Eager To Make My Point

I'm addicted to but a few things and bicycling is one of them. (I should clarify that I'm addicted to watching bicycling on TV, although I do enjoy touring around my local trails on my Specialized RockHopper trail bike, too - I'm just not addicted to it.) Specifically, I love watching the Tour de France each July.

A couple years ago, Versus network's play by play announcer, Paul Sherwen, said some words to the effect, "Now these boys are turning up into the sharp teeth of the mountains, and trust me, they didn't come here to just go half way up."

In those few words he nailed one of the most fascinating subsets of words that have flowed to us from the mother-tongue. It all starts with the IE root, ak meaning "sharp". Now think of all things you refer to as sharp. From "sharp dresser" to "sharp cheese", it can mean different things. Sherwen was accurate (accurate is an ak word itself meaning "right to the point") when he described Europe's Alps mountain range as sharp (one peak is even called a "horn" - now that's sharp). Are you familiar with America's Sawtooth mountain range? What could be sharper than a blade of sawteeth?

Acid is often described as being sharp and this certainly includes fods with acidic ingredients (lemon juice or vinegar) which we say have a "sharp taste". In the early days of chemistry, scientists found that all acids had one component in common so they named the element that made acids acidic: oxygen (ak - sharp + gen - making (as in generate)). If something has a very bitter, sharp smell we describe it as acrid, like acid, just with an extra letter picked up somewhere along it's long life.

Of course, an axe is sharp. An acute pain is very sharp! Even the word ear derives eventually from ak - think of an ear of corn, not that soft round thing hanging on the side of your head. Eager has an ancestor in aks, meaning someone who is "sharp". In times past, eager has also meant "keen or sharp-edged". Remember that Wile E. Coyote was always trying to capture (or blow up) Road Runner with one contraption or another from the Acme Co? Acme means "highest" - the sharp point, the top, only the best. Oh, and by the same reasoning, acne also means "point" - I think the reasoning is clear.

But there's one more word that includes ak and I think it speaks to the wonderful color lying beneath the surface of everyday words. My pal, Paul Sherwen assured me that Lance Armstrong and all his followers (literally) hadn't come to the sharp mountain points of the Alps to stop at half-way. Thank goodness! But what if they had. What word would we use to describe a person who stopped half-way (medi) up the mountain (ak)... medi+ak, or as we know the word today: mediocre. Yes, every time you say, write, hear, or read mediocre, you are engaged in a literal word-picture of someone (something) that had the ability or desire to go to the top, but stopped half-way. What a disappointment!

And welcome back to the Tour, Lance!