Word of the Day: Risible
Today’s word of the day, thanks to Merriam-Webster, is risible (https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day). According to the dictionary, it can mean
1a: capable of laughing
b: disposed to laugh
2: arousing or provoking laughter; laughable
3: associated with, relating to, or used in laughter
It’s pronounced /ˈrɪz.ə.bəl/, with the vowel in the first syllable being a short i sound, as in fizz. My mother-in-law would insist that it should be pronounced with a long i, as in rise, because the first syllable is stressed and the vowel is followed by only one consonant. That is somewhat of a law in English pronunciation, but it doesn’t always apply. Of course, we’d also expect the latter pronunciation because the word looks like it must be related to the word rise, but it’s not.
Rise is a Teutonic (German) word, coming into Modern English through Middle English and Old English and ultimately “from Proto-Germanic *us-rīsanan “to go up” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=rise). But risible comes into the language in the “1550s, ‘given to laughter,’ from French risible (14c.) and directly from Late Latin risibilis ‘laughable, able to laugh,’ from Latin risus, past participle of ridere ‘to laugh,’ a word which, according to de Vaan, ‘has no good PIE etymology.’ Meaning ‘laughable, capable of exciting laughter, comical’ is by 1727” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=risible).
A couple of quick notes (since I haven’t done one of these in almost a year). PIE stands for Proto-Indo-European. The “proto” part means that there are no existing examples of this ancient language. Indo-European is what we call the ancient language that is the parent language for a whole family of languages with multiple branches, including the Italic (or the Romance languages, including Latin and its derivatives), Germanic (which includes English), Indo-Iranian (which includes Hindi), and others. The asterisk before us-risanan indicates that it is a reconstructed word, reconstructed by comparing extant forms of the words and going backward, a feat which is accomplished because of the work of linguists who researched the rules by which Indo-European languages have changed over time and in different parts of the world.
So, moving on: some words that are etymologically related to risible are derision and derisive. The de- prefix means “down,” so that means that derision is the laughing down of someone or something. Others are ridicule and ridiculous, referring to things that are laughable. There is also an adjective irrisory, “’given to sneering or laughing derisively at others,’ 1824, from Late Latin irrisorius ‘mocking,’ from irrisor ‘a mocker,’ from stem of Latin irridere ‘to laugh at, make fun of,’ from assimilated form of in- ‘in’ (from PIE root *en ‘in’) + ridere ‘to laugh’” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=risible). In linguistics, an “assimilated form” is a form which has changed to be more like what follows or easier to pronounce, the way the prefix in- changes to im– before the word possible. I have never heard or seen the word irrisory used, anywhere.
On this date in 1471, the Yorkist king Edward IV defeated the Lancastrian Prince Edward and Margaret of Anjou, the wife of the Lancastrian king Henry VI, at the Battle of Tewkesbury. This battle, and the murder of Henry VI a couple of weeks later in the Tower of London, pretty much ended what we now call the Wars of the Roses, between the Houses of York and Lancaster.
Some people think that the Wars of the Roses ended with the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. But Richard was the last of the Plantagenet kings. Henry VII, who defeated Richard III at Bosworth Field, was of the House of Tudor. And the people of 15th century England did not call the battles between the House of Lancaster and the House of York the Wars of the Roses—that title for the years of conflict became popular during the 19th century, after its use in Sir Walter Scott’s novel Anne of Geierstein (1829). At the time, they were called the Civil Wars or, better yet, the Cousins’ War. The Houses of York and Lancaster were two branches of the House of Plantagenet, which ruled England from the accession of Henry II in 1154, until Richard III’s death.
Of course, Henry VII’s mother came from the House of Lancaster, and his father was also related to the Lancastrians, but technically he was a Tudor. In fact, his claim to the throne was far weaker than Richard III’s.
The impact of the Wars of the Roses on everyday people is hard to measure. Many parts of England saw virtually no effects of the various battles, and there was relatively little pillaging and destruction because both sides of the wars had a stake in protecting the country. Nevertheless, it’s estimated that over 100,000 people, probably mostly men since men did the fighting, died from the wars. That may not sound like a lot of people today, especially when you spread it out over some eight decades, but that was about 5% of England’s population—an equivalent number would be 15 million if you considered today’s population in the USA.
But the most painful part to me is that most of those 100,000 or so people who died had absolutely nothing to gain from fighting in these wars. In wars overseas, soldiers could pillage and bring home booty to enrich themselves after the fighting, a real benefit given that they had to give up their farm or their business while they were fighting the king’s war. Yes, they did, sometimes, get paid, but there was no GI Bill or Social Security to care for them if they lost a limb. And yes, sometimes the kings or other noblemen were killed in these battles, unlike the political leaders of today. But the nobility would be rewarded at a much higher rate than the peasants, the cannon fodder of the day.
Wars are never good. There is nothing risible about war.
Today’s image is an illustration from the Ghent Manuscript of the Battle of Tewkesbury; the manuscript was created in the late 15th century, so within a decade or two of the actual battle (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tewkesbury1.jpg).