The Words of the Week - Aug. 18

‘Racketeering’ & ‘RICO’

Racketeering and RICO saw increased lookups this week after a grand jury in Georgia returned indictments for former president Donald Trump and 18 others, accusing them of operating as a criminal organization in efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis indicted Trump on 13 felony counts late Monday night. Charges included violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, solicitation of violation of oath by public officer, filing false documents and multiple conspiracy counts. Prominent Trump associates like his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows were also indicted on multiple felony counts on Monday. All 18 co-defendants joined the ex-president in being indicted on the racketeering charge, with other counts varying, depending on the defendant.
— Aila Slisco, Newsweek, 15 Aug. 2023

The verb racketeer means “to carry on a racket,” and the relevant sense of racket in this story is “a fraudulent scheme, enterprise, or activity.” RICO is an abbreviation that stands for “Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations.” Our legal dictionary notes that the 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act “made criminal ‘enterprise,’ or illicit activity that is run like a business, illegal and applied harsh penalties to those engaged in it. RICO and later amendments include provisions against fraud, corruption, violence, and activity in furtherance of human trafficking and slavery. It allows federal prosecutors broad powers to attack organized crime elements or other groups involved in certain “patterns” of illicit conduct. It has been used successfully against a wide variety of offenders, and many states have modeled laws on its provisions.”

‘Question mark’

A lot of folks have been curious about question mark (perhaps you are one of them?) since the James Webb Space Telescope took some snaps that include images of a question mark-shaped blob, which scientists say may be two or more galaxies merging.

The James Webb Space Telescope recently captured a stunning new image of what scientists call a pair of actively forming stars. But eagle-eyed viewers were quick to seize on an even tinier—and to some, more intriguing—detail at the very bottom of the frame: an orange formation in the unmistakable shape of a question mark, tail and all. … ESA study scientist Nora Luetzgendorf says that while it’s too far away to say for sure, the arc of the question mark likely comes from the tidal interaction between the galaxies, “and the dot might as well be just a smaller spherical galaxy.”
— Rachel Treisman, NPR, 17 Aug. 2023

Our definition of question mark is straightforward enough: “a mark ? used in writing and printing at the conclusion of a sentence to indicate a direct question.” As for the origins of the mark itself, they’re a bit of a question mark. But if you’re interested in learning a bit more about the history of English punctuation, you might enjoy this article, full stop.

‘Burglarious’

Burglarious has seen higher than usual lookups lately, possibly due to a news story about a chonky smarter-than-your-average bear earlier this month.

A burglarious black bear in California responsible for at least 21 home break-ins in South Lake Tahoe since last year is headed to a wildlife sanctuary in Colorado. The female black bear, known as 64F and nicknamed “Hank the Tank,” has a rap sheet that includes “at least 21 DNA-confirmed home break-ins and extensive property damage,” according to the California Fish and Wildlife Department.
— Antonio Planas and the Associated Press, The Associated Press, 7 Aug. 2023

Burglarious is an adjective meaning “of, involving, or resembling burglary.” We define burglary as “the crime of entering a structure (such as a house or commercial building) with the intent to commit a felony (such as theft).” The charm of burglarious comes partly from its relative rareness and partly from its very formal tone (perhaps the two things are not unrelated). It’s one of those words that always seems funny (especially when apply to a chonky bear), because burglar is such a common and straightforward word that it seems to require no fancy sounding related adjective. More common words like thieving exist, but usually we think of this kind of modifier with less specificity: illegal or surreptitious.

‘Brain wave’

There was a surge in lookups for brain wave this week following reports that scientists were able to reconstruct a Pink Floyd song using the brain waves of 29 study participants.

As the participants listened to Pink Floyd’s 1979 song “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1,” the electrodes captured the electrical activity of several brain regions attuned to musical elements such as tone, rhythm, harmony and lyrics. Employing machine learning, the researchers reconstructed garbled but distinctive audio of what the participants were hearing. The study results were published on Tuesday in PLOS Biology. … Although the findings focused on music, the researchers expect their results to be most useful for translating brain waves into human speech. No matter the language, speech contains melodic nuances, including tempo, stress, accents and intonation.
— Lucy Tu, Scientific American, 15 Aug. 2023

Brain wave was first used in the mid-1800s to mean “a hypothetical vibration assumed to explain telepathy.” By 1900, it had come to mean “a flash of inspiration” (a sense still in use today). Today we also use brain wave to refer to “rhythmic fluctuations of voltage between parts of the brain resulting in the flow of an electric current,” as well as “a current produced by brain waves.”

Word Worth Knowing: ‘Nidorosity’

Though not an everyday word, nidorosity pulls its weight on the many holidays, such as fast-approaching Labor Day, that involve grilling. In 1755, Samuel Johnson defined nidorosity in A Dictionary of the English Language as an “eructation with the taste of undigested roast-meat.” An undisputed giant of lexicography, a man of immense learning and literary acumen, and perhaps the first person to single-handedly edit a great dictionary, Johnson also provided an entry for a word that basically means “meat-burp.” We all contain multitudes.