Meliorism

I discovered "meliorism" via Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day podcast. It's a word that I think we need right now as we are in the second half of what may well be a full pandemic year.

Meliorism (MEE-lee-uh-riz-um) is the belief that the world tends to improve and that humans can aid its betterment. 

It is not pessimism and not optimism but some place in between though closer to the optimistic side.

"An old truism holds that the pessimist sees the glass as half-empty 

while the optimist sees it as half-full. But active and engaged people 

don't bother to measure the contents of their cups. They savor what they've got, 

drink it down, then go looking for a refill. One name for this approach is meliorism. 

Meliorists want to make things better—to ameliorate them."

 — Andrew Fiala, The Fresno (California) Bee, 10 Nov. 2017 

Somehow I missed this word, though it's not new. British novelist George Eliot believed she had coined meliorist back in 1877 when she wrote, "I don't know that I ever heard anybody use the word 'meliorist' except myself." But the podcast sais that there is evidence that meliorist had been around decades before Ms. Eliot used it.

It probably comes from the Latin melior, meaning "better" with a nod the English melior descendant, meliorate, a synonym of ameliorate which means "to make better or more tolerable" which was introduced to English in the 1500s.

Meliorism is a word for 2021 when I would love to believe that the world will improve and that we can aid its betterment. 

First Known Use of a Word

In researching words and names for this site, I am often looking for the first known use of a word in English. I recently found an interesting online tool called Time Traveler that allows you to enter a year and see the words first recorded in that year. The site is part of Merriam-Webster.com so these results are based on their dictionaries.

I took a look at words from 1953 and was surprised that some words only appeared that year and that some came that early in history. The list is a kind of lens on what was happening in that year.

Here are a few words that had their first known use in 1953.

• ballpoint pen
• bench press
• blacklight 
• cherry bomb
• flea collar main manmalathion
• male-pattern baldness
• Medicare
• random-access memory
• real-time
• rebar
• RSVP
• saber saw 
• stiletto heels
• sunblock
• trans-fatty acid
• UFO
• videotape and videotape recorder
• wax museum
• whoopee cushion

With each word or phrase, you can look at the origin. For example, with "UFO" you find:
UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT
"All right." The President sighed. "Is there anybody around this table who thinks UFOs and this signal from Vega have anything to do with each other?"  — Carl Sagan
In 1966, the first UFO "abduction" was described in journalist John G. Fuller's book The Interrupted Journey.  — Keay Davidson

First Known Use of UFO, 1953, in the meaning defined above

The site cautions that the date may not represent the very oldest sense of the word. 

Many obsolete, archaic, and uncommon senses have been excluded from this dictionary, and such senses have not been taken into consideration in determining the date.

The date most often does not mark the very first time that the word was used in English. Many words were in spoken use for decades or even longer before they passed into the written language. The date is for the earliest written or printed use that the editors have been able to discover.

These dates also change as evidence of still earlier use emerges.

The First Known Use Date will appear in one of three rounded off styles:
For the Old English period (700-1099), "before 12th century"
For the Middle English period (1100-1499), by century (e.g., "14th century")
For the Modern English period (1500-present), by year (for example, "1942")

Nyctophiles and Night

Night image from Pixabay

I came across the word nyctophile and had to look it up. Nyctophile (noun) is a person who has a special love for night and darkness. I think I am one of those people.

This word has Greek origins – nyktos literally means night and‎ philos stands for love. We have a lot of words using phile from phileein meaning to love or to show a love of something. Bibliophiles love books. Cinephiles love the cinema. Astrophiles love astronomy and the stars. I am all of those things.

I do like (love?) nighttime and I am more active at night (nocturnal? not really). But I started to wonder what the actual difference is (if there actually is a difference) between words like night, dusk, evening, nightfall, twilight, eventide, and sundown. When is it officially "night"?

Dusk, evening and twilight are commonly used interchangeably to mean the period from sunset/sundown until nighttime. But I've also seen nightfall, eventide used for that period. I don't think anyone would correct you if at sundown you said "I love the light at dusk." 

Looking up these terms it seems that "dusk" is a period of time occurring at the end of the day during which the sunsets. "Evening" is the time of the day between dusk and night, when it gets dark. Dusk occurs when the geometric center of the Sun is 18° below the horizon in the evening.

In the 48 contiguous U.S. states, it takes anywhere from 70 to 100 minutes for it to get dark after sunset and the further north you are, the longer it takes for true darkness to arrive after sundown.

What about twilight? That is the time between daylight and darkness and seems to be applied to the time after sunset and also before sunrise when the light appears diffused and often pinkish. The sun is below the horizon, but its rays are still scattering because of the Earth's atmosphere to create the colors. So, there are two twilights - the periods between the dawn and sunrise, and the time between sunset and dusk.

Is that clear or more confusing? By the way, sunrise and sunset are defined as the exact times when the upper edge of the disc of the Sun is at the horizon. That's an easy one to identify.