Decorum (pronounced dih-kawr-uhm or dih-kohr-uhm)
(1) Dignified
propriety of behavior, speech, dress, demeanour etc.
(2) The
quality or state of being decorous, or exhibiting such dignified propriety;
orderliness; regularity.
(3) The
conventions of social behaviour; an observance or requirement of one’s social
group (sometimes in the plural as “decorums” the use an allusion to the many
rules of etiquette (the expectations or requirements defining “correct
behaviour” which, although most associated with “polite society”, do vary between
societal sub-sets, differing at the margins)).
1560–1570:
A learned borrowing (in the sense of “that which is proper or fitting in a
literary or artistic composition”) from the Latin decōrum, noun use of neuter of decōrus
(proper, decent (ie decorous) from decor
(beauty, elegance, charm, grace, ornament), probably
from decus (an ornament; splendor, honor), the Proto-Italic dekos (dignity), from the primitive Indo-European déḱos (that
which is proper), from deḱ- (take, perceive) (and used in the sense of “to
accept” on the notion of “to add grace”). By the 1580s the use of decorum has spread
from its literary adoption from the Latin to the more generalized sense of “propriety
of speech, behavior or dress; formal politeness”, a resurrection of the
original sense in Latin (polite, correct in behaviour, that which is seemly). Decorously (in a decorous
manner) is an adverb, decorousness (the state or quality of being decorous; a
behavior considered decorous) is a noun, indecorous (improper, immodest, or
indecent) and undecorous (not decorous) are adjectives). The adjective dedecorous (disgraceful; unbecoming) is extinct. Decorum is a noun; the noun plural is decora or
decorums.
Whether on rugby pitches, race tracks, in salons &
drawing rooms or geo-politics, disagreements over matters of decorum have over millennia
been the source of innumerable squabbles, schisms and slaughter but
linguistically, the related adjective decorous (characterized by dignified
propriety in conduct, manners, appearance, character, etc) has also not been
trouble-free. Decorous seems first to
have appeared in the 1650s from the Latin decōrus
and akin to both decēre (to be
acceptable, be fitting) and docēre (to
teach (in the sense of “to make fitting”) with the adjectival suffix –ōsus appended. In Latin, the -ōsus suffix (full, full of) was a doublet of -ose in an unstressed position and was used to form adjectives from
nouns, to denote possession or presence of a quality in any degree, commonly in
abundance. English picked this up from the
Middle English -ous, from the Old
French –ous & -eux, from the Latin -ōsus and it became productive. In chemistry, it has a specific technical
application, used in the nomenclature to name chemical compounds in which a
specified chemical element has a lower oxidation number than in the equivalent
compound whose name ends in the suffix -ic.
For example sulphuric acid (H2SO4) has more oxygen
atoms per molecule than sulphurous acid (H2SO3). Decorous is an adjective, decorousness
is a noun and decorously is an adverb.
In use there are two difficulties with decorous: (1) the negative forms and (2) how it should be
pronounced, both issues with which mercifully few will be troubled (or even see
what the fuss is about) but to a pedantic subset, much noted. The negative forms are undecorous & indecorous
(both of which rarely are hyphenated) but the meanings are differences in the
meaning. Undecorous means simply “not
decorous” which can be bad enough but indecorous is used to convey “improper,
immodest, or indecent” which truly can be damning in some circles so the two
carefully should be applied. There’s
also the negative nondecorous but it seems never to have been a bother. The problem is made worse by the adjective dedecorous (disgraceful; unbecoming) being
extinct; it would have been a handy sort of intermediate state between the “un-” &
“in-” forms and the comparative (more dedecorous)
& superlative (most dedecorous) would have provided all the nuance
needed. The related forms are the nouns nondecorousness,
indecorous & indecorous and the adverbs nondecorously, undecorously & undecorously.
The matter of the pronunciation of decorous is one for
the pedants but there’s a lot of them about and like décor, the use is treated
as a class-identifier, the correlation between pedantry and class-identifiers
probably high; the two schools of thought are dek-er-uhs
& dih-kawr-uhs (the second syllable
-kohr- more of a regionalism) and in
1926 when the stern Henry Fowler (1858–1933) published his A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, he in his prescriptive way insisted
on the former. By 1965, when the volume
was revised by Sir Ernest Gowers (1880–1966), he noted the “pronunciation has
not yet settled down”, adding that “decorum pulls one way and decorate the other”. In his revised edition, Sir Ernest distinguished
still between right & wrong (a position from which, regrettably, subsequent
editors felt inclined to retreat) but had become more descriptive than his
predecessor of how things were done rather than how they “ought to be” done and
added while “most
authorities” had come to prefer dih-kawr-uhs,
that other arbiter, the Oxford English
Dictionary (OED) had listed dek-er-uhs
first and it thus “may win”.
By the 2020s, impressionistically, it would seem it has.
Décor is another where the pronunciation can be a
class-identifier and in this case it extend to the spelling, something directly
related. In English, the noun décor dates
from 1897 in the sense of “scenery and furnishings” and was from the eighteenth
century French décor, a back-formation
from the fourteenth century décorer (to
decorate), from the Latin decorare (to
decorate, adorn, embellish, beautify), the modern word thus duplicating the Latin
decor. The original use in English was of theatre stages
and such but the term “home décor” was in use late in the 1890s to described
the technique of hanging copies of old masters as home decoration. From this evolved the general use (decorations
and furnishings of a room, building etc), well established by the mid 1920s and
it’s been with us ever since. Typically
sensibly, the French l'accent aigu (acute
accent) (the “é” pronounced ay in
French) was abandoned by the Americans without corroding society but elsewhere,
décor remained preferred by among certain interior decorators and their clients,
the companion French pronunciation obligatory too.
Courtoom decorum: Lindsay Lohan arriving at court, Los Angeles, 2011-2013. All the world's a catwalk.
Top row; left to right: 9 Feb 2011; 23 Feb; 2011; 10 Mar
2011; 22 Apr 2011.
Centre row; left to right: 23 Jun 2011; 19 Oct 2011; 2
Nov 2011; 14 Dec 2011.
Bottom row; left to right: 17 Dec 2011; 30 Jan 2012; 22
Feb 2012; 28 Mar 2012.
In English, the original use of decorum was in the
technical jargon of what word come to be called literary theory; decorum
describing a structuralist adherence to formal convention. It was applied especially to poetry where
rules of construction abound and it was about consistency with the “canons of propriety” (in this context
defined usually as “good taste, good manners & correctness” which in our
age of cultural (and linguistic) relativism is something many would label as “problematic”
but all are free to “plug-in” their own standards). Less controversially perhaps, decorum was
understood as the matter of behavior on the part of the poet qua ("in the capacity or character of;
as being" and drawn from the Latin legal qua (acting in the capacity of,
acting as, or in the manner of)) their poem and therefore what is proper and becoming
in the relationship between form and substance. That needs to be deconstructed: decorum was
not about what the text described because the events variously could be thought
most undecorous or indecorous but provided the author respected the character,
thought and language appropriate to each, the literary demands of decorum were satisfied. Just as one would use many different words to
describe darkness compared to those used of sunlight, a work on a grand and
profound theme should appear in a dignified and noble style while the trivial
or humble might be earthier.
The tradition of decorum is noted as a theme in the works
by the Classical authors from Antiquity but the problem there is that we have
available only the extant texts and they would be but a fragment of everything
created and it’s acknowledged there was much sifting and censoring undertaken
in the Medieval period (notably by priests and monks who cut out “the dirty
bits” and it’s not known how much was destroyed because it was thought “worthless”
or worse “obscene”. What has survived
may be presumed to be something of the “best of” Antiquity and there’s no way
of knowing if in Athens and Rome there were proto-post modernists who cared not
a fig for literary decorum. The Greek
and Roman tradition certainly seems to have been influential however because
decorum is obvious in Elizabethan plays.
In William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) Much
Ado About Nothing (circa 1598), the comic passages such as the badinage
between Beatrice and Benedick appear for amusing effect in colloquial dramatic
prose while the set-piece romantic episodes are in formal verse; the very moment
Benedick and Beatrice realize they are in love, that rise in the emotional
temperature is signified by them suddenly switched to poetic verse.
Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December, 2011.
By contrast, in rhetoric, the conventions of literary
decorum were probably most useful when being flouted. Winston Churchill’s (1875-1965; UK
prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) World War II (1939-1945) speeches are
remembered now for their eloquence and grandeur but there’s much evidence that
at the time many listeners regarded their form as an anachronism and preferred
something punchier but what made them effective was the way he could mix light
& dark, high and low to lend his words a life which transcended the essential
artificiality of a speech. Once, when
discussing serious matter of international relations and legal relationships
between formerly belligerent powers, he paused to suggest that while Germany
might be treated harshly after all that had happened, the Italians “…might be allowed to work their passage back.” [to
the community of the civilized world].
What the flouting of decorum could do was make something worthy but dull
seem at least briefly interesting or at least amusing, avoiding what the British
judge Lord Birkett (1883–1962) would have called listening to “the ‘refayned’
and precious accents of a decaying pontiff.”
In English literature, it was during the seventeenth
& eighteenth centuries that decorum became what might now be called a
fetish, a product of the reverence for what were thought to be the “Classical rules and tenets” although
quite how much these owned to a widespread observance in Antiquity and how much
to the rather idealized picture of the epoch painted by medieval and Renaissance
scholars really isn’t clear. Certainly, in
the understanding of what decorum was there were influences ancient & modern,
Dr Johnson (Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)) observing that while terms like “cow-keeper” or “hog-herd” would be thought too much the vulgar talk of the peasantry
to appear in “high poetry”, to the Ancient Greeks there were no finer words in
the language. Some though interpolated
the vulgarity of the vernacular just because of the shock value the odd discordant
word or phrase could have, the English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) clearly
enjoying mixing elegance, wit and grace with the “almost brutal forcefulness” of
the “the
crude, the corrupt and the repulsive” and it’s worth noting he made
his living also as a satirist. His
example must have appealed to the Romantic poets because they sought to escape
the confines imposed by the doctrines of Neoclassicism, William Wordsworth
(1770–1850) writing in the preface to Lyrical Ballads (1798 and co-written with
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)) that these poems were here to rebel
against “false
refinement” and “poetic diction”. He may have had in mind the odd “decaying pontiff”.