{"id":63,"date":"2003-04-22T21:45:31","date_gmt":"2003-04-23T01:45:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/desultor\/2003\/04\/22\/piss-ant-discovery\/"},"modified":"2003-04-22T21:45:31","modified_gmt":"2003-04-23T01:45:31","slug":"piss-ant-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/2003\/04\/22\/piss-ant-discovery\/","title":{"rendered":"Piss-ant discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

New word for the day: pismire = ant.<\/p>\n

From “piss” and “mire”, apparently due to the “urinous smell of an anthill” – I’ve never noticed such a smell, but maybe European ants are stinkier than upstate NY ants…<\/p>\n

“Mire” here doesn’t mean mud. It’s another word entirely – an old-school word for “ant”. There’s something like it in lots of the Germanic languages. Interestingly, some scholars think it comes from a root which gives us “mig” and such Latinate joys as “micturition”. “Mig” is defined by one “Atkinson” in his Cleveland Glossary: <\/p>\n

Mig, liquid manure; the fluid which runs away from the midden, or from the stall drains of a cow-house, &c.<\/i><\/p>\n

That is to say, mig = piss.<\/p>\n

So, poor Pissy Emmet the piss-ant is defamed in both syllables of pismire. And he doesn’t escape it in Latin “formica” (or descendants like Spanish hormiga) either – you can guess where those last two syllables come from. Sadly, I don’t have the resources to determine whether “myrmex” in Greek comes from the same root. It would be a grave indignity for Achilles, whose compatriots the Myrmidons took their name from the ant, if this were so.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, looking up “pismire” in the Promptorium Parvulorum puts you in a pretty funny section. Here are three consecutive entries:
\nPYSMERE. Formica.
\nPYSMERYSHYLLE. Formicarium
\nPYSPOTT, idem quod<\/i> pyssynge vessel, supra.<\/i><\/p>\n

That last one just cracks me up!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New word for the day: pismire = ant. From “piss” and “mire”, apparently due to the “urinous smell of an anthill” – I’ve never noticed such a smell, but maybe European ants are stinkier than upstate NY ants… “Mire” here doesn’t mean mud. It’s another word entirely – an old-school word for “ant”. There’s something […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}