Friday, March 23, 2012

Cantankerous Cacophony

I'm feeling cantankerous today. What cacophony! I's a word which is not too common, but so relevant.

Cantankerous means cranky, irritable, irascible. It is from Latin, I predict. Wait, the origin of this word is much more interesting than I thot.  It comes from some alteration or mispronunciation of a Middle English word for troublemaker, which probably came from a French word for contrarian. The opposite of cantankerous is easy-going.

Cacophony means harsh disharmonious (unharmonious?) noise, as opposed to a symphony which is harmonious music. It comes from Greek, caco means bad and phone means noise.

May all you encounters today be harmonious and non-cantankerous!

For more posts like this, see Philolog's log.

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