In one of those lists of Words for Things You Didn’t Know Had Names (e.g.) I saw an entry for vagitus ‘the cry of a new-born child.’ My initial reaction was skepticism — I assumed it was a Latin word dragged kicking and screaming into an English context where it didn’t belong — but a look at the OED (entry from 1986) showed that it is in fact used, however rarely:
a1651 Thou hast not yet the strength of a well grown Christian; well, but is there the vagitus of an Infant?
N. Culverwell, White Stone in Elegant Discourse of Light of Nature (1652) ii. 1191825 Vagitus, the cry of young children; also the distressing cry of persons under surgical operations.
R. Hooper, Lexicon Medicum (ed. 5) 1237/11921 The various inspired articles..hardly went beyond the vagitus, the earliest cry of the new-born method.
19th Century & After July 281938 To go back no further than the vagitus, it had not been the proper A of international concert pitch,..but the double flat of this.
S. Beckett, Murphy v. 711957 He actually seemed to forehear the babe’s vagitus.
V. Nabokov, Pnin ii. 471977 My speech was to be nothing more than a vagitus, an infantile cry.
A. Sheridan, translation of J. Lacan, Écrits iii. 31
The etymology is simplicity itself: “Latin, < vāgīre to utter cries of distress, to wail.” And the pronunciation — pay attention, now — is /vəˈdʒʌɪtəs/ (vuh-JYE-tus, first two syllables as in vagina); if you’re going to use this extremely obscure and marginal word, make sure you know how to say it.
As dubious as I am about it, I give it major props for having been used by Beckett and Nabokov; if it’s OK with two of the greatest prose writers in English, who am I to say it nay?
Incidentally, I decided to investigate that Lacan citation, and I discovered it’s been newly translated. Here’s the relevant passage in French:
Pour l’auteur de ce discours, il pensait être secouru, quelque inégal qu’il dût se monter à la tâche de parler de la parole, de quelque connivence inscrite dans ce lieu même.
Il se souvenait en effet, que bien avant que s’y révélât la gloire de la plus haute chaire du monde, Aulu-Gelle, dans ses Nuits attiques, donnait au lieu dit du Mons Vaticanus l’étymologie de vagire, qui désigne les premiers balbutiements de la parole.
Que si donc son discours ne devait être rien de plus qu’un vagissement, au moins prendrait-il là l’auspice de rénover en sa discipline les fondements qu’elle prend dans le langage.
The new Norton edition, translated by Bruce Fink in collaboration with Héloïse Fink and Russell Grigg, has:
For my part, I considered myself assisted—however unequal I might prove to be to the task of speaking about speech—by a certain complicity inscribed in the place itself.
Indeed, I recalled that, well before the glory of the world’s loftiest throne had been established, Aulus Gellius, in his Noctes Atticae, attributed to the place called Mons Vaticanus the etymology vagire, which designates the first stammerings of speech.
If, then, my talk was to be nothing more than a newborn’s cry, at least it would seize the auspicious moment to revamp the foundations our discipline derives from language.
I much prefer “a newborn’s cry” for the standard French word vagissement, but I can see why in this context the previous translator went with the Latin(ate) vagitus. (We discussed Aulus Gellius and his oddly nativized French name, Aulu-Gelle, back in 2013.)
Use by certain authors is not really evidence that the lexeme is not obscure and marginal, esp. if those authors may have had a weakness for obscure and marginal lexemes … I assume Lacan’s translator deliberately used italics to signal the word’s dubiousness (in terms of membership in the English lexicon).
Indeed, which is why I called it obscure and marginal.
Beckett also used it in the stage directions for Breath, which Damien Hirst didn’t really follow.
That gave me the shivers. A sense I hope there’s not much occasion to use nowadays.
And the plural is “vagituses”? I would probably rather use “vagiti” with a word this obscure. Or is it a 4th declension “vagitūs”?
Yeah, the Latin word is fourth declension:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vagitus#Latin
So the correct English plural is indeed “vagituses.” Same principle as “sinuses.” Or, to use an even more familiar example, “Tractatuses.”
I trust you’re not implying that tractātus is fourth declension. It is, of course, true that it would be silly to use tractati in English.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tractatus#Noun
These things are easier in Welsh: traethawd, plural traethodau. (For once, the historically u-stem plural ending -au is even justified!)
Whoa! Consider me edumacated!
трактати is the plural in e.g. Macedonian, implying “tractati” …
No, as far as I know all Macedonian plurals end in -и.
I’m just saying we might get more cromulent English by transliterating Macedonian than by aping the Latin fourth declension …
“Tractatussesses” is perfectly cromulent.
However, it may be something whereof we cannot speak.
Ah, like platypuzzesses.
(ancient in-joke)
Tractates!
But yeah, if it’s built on a passive-participle stem but has an active meaning, it’s a supinative, therefore 4th declension.
My Latinity started in the “dubious” range and has been degenerating for decades.
horribile dictu
And true to form, on August 15 I read, “acaso aún antes de que yo diese mi primer vagido”
Ana María Matute, Algunos Muchachos
Never aware of this word before, in any language.
Stewardessesses (0:35).
@hat, I’ve been faking it all along on 1 hour a week in ninth grade, and what I’ve learnt here. (Last lesson on whatever weekday, so concentrating was hard). I did have better command of the paradigms when I was 14, though.