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Et Cetera, Et Cetera: Notes of a Word-Watcher
Examines the origin of simple but important words, the development of language, and the light that words shed on the history of human beings
Hardcover
First published October 1, 1990
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About the author
Lewis Thomas
71 books218 followersLewis Thomas (November 25, 1913–December 3, 1993) was a physician, poet, etymologist, essayist, administrator, educator, policy advisor, and researcher.
Thomas was born in Flushing, New York and attended Princeton University and Harvard Medical School. He became Dean of Yale Medical School and New York University School of Medicine, and President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute. His formative years as an independent medical researcher were at Tulane University School of Medicine.
He was invited to write regular essays in the New England Journal of Medicine, and won a National Book Award for the 1974 collection of those essays, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher. He also won a Christopher Award for this book. Two other collections of essays (from NEJM and other sources) are The Medusa and the Snail and Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony. His autobiography, The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine Watcher is a record of a century of medicine and the changes which occurred in it. He also published a book on etymology entitled Et Cetera, Et Cetera, poems, and numerous scientific papers.
Many of his essays discuss relationships among ideas or concepts using etymology as a starting point. Others concern the cultural implications of scientific discoveries and the growing awareness of ecology. In his essay on Mahler's Ninth Symphony, Thomas addresses the anxieties produced by the development of nuclear weapons.[1] Thomas is often quoted, given his notably eclectic interests and superlative prose style.
The Lewis Thomas Prize is awarded annually by The Rockefeller University to a scientist for artistic achievement.
Thomas was born in Flushing, New York and attended Princeton University and Harvard Medical School. He became Dean of Yale Medical School and New York University School of Medicine, and President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute. His formative years as an independent medical researcher were at Tulane University School of Medicine.
He was invited to write regular essays in the New England Journal of Medicine, and won a National Book Award for the 1974 collection of those essays, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher. He also won a Christopher Award for this book. Two other collections of essays (from NEJM and other sources) are The Medusa and the Snail and Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony. His autobiography, The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine Watcher is a record of a century of medicine and the changes which occurred in it. He also published a book on etymology entitled Et Cetera, Et Cetera, poems, and numerous scientific papers.
Many of his essays discuss relationships among ideas or concepts using etymology as a starting point. Others concern the cultural implications of scientific discoveries and the growing awareness of ecology. In his essay on Mahler's Ninth Symphony, Thomas addresses the anxieties produced by the development of nuclear weapons.[1] Thomas is often quoted, given his notably eclectic interests and superlative prose style.
The Lewis Thomas Prize is awarded annually by The Rockefeller University to a scientist for artistic achievement.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 20, 2025
DREAMING, the chief preoccupation of that thirty-three percent of our lives, is strangely overlooked as well. The language has drem for sleep, of course, but despite the similarity of sound there are no successor words meaning dream, or anything like it. There is dhreugh, with a Germanic suffixed form draugma leading to Old English dream, but this word was used to describe music and joy and wonderful visions, and had nothing to do with sleeping, and there is no direct evidence for the meaning we attach to DREAM today. It could be that the language, in a sleepy moment, got drem and dhreugh mixed up together, with sleep and joy and music all combined. If so, the language has had better dreams than most of the rest of us.
My favorite lexicological, philological, linguistic of the three I have read recently, filled with interesting stories about words, well written, and able to be picked up here and there.
When a word like NICE can exist unchanged in its structure and sound for a thousand years or longer, and during that time move from the meaning of an ignorant, silly person (ne plus scire, not-knowing) all the way to today's sense of decency in a person (a nice man), or exact precision in a thought (a nice distinction), would seem to demand a process of deliberation and open discussion. But it is not so, as far as we know. The word simply changed. Something like this happened to SILLY, but in reverse. Early on, a silly person was a happy one; the IE root was sel, meaning happy; cognates are HILARIOUS and EXHILARATE. The early SILLY was not just happy, it also carried an air of innocence. But now, and for the past several centuries, a silly man is simply foolish, trivial, lacking sense, even stupid. Who decided that?
It is a silly question and a nice question, in both early and late meanings, a foolish question and a happy sharp question today. Long ago some unknown influence was installed in language to enable it to change itself. It is, I think, an extremely happy thought that language is a live thing, a creature off on its own, capable of making its own transformations in meaning whenever it has a mind to. No attempts to meddle or intervene on the part of the participants, you and I, can have the slightest effect, any more than a single termite can affect the decisions of the Hill and its million residents. It gives me the same relaxed satisfaction as my conviction that I have no real governance over the workings of my own brain, nor am I obliged to run my liver or keep track of my bone marrow. For all the overarching importance of language in our lives, it is nice to know that we don't
have to worry about it; it will look after itself, change itself, expand its power, all on its own.
The lists of words derived from the same root seem to make no sense when lined up in a row, but looked at closely they do, almost always. Bheid, for example, is a root for which the original meaning was to split, with Germanic derivatives referring to biting. Our word BOAT is tracked by the scholars to bheid. How come?
BITE itself makes perfectly good sense, of course, also BEETLE, both turning up in Germanic and Old English as bitan. A BIT fits nicely, something BITTEN off, also BITTER, from the biting taste; also BAIT, considering hunting hounds, tethered prey, all that. But what about BOAT? Easy, as it turns out. The earliest watercraft were dugout contraptions, canoes, coracles, their insides dug out, not bitten literally, but surely something like.
If I were an early, primitive man, instead of the late man that I feel these days, and if I had not yet built a language for naming my tree, dumbstruck, I would go looking for a small child. What is it, I would ask. The child would say a word never heard before, pointing up into the tree in eagerness for my attention. The word would have the sound of ai, then a gentle breath, aiw, and it would sound right for this tree. The word would then enter the language by way of me, I would tell it to my friends, and thousands of generations later, long after my time, it would be used to describe many things, not trees but the feeling that was contained in that particular tree. Aiw would become EVER, and AYE, and EON and AGE. The Sanskrit language would have built it into the word ayua, meaning life. Gothic would have used it for a word, aiwos, eternity. Latin would have placed it in aevem and aetas, for the connected ideas of age and eternity. The Greeks would put it into aion, vital force, and we would receive it in our word EON.
In order to get a language really to work from the outset, as a means of human communication by speech, it must have been technically obligatory to make, first off, the words needed to express the feelings aroused by things, particularly living things in the world. Naming as a taxonomic problem could come later and would take care of itself. But for ideas to begin flowing in and out of minds, so that the deepest indispensability of language could take hold, the feelings would have to come first into speech, and that sense of the roots must like genes in all the words to follow.
GORGEOUS is high on our list of such words, never used. Instead of signifying any sort of splendor or magnificence, and despite the dictionary meanings of "wonderful, delightful," there is an undertow of tawdriness in this word. Its base is another word, GORGE, coming from the IE root gwere, meaning to swallow, yielding GARGLE, CRAG, GARGOYLE, CRAW, words like that, not remotely gorgeous. One etymological guess is that people have been wearing ornaments around their throats forever, gorgets, necklaces, baubles, and some of these may have seemed impressive enough to call for commendation. But GORGEOUS is the wrong word, with a wrong root, and bad cognates all around. In another off moment, the language might well have given us jugularious for the same purpose. GORGEOUS is a cheap word, like the imitations of the lace worn by Saint Audrey* of Ely to hide her goiter (that word coincidentally has the same root, gwere).
My favorite lexicological, philological, linguistic of the three I have read recently, filled with interesting stories about words, well written, and able to be picked up here and there.
When a word like NICE can exist unchanged in its structure and sound for a thousand years or longer, and during that time move from the meaning of an ignorant, silly person (ne plus scire, not-knowing) all the way to today's sense of decency in a person (a nice man), or exact precision in a thought (a nice distinction), would seem to demand a process of deliberation and open discussion. But it is not so, as far as we know. The word simply changed. Something like this happened to SILLY, but in reverse. Early on, a silly person was a happy one; the IE root was sel, meaning happy; cognates are HILARIOUS and EXHILARATE. The early SILLY was not just happy, it also carried an air of innocence. But now, and for the past several centuries, a silly man is simply foolish, trivial, lacking sense, even stupid. Who decided that?
It is a silly question and a nice question, in both early and late meanings, a foolish question and a happy sharp question today. Long ago some unknown influence was installed in language to enable it to change itself. It is, I think, an extremely happy thought that language is a live thing, a creature off on its own, capable of making its own transformations in meaning whenever it has a mind to. No attempts to meddle or intervene on the part of the participants, you and I, can have the slightest effect, any more than a single termite can affect the decisions of the Hill and its million residents. It gives me the same relaxed satisfaction as my conviction that I have no real governance over the workings of my own brain, nor am I obliged to run my liver or keep track of my bone marrow. For all the overarching importance of language in our lives, it is nice to know that we don't
have to worry about it; it will look after itself, change itself, expand its power, all on its own.
The lists of words derived from the same root seem to make no sense when lined up in a row, but looked at closely they do, almost always. Bheid, for example, is a root for which the original meaning was to split, with Germanic derivatives referring to biting. Our word BOAT is tracked by the scholars to bheid. How come?
BITE itself makes perfectly good sense, of course, also BEETLE, both turning up in Germanic and Old English as bitan. A BIT fits nicely, something BITTEN off, also BITTER, from the biting taste; also BAIT, considering hunting hounds, tethered prey, all that. But what about BOAT? Easy, as it turns out. The earliest watercraft were dugout contraptions, canoes, coracles, their insides dug out, not bitten literally, but surely something like.
If I were an early, primitive man, instead of the late man that I feel these days, and if I had not yet built a language for naming my tree, dumbstruck, I would go looking for a small child. What is it, I would ask. The child would say a word never heard before, pointing up into the tree in eagerness for my attention. The word would have the sound of ai, then a gentle breath, aiw, and it would sound right for this tree. The word would then enter the language by way of me, I would tell it to my friends, and thousands of generations later, long after my time, it would be used to describe many things, not trees but the feeling that was contained in that particular tree. Aiw would become EVER, and AYE, and EON and AGE. The Sanskrit language would have built it into the word ayua, meaning life. Gothic would have used it for a word, aiwos, eternity. Latin would have placed it in aevem and aetas, for the connected ideas of age and eternity. The Greeks would put it into aion, vital force, and we would receive it in our word EON.
In order to get a language really to work from the outset, as a means of human communication by speech, it must have been technically obligatory to make, first off, the words needed to express the feelings aroused by things, particularly living things in the world. Naming as a taxonomic problem could come later and would take care of itself. But for ideas to begin flowing in and out of minds, so that the deepest indispensability of language could take hold, the feelings would have to come first into speech, and that sense of the roots must like genes in all the words to follow.
GORGEOUS is high on our list of such words, never used. Instead of signifying any sort of splendor or magnificence, and despite the dictionary meanings of "wonderful, delightful," there is an undertow of tawdriness in this word. Its base is another word, GORGE, coming from the IE root gwere, meaning to swallow, yielding GARGLE, CRAG, GARGOYLE, CRAW, words like that, not remotely gorgeous. One etymological guess is that people have been wearing ornaments around their throats forever, gorgets, necklaces, baubles, and some of these may have seemed impressive enough to call for commendation. But GORGEOUS is the wrong word, with a wrong root, and bad cognates all around. In another off moment, the language might well have given us jugularious for the same purpose. GORGEOUS is a cheap word, like the imitations of the lace worn by Saint Audrey* of Ely to hide her goiter (that word coincidentally has the same root, gwere).
February 22, 2011
I always loved Thomas's writing (science-related), but this one, dealing with WORDS, is even better! Rereading in 2011.
May 26, 2023
Never actually finished. Sorta skimmed most of book skipping chapters here and there. Boring for the most part but some interesting isights. Glad I picked it up at the bookstore for one dollar in the winter.
July 28, 2018
A fun collection of essays exploring the etymology of a variety of words in the English language.
March 23, 2025
Philology as a study is something I hadn’t really encountered before this book. This book is cool, unlike anything I’ve ever read before, and the author really knows how to turn a phrase.
August 9, 2008
When Thomas moved away from biology to language in this book I really felt he took a misstep. I didn't find this very compelling. His biological science stuff is wonderful.
August 22, 2011
I loved this book. It's a bit scattered and his logic is sometimes nutty, but I just loved reading it. It was totally brain candy.
July 14, 2015
he's a great writer but the subject of word origins tended to get very repetative
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews