Words that seem like they shouldn't exist

Alright class, today we are looking at words that seem like they shouldn't exist.

Words that look like they've got too many bits
Ungainlily? Or ungainlyly? I'm all for the second one.
In the same vein, "slyly". "Slily"? Silly.
In Hebrew: חמימים. As in, "דברים חמימים" ("warm things") (or is it "חמימיים"? Even better!)

Words that mean the opposite of themselves, or almost do
Sanction. Are you approving it? Or imposing penalties on it?
Proscribe. Just too close to "prescribe".

To be continued.

SVO

The great weakness of English as a Subject-Verb-Object language only really becomes apparent when it forces you to hang a name in the air for the eternity it takes to get out "died". No object can follow, of course, and it is lucky that this is so, because the difficulty in forming the name, with its potential to be followed by an infinite number of verbs, knowing that the one to come is the ultimate intransitive, is only exceeded by the impossibility of getting out anything further.

I wrote the above to myself on the back of a Service Agreement while I was waiting for the family of the deceased to arrive at a recent funeral. While the body was being placed in the ground, I was mentally describing the light-brown colouration of the fringes of the tallit which had been unwrapped from the body of the dead boy, brought out from the grave by the man whose job it is to jump into graves with dead bodies and make sure they lie properly, and laid on the stretcher which just a few minutes beforehand had been followed by all of the mourners to that place, and which was now lying just near my foot.

I had left it until now.

I have a funny relationship with death. I relate to the dead person, thinking that maybe that's me and my living is the illusion. I relate to the family, to their genuineness, and try to let them know that no matter how unconventional they think their feelings are, it's okay to feel it while I'm there. Having some brief experience in the world of mourning from the inside, I think it's very common that the mourners themselves feel pressure to feel in a certain way, to act in a certain way. In most cases, if you ask the mourners, they will probably say that it's like any occasion where they are hosting guests - they will act in a certain way and try to control the behaviour of those around them so that their guests feel comfortable. Davka I think that death is the one occasion where we should be released from these bonds of politeness, and allowed to feel whatever the hell we want.

Holding our Fingers

My boss at work just called me to let me know that they are מחזיקים את האצבעות ("holding their fingers") for me, that I may do well in my exam tomorrow. While thanking him for the thought, I couldn't help thinking about this phrase, which I had heard previously, but never got around to writing about (and thought, unblogged, is such a fleeting thing, don't you find?).

The question is, I think, obvious - what is the relationship of the above to the phrase "crossing our fingers"? The wise web-page "Words to the Wise: Your Etymological Queries Answered" offers the far-less-certain-than-I-would-have-expected hypothesis that the latter is connected to the crucifixion of Jesus, with possible pagan precursors (cf. on both counts "touch wood" - see, for instance, this potentially unreliable resource which backs me up), which would then suggest that the Hebrew phrase is a modern spin-off with the deletion of the Christianity reference (cf. the "plus" sign used in some Israeli text-books, which is missing the "south" pointing axis, leaving it the shape of an inverted squat upper case "T").

And from here, I throw the floor open to anyone who can shed further light on the origin of the Hebrew phrase. I hope there are some interesting answers - otherwise, what a waste of a post (after all, blogspace is not cheap) ...

Some Hebrew linguistic questions

Some questions for any adventurous Hebrew linguists out there:

1. Where does מו come from, as in במו עיניי ("before my very eyes")? Is it related to עצמו in any way? I would presume not, as I presume עצמו comes from עצם ("bone") even if I fail to see the semantic connection.

2. Where the hell does אדרבה ("on the contrary") come from? Sounds very Aramaic to me. Unless it's "until 4:00" ...

3. Something about למחוא כפיים ("to applaud", literally "to strike two palms") always seemed weird to me. Shouldn't למחוא by itself be enough? Can you do anything else with כפיים other than למחוא them?

4. In מלכתחילה ("from the beginning"), where the hell does the כ come from? A ה I could understand, but a כ?

I'm full of such questions. These are but a few that I have managed to spew out at this ungodly hour. While we're at it, why is it "ungodly hour" and "untimely death" and not the other way around? Okay, that's not a real question - feel free to ignore it.