly from a live model, the drips allowed organically to happen from her languid form and by using light, bright hues, I hoped to bring a spirit of optimism to this transformative process.”

A footnote to the addition of deliquesce to scientific English is a tale of the chance intersection of politics and chemistry.  Dr Charles Lucas (1713–1771) was an Anglo-Irish physician who held the seat of Dublin City in the Irish Parliament and was what now would be called “a radical”, dubbed at the time “Irish Wilkes” (a nod to the English radical politician John Wilkes (1725–1797).  His early career was as an apothecary and he was shocked discover the fraud and corruption which permeated the industry and in an attempt to reform the abuses published A Short Scheme for Preventing Frauds and Abuses in Pharmacy (1735) which much upset his fellow apothecaries who were the beneficiaries of the crooked ways but the parliament did respond and created legislation regulating standards in medicines and providing for the inspection of the products; it was the first of its kind in the English-speaking world and the ancestor of the elaborate framework of rules today administered by entities such as the US FDA (Food & Drug Administration.  Encouraged, he later published Pharmacomastix, or the Office, Use, and Abuse of Apothecaries Explained (1741), the contents of which were used by the parliament to make certain legislative amendments.

However, as well as a radical, Lucas was a idealist and while the establishment was content to support him in matter of pills and potions, when he intruded into areas which disturbed the political equilibrium, they were less tolerant and, facing imprisonment, Lucas fled to the continent where he’d decided to study medicine, graduating as a doctor in 1752.  One of his first projects as a physician was a study of the composition of certain mineral waters, substances then held to possess some remarkable curative properties (something actually not without some basis).  To undertake his research he visited a number of sites including Spa, Aachen in what is now North Rhine-Westphalia and Bath in the English county of Somerset.  The material he assembled and published as An Essay on Waters. In three Parts: (i) of Simple Waters, (ii) of Cold Medicated Waters, (iii) of Natural Baths (1756) and it was in this work that the verb “deliquesce” first appeared.  Ever the “disturber” Dr Lucas’s tract upset the medical establishment in much the same way two decades earlier he’d stirred the enmity of the apothecaries, the cluster of physicians clustered around the Bath spa angered the interloper hadn’t consulted with them on a topic over which they asserted proprietorship.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

In chemistry, the companion word of deliquescence is hygroscopy, both describing phenomena related to the ability of substances to absorb moisture from the surrounding environment, but they differ in extent and behavior.  Hygroscopy refers to the ability of a substance to absorb moisture from the air when exposed; hygroscopic substances can attract and hold water molecules onto their surface but tend not to dissolve.  Many salts behave thus and a well-known example of practical application is the silica gel, which, in small porous packages, is often used as a desiccant to absorb moisture in packaging. Deliquescence can be thought of an extreme form of hygroscopy (hydroscopy taken to its natural conclusion) in that a substance which deliquesces not only absorbs moisture from the air but also absorbs it to the point where it dissolves completely in the absorbed water, forming a solution.  In the natural environment, this happens most frequently when the relative humidity of the surrounding air is high and the classic deliquescent substances are salts like calcium chloride, magnesium chloride, zinc chloride, ferric chloride, carnallite, potassium carbonate, potassium phosphate, ferric ammonium citrate, ammonium nitrate, potassium hydroxide, & sodium hydroxide.  Presumably because deliquescence is the extreme form of hydroscopy it was the former which came to be used figuratively (dissolving into “nothing”) while the latter did not.

At the chemical level, hygroscopy (a class in which scientists include deliquescence as a sub-set) describes the phenomenon of attracting and holding water molecules via either absorption or adsorption (the adhesion of a liquid or gas on the surface of a solid material, forming a thin film on the surface.) from the surrounding environment.  Hygroscopy is integral to the biology of many plant and animal species' attainment of hydration, nutrition, reproduction and/or seed dispersal.  Linguistically, hygroscopy is quirky in that the construct is hygro- (moisture; humidity), from the Ancient Greek ὑγρός (hugrós) (wet, moist) + -scopy (observation, viewing), from the Ancient Greek σκοπέω (skopéō) (to see (and the source of the Modern English “scope”) yet unlike other forms suffixed by “-scopy”, it no longer conveys the sense of “viewing or imaging”.  Originally that was the case, a hygroscope in the late eighteenth century understood as a device used to measure humidity but in a wholly organic way this use faded (“dissolving deliquescently to nothing” as it were) while hygroscopic (tending to retain moisture) & hygroscopy (the ability to do so) endured.  The modern instrument used to measure humidity is hygrometer, the construct being hygro- + -meter (the suffix from the Ancient Greek μέτρον (métron) (measure) used to form the names of measuring devices.

Chopine

Chopine (pronounced choh-peen or chop-in)

(1) A shoe having a thick sole, usually of cork, suggesting a short stilt, worn especially by women in Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and said to have been introduced from the Ottoman Empire.

(2) A bottle of wine (usually Bordeaux) containing 0.250 fluid liters, 1/3 of the volume of a standard bottle.

1570–1580: From the Middle French chapin, from the Old Spanish chapín (type of high shoe or clog, raised by means of a cork sole), from chapa (plate), the construct being chap(a) (from the Middle French chape) + -in (the adjectival suffix).  The original, the Old Spanish chapín, is probably imitative of the sound made by the shoe when walking.

The ultimate platform shoe

How they worked.  Chopines were a kind of wonder bra for the feet.

Chopines began as a purely functional device; a means of raising women’s shoes and the hems of their dresses above the dirt and filth in which they were often compelled to walk.  It's said they were brought by traders from the Ottoman Empire where they'd been worn in bath houses by concubines, courtesans and others, the speculation being they were originally a modestly proportioned device designed as a health measure, a means of protecting the feet from infection, bath houses being warm, dark and moist, the perfect incubation environment for bacteria.  As sometimes happens, they became a status symbol with prestige determined by their elevation, the tallest extant examples reaching 20 inches (508 mm) although some historians claim they were built as high as 30 inches (762 mm).  Beyond a certain height practicality was marginal but there's evidence highly stylized examples were worn outside the bath house on ceremonial occasions.  Chopines were most popular in Spain and Italy in the late sixteenth century and when they spread to England, they were sometimes referred to as "the Venice" because of the perception that was their city of origin, something which seems to have arisen because of their mention in widely-read travel journals of the age.  Their impracticality must have made them a niche item because they never became part of any defined English costume or style of dress.  Whether men objected to women suddenly appearing taller is lost to history.

As shoes, they had a short life because their sheer size dictated they be made from lightweight materials like cork and wood although some used a metal framework.  The style, in a less extreme form, was briefly revived with the cork-soled platform soles of the 1970s which had the effect of creating a short-lived investment bubble in the Portuguese cork industry.

The absurdity of the style attracted the attention of writers.

"It is ridiculous to see how these ladies crawl in and out of their gondolas, by reason of their choppines [clogs]; and what dwarfs they appear when taken down from their wooden scaffolds; of these I saw nearly thirty together, stalking half as high again as the rest of the world."  (John Evelyn, diary entry, June 1645)

"By'r lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last by the altitude of a chopine." (Hamlet, act 2 scene 2, William Shakespeare, 1602)

"He creaked to and fro, tiptoing up nearer heaven by the altitude of a chopine... "(Ulysses, James Joyce, 1922).

Continuing the chopine tradition: Lindsay Lohan in Saint Laurent Billy leopard-print platform boots (Saint Laurent part number is 5324690SR00), New York, March 2019.

Limn

Limn (pronounced lim)

(1) To represent in drawing or painting; to delineate (rare except as literary device and also used figuratively).

(2) To portray in words; to describe (rare except as literary device).

(3) To illuminate (in the archaic sense) manuscripts; to decorate with gold or some other bright colour (obsolete except in historic references)

1400–1450: From the late Middle English limnen, limyne, lymm, lymn & lymne (to illuminate (a manuscript)), a variant of the Middle English luminen (to illuminate (a manuscript)), a short-form variant of enluminen or enlumine (to shed light upon, illuminate; to enlighten; to make bright or clear; to give colour to; to illuminate (a manuscript); to depict, describe; to adorn or embellish with figures of speech or poetry; to make famous, glorious, or illustrious), from the Old & Middle French enluminer (to illumine (a manuscript)), from the Latin illūminō (to brighten, light up; to adorn; to make conspicuous), the construct being il- (a variant of in- (the prefix used in the sense of “in, inside”)) + lūminō (to brighten, illuminate; to reveal), the construct being from lūmen (genitive luminis) (radiant energy; light; (and used poetically) brightness”) (from the primitive Indo-European lewk- (bright; to shine; to see)) + -ō (the suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs).  The more familiar derived form in Latin was inlūmināre (to embellish; to brighten (literally “light up”), related obviously to related to lucere (to shine), the idea identifiable in the Modern English lustre.

Limn’s figurative sense of “portray, depict” which persists in literary and poetic use (some journalists also like the archaic flourish) was in use by the 1590s.  The derived forms include the verbs dislimn, dislimns, dislimning & dislimned (to remove the outlines of; to efface); enlimn enlimns, enlimning & enlimned) (to adorn (a book, manuscript etc) by illuminating or ornamenting with coloured and decorated letters and figures, the adjective unlimned (not limned or depicted), outlimn (to sketch out or delineate) and the noun limner (plural limners) (one who limns or portrays.  The use of limning as a noun described a depiction (the definitional boundaries of which shifted over the centuries).  The spelling limne was (obsolete) by the seventeenth century.  Limn & limned are verbs, limner is a noun & limming is a noun & verb; the two nouns plural are limners & limnings.

Two limnings in miniature from Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. 

In the popular imagination, the illuminate manuscript is one where the art has a quality of vibrancy, the colors vivid, typified by Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (The Very Rich Hours of the Duke of Berry) (1413-1416) by Dutch miniature painters, the brothers Herman, Paul, and Jean de Limbourg from the city of Nijmegen.  The volume is now in the collections of the Musée Condé in the Château de Chantilly, Chantilly, France.  January (left) and September (right) were two of a number of illustrations in a seasonal theme and as well as of interest to historians of art, the depictions have been used as documentary evidence of aspects of lifestyle as varied as the place of animals in society to the colors of garments.  In the tradition of the International Gothic of fourteenth & fifteenth centuries (the successor epoch to the High Gothic) the book is noted for its detail, refinement and use of gold leaf though quite how reliable as a historic record such documents are has been questioned; while not exactly the Instagram of the age, they were certainly idealized and produced for whomever it was prepared to pay for the commission.

Limnophile Lindsay Lohan lingers to look with longing at a lake's languid waters, Georgia Rule (2007).

Limno- is a word-forming element used in science in the sense of “of or pertaining to lakes and fresh water; the study of bodies of fresh water” and dates from 1892 when the name for the discipline appeared in scientific papers, the first to use the term apparently the Swiss geologist François-Alphonse Forel (1841-1912).  The related forms are limnological, limnetic, limnophile (there seem not to be any limnophobes), limnologist and the marvellous adjective limnophilous (loving or having an affinity towards lakes).  The noun limnology does not describe the study of illuminated manuscripts and despite the spelling is unrelated, the construct being limno-, from the Ancient Greek λίμνη (límnē) (pool of standing water, tidal pool, pond, marsh, lake," a word of uncertain origin but perhaps connected to the Latin limus (mud), from the primitive Indo-European root slei & lei- (slime), via the notion of “moistness, standing water), from or closely related to λιμήν (limḗn) (harbor) & λειμών (leimṓn) (moist place, meadow) +‎ -(o)logy.  The suffix -ology was formed from -o- (as an interconsonantal vowel) +‎ -logy.  The origin in English of the -logy suffix lies with loanwords from the Ancient Greek, usually via Latin and French, where the suffix (-λογία) is an integral part of the word loaned (eg astrology from astrologia) since the sixteenth century.  French picked up -logie from the Latin -logia, from the Ancient Greek -λογία (-logía).  Within Greek, the suffix is an -ία (-ía) abstract from λόγος (lógos) (account, explanation, narrative), and that a verbal noun from λέγω (légō) (I say, speak, converse, tell a story).  In English the suffix became extraordinarily productive, used notably to form names of sciences or disciplines of study, analogous to the names traditionally borrowed from the Latin (eg astrology from astrologia; geology from geologia) and by the late eighteenth century, the practice (despite the disapproval of the pedants) extended to terms with no connection to Greek or Latin such as those building on French or German bases (eg insectology (1766) after the French insectologie; terminology (1801) after the German Terminologie).  Within a few decades of the intrusion of modern languages, combinations emerged using English terms (eg undergroundology (1820); hatology (1837)).  In this evolution, the development may be though similar to the latter-day proliferation of “-isms” (fascism; feminism et al).

Two folio pages from Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. 

Intriguingly different from most in the genre is the Black Hours Manuscript (known also as the Morgan Black Hours), created between 1460-1480 (some sources claim the final artwork was completed by 1475) in Bruges in what is now the Flemish Region of Belgium.  Created probably for a patron or member of the Burgundian Court, it’s now held in Manhattan’s Morgan Library and Museum.  What is most striking about the Black Hours is the extensive use of dark blueish hues as the predominant background shading.  Highly unusual in any artistic form in this era, the color occurs because of the extremely corrosive process used to dye the vellum with iron gall ink.  The black pages are a rarity (and at the time an expensive one) and the miniatures all use tones, the palette throughout very limited and restricted to blue, old rose, green, gray and white, with a few touches of gold, a radical departure from the usual splashes of yellow and scarlet, the margins decorated with blue borders, gold acanthus leaves and the expected drolleries.  So distinctive are the stylistic elements that historians of art continue to debate the influences on the creators and traces of its motifs appear often in modern graphic art.