{"id":4618,"date":"2019-11-20T16:13:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T16:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=4618"},"modified":"2019-11-20T16:16:37","modified_gmt":"2019-11-20T16:16:37","slug":"word-of-the-day-controvert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2019\/11\/20\/word-of-the-day-controvert\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Controvert"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Dictionary.com Word of the Day for today is controvert<\/em>. Here is what the website\nsays: \u201cA controvert is not some kind of hybrid of an introvert<\/em> and extrovert<\/em>.\nIt is actually a verb that means \u2018to argue about; debate; discuss\u2019 and \u2018argue\nagainst; deny; oppose.\u2019 Controvert<\/em>\ndoes share a root, however, with introvert<\/em>\nand extrovert<\/em>: Latin vertere<\/em> \u2018to turn.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The website www.etymonline.com<\/a>\nsays that the word entered the language around 1600 and that it was probably a\nbackformation from the word controversy<\/em>.\nControversy came into the language in the late 14th<\/sup> century from\nFrench, \u201ccontroversie<\/em> \u2018quarrel, disagreement\u2019 or directly from\nLatin controversia<\/em> \u2018a turning against; contention, quarrel,\ndispute,\u2019 from controversus<\/em> \u2018turned in an opposite direction,\ndisputed, turned against,\u2019 from contra<\/em> \u2018against\u2019 (see contra<\/strong><\/a> (prep.,\nadv.)) + versus<\/em> \u2018turned toward or against,\u2019 past participle\nof vertere<\/em> \u2018to turn\u2019 (from PIE root *wer-<\/strong><\/a> (2)\n\u2018to turn, bend\u2019).\u201d I\u2019ve talked about backformations before, but here is a\nreminder: backformation is a process by which new words are created by removing\nsupposed affixes from an existing word. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, for instance, we have the word burglar<\/em>, which means someone who breaks into a house to steal\nsomething; it is derived from the Germanic word meaning \u201chouse,\u201d and comes into\nEnglish through Anglo-Latin burgolator<\/em>,\nwhich may be a compounding of burg<\/em>\nwith latro<\/em>, \u201cthief.\u201d We often derive\nwords and even names by adding an \u201c-er\u201d suffix to a verb, like miller<\/em> from the verb to mill<\/em> or driver<\/em> from to drive<\/em> (we\ncall these nouns \u201cagent nouns\u201d because the person is an agent of the action).\nNow you might thing, \u201cBut those agent nouns end in \u201c-er\u201d and burglar ends in \u201c-ar,\u201d\nbut you have to remember that language is first spoken and then written. And\nreally the only way we can tell which word was derived from which is by the\nhistorical record, by which word appeared in the language first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So we have the noun controversy,<\/em>\nand from that noun we derive the verb form, to\ncontrovert<\/em>. It\u2019s interesting that this process continues, though it takes\ntime for people to adjust to such neologisms. For instance, one can now hear\npeople use the backformation conversate<\/em>,\na backformation from conversation<\/em>\nfound in the late 1800s, even though there is a perfectly good verb, to converse<\/em>. Quick aside: the British\npronunciation of controversy<\/em> puts the\nemphasis on the second syllable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this date in 1952, the Sl\u00e1nsk\u00fd Trial (\u201cTrial of\nanti-state conspiracy centered around Rudolf Sl\u00e1nsk\u00fd\u201d) began in Prague,\nCzechoslovakia. There were sixteen primary defendants, all members of the\nCommunist Party and all accused of being Trotskyites and Titoites, that is,\nfollowers of the disgraced former Soviet leader Leon Trotsky and the Yugoslav\nleader Josef Broz, known as Tito. This show trial was part of Josef Stalin\u2019s\nattempt to purge the Communist leadership in the various satellite countries of\ndisloyal elements. All the defendants, having been subject to torture and\nthreats against their families, confessed, and eleven of the sixteen were\nexecuted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is perhaps even more striking about this show trial is\nthat the defendants were Zionists. According to the wiki, \u201cApropos of the\nconspiracy theories of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, prosecutors claimed\nthat a \u2018Zionist-Imperialist\u2019 summit had taken place in Washington DC in April\n1947 with President Truman, undersecretary of state Dean Acheson, former\ntreasury secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr, David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharret in\nattendance. The conspiracy charged that defendants were acting in accordance with\na so-called “Morgenthau Plan” to commit espionage and sabotage\nagainst Czechoslovakia for the US in exchange for American support for Israel.\nIronically most of the defendants were known to be ardent anti-Zionists.\u201d The\ntruth is that none of the men who were tried had been disloyal to Stalin, but\nwhen people with power want to condemn someone, there is often very little stop\nthem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The use of anti-Semitism in Europe as a way to condemn other\npeople is not unusual. There are those who believe that the Holocaust was some\nsort of isolated incident, something that happened only because Adolf Hitler\nwas full of self-hate and the German people are without conscience. But anti-Semitism\nexisted in Europe long before Hitler and continued after, even till today. In\nfact, on this date in 1938, Father Coughlin made the first of many anti-Semitic\nremarks on his radio show in the USA. Father Coughlin promoted the Russian\nforgery called \u201cThe Protocols of the Elders of Zion,\u201d arguing that Jewish\nbankers were behind the Bolsheviks, and supported the fascist states of Germany\nand Italy as opponents of communism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to OnThisDate, in 1829 Nicholas I of Russia\ndecreed the expulsion of Jews from Sevastopol and Nikolaev, areas of Ukraine,\nthough the leaders of those areas had the pogrom delayed first to 1832 and then\nto 1834. Nicholas I is remembered as particularly anti-Semitic, though he was\nnot responsible for creating the Pale of Settlement in Russia\u2014that had happened\ndecades before his reign. But he did decree that all Jewish males, starting at\nthe age of 12, would be drafted into the Russian army. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our world, people throw around words like racism<\/em> and bigotry<\/em> for all kinds of reasons, often just simple disagreements\nover government policy. People love to argue with ad hominem<\/em> attacks. But there is one thing that is incontrovertible\u2014anti-Semitism\nmay be subtler today, but it still exists and still motivates people to do\nhorrible things. Well, I say that it is incontrovertible, but some people will\ncontrovert over anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The image comes from the Maariv newspaper and depicts Rudolf Sl\u00e1nsk\u00fd at the Prague trials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Dictionary.com Word of the Day for today is controvert. Here is what the website says: \u201cA controvert is not some kind of hybrid of an introvert and extrovert. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4618"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4625,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4618\/revisions\/4625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}