From the Classroom: Book Review





Blending the Classics with Cussing


By Steve Tuttle

Classics 1300 was voted No. 1 in a campus newspaper popularity poll by students who raved about the professor—Dr. Steven Cerutti—and his entertaining lectures, which always begin by exploring the origins of a “word of the day.” Cerutti usually chooses words that typify the strong Latin or Greek roots of many common English words. But sometimes he selects a shocker.

Take fornication, for example, one recent word of the day. To explain how the word came to mean having sex outside marriage, Cerutti gave a lesson in Roman architecture, which was defined by its use of graceful arches. The Latin root word for arch is fornic, so any large building using many arches was a fornication. Similarly, a building with walls strengthened against attack was a fortification.

A good example of fornication architecture in Rome was the Circus Maximus, where vendors sold wine and bread from shops set up under the arches of the palatial stadium. To attract customers to the arena on days without chariot races, some shops became brothels. Randy Romans of the day would cloak their reasons for visiting the Circus Maximus by saying, wink, wink, that they were going “arching.”

Now, Cerutti has compiled that and many other illuminating peeks inside the English language for a new book, Words of the Day: The Unlikely Evolution of Common English. It’s the fifth he’s written on the topic and it’s required reading in his class this semester. The book is illustrated by ECU student Joel White.
 
“It’s unfortunate that everyone seems to focus on the off-color words we examine in class and in the book,” Cerutti says. “But I believe strongly that you can’t fully understand and appreciate our language without knowing how it evolved.” Not studying some words—the four-letter kind—would be like studying European history and omitting Stalin just because he was a bad man, Cerutti says. He is careful to warn students in the class syllabus that those with sensitive ears may be offended by some words discussed in class. However, all the blue words can be found in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Some come to class already aware that English is constantly evolving, and not just those driving freshly painted and repaired cars. Until this generation, pimp was an off-color word meaning a shady character who controls prostitutes. Now it has morphed from a noun to a verb and acquired a positive image, as in “pimp my ride.”

In Words of the Day, Cerutti reminds readers that words are powerful and should be used with precision. He cites the example of the former Virginia lieutenant governor who once commented that a looming budget deficit meant the state would have to be niggardly in its spending on certain programs. “He used the word absolutely correctly, meaning the state had scanty or meager resources. But some people thought he was making a disparaging remark about African-Americans. It caused such a ruckus he had to resign.”

Most students take the class as an elective to satisfy degree requirements in General Education/Humanities. But many come back for more, which explains the interest in Cerutti’s other classes, Introduction to the Classical World 2000, Women in Classical Antiquity 2400, The Ancient City Rome 3400 and The Ancient City Pompeii 3410.

When he came to ECU in 1992 after finishing his doctorate at Duke University, Cerutti was asked to improve the university’s offerings in the classics. He expanded the classical studies program, redesigned the Latin curriculum and introduced Greek. Nearly half of the more than 60 classes now offered by the department explore classic languages, arts and culture. For the modern minded, the department also offers French, German, Spanish, Russian, Japanese and Italian.

Cerutti says he was inspired to write Words of the Day during a tour of the Tower of London, where a guide explained that the condemned once were required to pay the executioner for chopping off their heads. If the sack of money offered tipped the scales favorably, the executioner would use his sharp axe, not the dull one. From that ghastly exchange, Cerutti learned, have grown the concepts of “tipping” and “severance pay.”