Spitball Army

In conversation today, I was attempting to find a word – just one word – to describe my impression of someone who has been in my acquaintance for about 10 years.  Not a friend, mind you, but a person who I had dealings with professionally.  Is he a “sarcastic” person?  No, there was not that tinge of maliciousness about him, necessarily.  He didn’t seem to like himself very much, and was often self-deprecating in a strangely humorless way.

I thought of the word “sardonic,” but wasn’t convinced that it was the right word.  So, while still in conversation on the telephone, I Googled “define sardonic.”

What an unbelievably 21st century thing it is to be able to check and verify one’s ideas on a computer before uttering them in a conversation.  That is either progress or a sign of the decline of civilization.  In the 20th century, I would have had to actually speak the word “sardonic” and grit my teeth hoping that it was the right word – not knowing if it was, of course – and opening myself up to the ridicule of my opportunist conversational partner.

It turns out that my instinct was pretty right on, though.  Google offered me two definitions.  The first, rather dry, definition came from Princeton

(adj) sardonic (disdainfully or ironically humorous; scornful and mocking)

and was followed by a couple of examples in context.  The second, from a website for the Classics Department at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia was more suitable.

Sardonic–characterized by scornful derision or bitter irony; mocking; cynical;

Followed by the “kicker”

said to derive from the Latin word for a Sardinian plant which, when eaten, was supposed to produce convulsive laughter ending in death!

YES!!

He is sardonic, all right.  (That is the kind of thinking that will surely hasten my arrival in hell.)

Further searching generated the following etymological information from allexperts.com:

The Greek word “sardonios” or “sardanios” (as an adjective) and the neuter noun “sardonion” or the feminine noun “sardane” refer to a Sardinian plant which when eaten was supposed to produce convulsive laughter sometimes ending in death.  This word was certainly known to Homer and later we read these terms in Pausanias, traveller and geographer of the 2nd century AD.  In Latin also we have “Sardinia herba” (Sardinian herb) and “Sardonicus cespes” (Sardinian turf) both meaning: “Sardinian plant with a bitter taste which is said to produce facial convulsions which resemble laughter.”  Hence the meaning “sardonic,” i.e. mocking, cynical, sneering, sarcastic, ironic, caustic, satirical.

Finally this plant was called “Ranunculus bulbosus” (bulbous buttercup) and “Ranunculus sceleratus” (cursed buttercup) by Linnaeus.

The cursed, bulbous culprit appears thus in the wild

and can be found EVERYWHERE (all the areas in green) in the contiguous United States…so beware!  Lord knows, you don’t want to die of your own bitter laughter, as that Joe I was trying to describe will likely do one day.