I can’t help but notice that I’ve affected the vocabulary of pop music.— David Bowie
Language fascinates me, and different words have different energies.— Alan Rickman
It has been a difficult week.
The passing of David Bowie and Alan Rickman in the same week took some of the light out of the world. It’s appropriate that this week’s Lunchbox should contain a hint of grey, so we have three morose words that sum up the week’s events.
From the Latin lugubri, meaning “mournful”, we get the word lugubrious. It too means “mournful”, but sometimes carries connotations of melodramatic and exaggerated wailing.
Something that is lachrymose (“LACK-ruh-mohs”) causes tears, or is tearful. The word comes from the Latin lacrima, or “tear”, the same root that gives the lacrimal glands — the source of tears — their name.
The curious spelling of lachrymose is a relic of the Medieval Latin practice of writing “ch” instead of “c” when the following letter is an “r”. You can see that same quirk at work in sepulchre, a word spotlighted in our Halloween edition last year, and
Fuscous Honeyeaters, Australia. Credit: Aviceda
Our final word is fuscous, a somber, brownish-grey color. It also comes from the Latin: fuscus is the Latin term for “dusky”.
The fuscous honeyeaters to the right show that there is beauty even in the most somber colors.
