A woman was looking at one of the small books we keep at the register while I rang up her sale today--I think it was a picture dictionary. At any rate, she said "Imbricate. What's imbricate?" The pencil drawing showed a plant somewhat like an asparagus, but beyond that, I didn't even know what the drawing was. I said, "I don't know, I guess I'll have to look into that." She said, "I'm going to take a picture of it. That's how I remember things." And so I suppose to prove that I can remember things without a camera, I'm going to look into this now.
***
Well, Latin students will know all about this one, I suspect. Imbricate plants are those whose leaves overlap partially in an even sort of pattern. The tips of asparagus do fit the bill, but so do artichokes. And pinecones. In fact, a lot of things in the world are imbricated. Fish scales. Shingles.
And shingles, or, really, roof tiles, are the key here. Imbricate and imbricated come from the Latin imbricatus, "covered with tiles", the past participle of imbricatare, "to cover with rain tiles". An imbrix was one of the rounded Roman tiles that lay over the joins of two tegula, the other flatter tile used as part of the rainproofing system. The imbrix was so named because it protected from imber--rain.
Seems a long way from there to artichokes, doesn't it?
In the course of my wanderings, I came across this post by a professor named Michael Drout from Wheaton College, refuting the idea that "imbricated" was a good way to describe overlapping cultural studies. It is not only a word used to show we are smarter than someone else, but also it is used imprecisely in this context.
"We fight a losing battle against fossilized metaphor and imprecise language, but it is a long defeat worth fighting, because when we preserve the specific meaning of "dilapidated" as "having stones missing" or "imbricated" as "overlapping like shingles on a roof," rather than allow these words to decay into just dead metaphors for "old" or "entwined," we keep the language richer and more powerful, more able to communicate specific, concrete ideas in only a few words."
Luckily, there are plenty of ways to used "imbricated" without having to resort to academic-speak.
***
Well, Latin students will know all about this one, I suspect. Imbricate plants are those whose leaves overlap partially in an even sort of pattern. The tips of asparagus do fit the bill, but so do artichokes. And pinecones. In fact, a lot of things in the world are imbricated. Fish scales. Shingles.
And shingles, or, really, roof tiles, are the key here. Imbricate and imbricated come from the Latin imbricatus, "covered with tiles", the past participle of imbricatare, "to cover with rain tiles". An imbrix was one of the rounded Roman tiles that lay over the joins of two tegula, the other flatter tile used as part of the rainproofing system. The imbrix was so named because it protected from imber--rain.
 |
| the rounded, upper tile is the imbrix. |
Seems a long way from there to artichokes, doesn't it?
In the course of my wanderings, I came across this post by a professor named Michael Drout from Wheaton College, refuting the idea that "imbricated" was a good way to describe overlapping cultural studies. It is not only a word used to show we are smarter than someone else, but also it is used imprecisely in this context.
"We fight a losing battle against fossilized metaphor and imprecise language, but it is a long defeat worth fighting, because when we preserve the specific meaning of "dilapidated" as "having stones missing" or "imbricated" as "overlapping like shingles on a roof," rather than allow these words to decay into just dead metaphors for "old" or "entwined," we keep the language richer and more powerful, more able to communicate specific, concrete ideas in only a few words."
Luckily, there are plenty of ways to used "imbricated" without having to resort to academic-speak.
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