Subject: (urth) Foila'd, cacogen, carnifex

From: Alice Turner <pei047 at attglobal.net>
Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 08:24:43 +0000

Michael Andre-Driussi writes:

>Right.  I didn't mean to suggest that she was going to chose this option.
>My money is on bachelor number three.

:Whoops.  I completely misunderstood your comment, that you felt she had
:*won* the contest by telling the best story.  Quit confusing me with
:sports metaphors!

Now *I'm* confused! I thought mantis was suggesting that she was in fact
flirting with Sev himself, whose height, at least, suggests that he has some
claim to nobility. It's hard to believe that she would really take Loyal
seriously--after all that would mean she'd (presumably) have to live with
him. Which would be extremely difficult either if she were a career officer
or if she weren't.

>Putting these odd pieces together, it almost seems as if Foila is blaming
>her first two suitors/fellow soldiers for her own real wounding--not
>necessarily "friendly fire," but just their own ineptness as soldiers!
>After all, one is a seal hunter, the other is a farmer boy--whereas she!
>She is an armigette (she is at least a cavalry officer)!

:This sounds reasonable, if we assume that Foila knew Hallvard and Melito
:before she was injured.  I have the sense that she didn't, that she was in
:some different formation from the PBI types until they all washed up
:together in the Pelerines' MASH unit; but either way is possible.  Or are
:you suggesting that she blames the inept infantry in general -- they may
:be volunteers, but they're not professionals?

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From: "Jim Henley"

:First "cacogen." Okay, filthy born. Right. Got that. But has anyone
:suggested "shit-spewer" or even bullshitter? If we read it as being of the
:same form as _pathogen_ we get "causer or creator or producer of ordure" -
:cacogenesis would be the process itself. (And what a lovely process it is!)
:From there it's just a quick jaunt to the demotic, fueled by the resentment
:for extrasolarians. And what do people resent? That the cacogens keep
:whispering in the Autarch's ear, no doubt feeding him a line of crap to get
:him to do what they want.

:Seems like "cacogen" becomes a genuinely insulting thing to say about
:someone.
>From OED:
q cacogenesis (k&k@U"dZEnIsIs). [mod.L. f. caco- + Gr. cOmeri| origin,
birth.] Morbid or depraved formation; a monstrosity, a morbid pathological
product. caco- representing Gr.combining form of  bad, evil, forming many
compounds in Greek, some of which, like cacochymy, cacodæmon, cacoethes,
cacophony, have reached English through Latin (and French); others have been
adapted directly from Greek in modern times (as cacology, cacotrophy);
others have been formed on Greek analogies from their elements. Compounds of
Greek and Latin, as cacodorous = malodorous, and the medical cacosomnia
(sleeping badly) are exceptional. Occasionally caco- is used in looser or
casual combination with words of Greek derivation, which may have been
modeled on cacodæmon, as in caco-magician, cacotype. It is very freely used
in medical terminology to form names of bad states of bodily organs, but
most of these are not English in form, e.g. cacoga'lactia (a condition in
which the milk is bad), cacoglossia (putrid state of the tongue),
cacomorphia (malformation or deformity), caconychia (morbid state of the
nails), cacopharyngia (a putrid condition of the pharynx), cacophthalmia
(malignant inflammation of the eyes), cacoplasia (formation of diseased
structures from a depraved condition of the system), cacopneumonia,
cacorrhachitis (disease of the vertebral column), cacothymia (disordered
state of mind), cacotrichia (disease of the hair), etc.

:Carnifex - wouldn't this simply be "meat maker?" A pretty direct
:characterization of an executioner's function - you could see it maybe
:appearing on their vision statements. Then if there were an unheated prison
:where, one winter, an inmate was pressed into the role of acting headsman
:in the absence of an official functionary, the poor fellow would be a
:chilly con carnifex.carnifex ("kA:nIfEks). Obs. exc. Hist. [L. carnifex,
carnific-em, f. carn-em flesh + -fex, -ficem, maker, f. fac- (in
comb. -fic-) make, making; in ancient L. 'executioner', but in med.L. often
'butcher' (the trade), e.g. An executioner-alga

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