In a Word

And now for one of my favourite words in the English language but not for its meaning. I refer to “facetious”. It may even be a betrayal to describe it as one of my favourite words. It’s all about order. “Order, order, . . . mine’ll be two Guinness and a packet of crisps. Tayto. Cheese and onion. Wha . . . ?” How did I get here?

Anyhow. My affection for facetious probably means I’ve an anal-retentive personality. Such would be described by psychologists as “characterised by meticulous neatness, suspicion and reserve . . . orderliness, stubbornness, a compulsion for control”.

Moi? As if. Neatness. Me? Reserve. Me? Stubborn. Never. Control freak? Ah now . . .

It has been suggested one way of establishing whether you may be anal retentive is if you find an irresistible urge to look up the words “anal” and “retentive” to see whether they are hyphenated. (I didn’t. They’re not, unless used adjectivally.)

No, I like the word facetious for a simple reason. It has all five vowels in the correct order – fAcEtIOUs; AEIOU. See! Who’s a clever boy then? Indeed, for very many happy years I believed it was the only word in the English language that had the vowels in their correct order. So it was with mixed feelings I discovered this is not the case at all. There is another such word, which would also contend for a place in my affections but for its meaning. That word is “abstemious”. AbstEmIOUs.

Abstemious. Me? “Fie on’t,” as Shakespeare would say. Or one of his characters. “Let my liver rather heat with wine/ Than my heart cool with mortifying groans,” as one said.

“Facetious” originated with the French “facétieux”, derived from “facétie”, meaning “a joke”, itself said to have originated in the Latin “facetiae”, meaning “jests, witticisms”, from “facetus” – “witty, elegant, fine, courteous”. It can mean “witty, amusing” but often suggests a desire to be amusing that is often intrusive or ill- timed and/or trivial.

As for abstemious, you can have it. So . . . so austerity-led. Meaning “sparing or moderate in eating and drinking, temperate in diet”. It’s for the joyless. From the Latin “abstemious”, meaning “sober, temperate” and a combination of “ab” (away, from) and “temetum”, meaning “strong drink”, related to the Latin “temulentus”, meaning “drunken”.

My father used to say: “Never trust a man who doesn’t drink.” I’ve proven so very trustworthy in my time. inaword@irishtimes.com