Term after Term. VI

JONAS KLIMAVIČIUS

Water hemlock, BUT NOT poison hemlock

For botanists, it has been clear for more than a hundred years that nuokana is a neologism coined by Laurynas Ivinskis. The abundance of neologisms in Ivinskis’s dictionaries was noticed and demonstrated half a century ago by Jonas Kruopas (Kruopas 1998: 193, 195–196). I myself, while working on the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language, took note long ago of Ivinskis as a consistent Lithuanizer of foreign and international words, and even a relentless replacer of exoticisms. Having become more familiar with the scope and results of Ivinskis’s neologism-making through Albina Auksoriūtė’s dissertation articles (Auksoriūtė A. 1995: 58–65; 1997, 33–39; 2000, 48–57; 2001, 95–111; 2002, 95–102; 2003, 135–142, 2004, 127–149, 2007, 72–91; 2008, 132–141)—including a great many entirely individual coinages whose motivation is difficult or wholly impossible to understand—and of the partial success of this coinage, as well as the efforts now being made to establish his more suitable manuscript neologisms, one cannot help reflecting: such bold, hopeful work, such a lively, refreshing source during the oppression of the Lithuanian language, and such aridity and desiccation now, in the years of freedom...

This small step of mine, without any truly theoretical aim—to prove that nuokana is a neologism coined by Ivinskis, and to show how it was formed, its semantic motivation, and partly its etymology—also has a practical aim: to complete the establishment of nuokana in all areas of Lithuanian usage (not just botanical nomenclature), since this has not yet been achieved, and perhaps no effort has been made to do so.

I came across nuokana not through its coiner, Ivinskis, but quite by chance. It was in 1981, through Juozas Glinskis’s play Cikuta – Sokratui (Hemlock for Socrates). It had long been known that the Athenian court had sentenced Socrates to death in a special, though milder, way—not by casting him from a cliff, but by making him drink poison. Here, he was to drink some kind of cicuta. What is cicuta here? The writer probably did not investigate. Yet there is no shortage of accounts specifying what poison Socrates drank, for example: Во времена Сократа при-

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The man condemned to death would, at the appointed time, drink a cup of ground poisonous hemlock (Conium) Nersesyants 1977: 139. <...> drank a cup of hemlock poison Xenophon 1993: 12. <...>, in our times Socrates would not have had to drink poison hemlock juice,<...> Ruso 1979: 30. <...> death from a cup of water-hemlock poison<...> Averintsev 1989: 188. And not only in Socrates’ case, for example: Of course, it is much safer for a bent-over cobbler than to drink wine mixed with poison from a golden cup in a toast to health—from poisonous water hemlock and hemlock Lucian 1975: 89. Which poison is the real one? Water hemlock (Cicuta) and poison hemlock (Conium<, Greek koneion) are rather similar plants in the same family of Umbelliferae (now Apiaceae); both are poisonous, but in water hemlock (the species poisonous water hemlock—Cicuta virosa) only the roots are poisonous, whereas in poison hemlock the whole plant is (especially the fruit); their habitats also differ: water hemlock grows on the banks of bodies of water, in marshy areas and wet meadows, while poison hemlock grows in wastelands, homestead sites, under eaves and along fences. Their similarity is also reflected in the names used in some languages: German Schierling—poison hemlock, Wasser schierling (but also Wüterich)—water hemlock; English poison-hemlock—poison hemlock, water-hemlock (but also cowbane)—water hemlock. Russians try to distinguish them: water hemlock—вех (Polish wiechon), цукыма; poison hemlock—болиголов, омег. Thus the botanical distinction is clear, but what Socrates actually drank should be determined by specialists in classical philology. Here it is important only to say that cicuta means not only water hemlock, but also, more generally, poison (LoLieŽ 2007). Therefore, Nersesyants’s цукыма (болиголов) may not mean synonyms: цукыма means poison, while болиголов specifies the particular plant: poison hemlock. On the other hand, it may do so, but need not: “cicuta was the name the Romans used for the poisonous plant Conium maculatum” LBŽ 1938 (hence in the classical Latin dictionary, cicuta—1) болиголов, цукыма Dvoretsky 1986), only in scientific botanical nomenclature is the opposite true. The contrast between the word cicuta—“poison hemlock” and “water hemlock”—and its general meaning, “poison,” are indispensable facts; one must simply take care not to conflate them. What Socrates actually drank (and why the poison drunk by the Greek Socrates is called by the later—Horace’s and Pliny the Elder’s—Latin word) should be determined by specialists in classical philology.

The times and surroundings in which Laurynas Ivinskis lived—both immediate and general (without the University of Vilnius, and later also under the press ban)—were very unfavorable to him, to Lithuanian identity and the Lithuanian language, and to the very vitality of the language: it was the dawn before daybreak, but the dawn of a long night... Yet he had no shortage of grateful and dedicated successors in his work. More than one of Ivinskis’s neologisms

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having emerged from a not-so-brief period of oblivion, it found its way into Povilas Matulionis’s 1906–1907 work Žolynas, when, after Aušra, Vincas Kudirka’s Tautiška giesmė and Maironis’s Jaunoji Lietuva were already resounding. And among them was the word under discussion: Cicuta L. – nuokana Iv[inskis] – вехъ – szalej, cykuta Matulionis 1906–1907. Matulionis already knew that this was Ivinskis’s coinage. We can only confirm that before Ivinskis, nuokana (LKŽ VIII 1970) is not attested in any Lithuanian-language source, whether dialectal or written. When and in which of Ivinskis’s many works nuokana was first used is a small pleasure of discovery left to Ivinskis scholars; what is known now is only that as early as 1858, in Ivinskis’s translation of Genavaitė, he uses the word cikutas and gives it in a footnote as a botanical term: Cikutas marinamasis. Cicuta virosa. Szalej jadowity Ivinskis R 1995: 285. Nuokana made its way into J. Baronas’s dictionary: веха – nuokana RLŽ 1924. In Matulionis’s Žolynas, the species Cicuta virosa Lin. is designated by the prefixed term nuokana garlė Jac[oby]. The standard Lithuanian name giftiger Wesserschierling – вех ядовитый – szalej jadowity – vėlnrutks for Cicuta virosa L., nuodingoji nuokana, is provided in the Lietuviškas botanikos žodynas. I dalis, compiled and published in 1938 by the Commission for the Botanical Dictionary; it also lists regional synonyms and unsuccessful neologisms: morkelės Seinai, morkiukai Tauragė, mirštamukai K. Grinius, smertkevynis J.–A. Pabrėža, vandens maudas J.–A. Pabrėža, F. Kuršaitis, šelmis tručyzninkas J. Fiedorowicz (1851). The work of botanical terminology was finally completed: the monumental Lietuvos flora (6 vols.), the 1998 Botanikos vardų žodynas, and the encyclopedias no longer had difficulty with it.

Things were different with dictionaries of foreign words. The 1936 TŽŽ mostly “made use of the best dictionaries of this kind in French, German, Russian, Polish and English” (5–6), so Polish cykuta and Russian цукута could easily have come to the compilers’ attention, rather than nuokana (there were still two years to go before LBŽ 1938)... Thus the entry reads: cikuta (Latin) – “a highly poisonous plant of the umbellifer family.” The translated TŽŽ editions of 1951 and 1969 took half a step forward and half a step sideways: cikutà – p o i s o n o u s w a t e r h e m l o c k (followed by an explanation); in other words, do as the dictionary does: use cikuta and know that it means nuodingoji nuokana; but what is the point if the dictionary gives cikuta? Only DŽ 1972 gives: nuokana – botany, “a medicinal plant of the umbellifer family” (Cicuta): nuodingoji nuokana (Cicuta virosa). Nothing more normatively correct appears in DŽ 1993 or DŽ 2000, or in TŽŽ 1985 or TŽŽ I 1999. Only TŽŽ 2001 has cikutà (Latin cicuta – the name of a poisonous plant), ntr., nuokana – “<...>”.

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Thus two tasks remain: to eradicate cikuta altogether through prescriptive lexicography and other means, and, to make that easier, to explain the function and motivation of nuokana.

I should have known the dialect word nukanoti from the very beginning of my studies—probably from the then-popular humorous verse narrative Smetonas: Nebibusiu as tajp smajlus, kad tajp n u k a n o j a, / Pasiktausidama dvases kada tajp nuotwoja, attributed to Laurynas Ivinskis; LLIChrest 1957: 406 (Nebebūsiu aš taip smailus, kad taip n u k a n o j o Ivinskis R 1995: 36). Nukanojo is glossed as “flogged, beat” (406); throughout the book, the Glossary: nukanoti – nukamuoti, nuplakti, sumušti. This is not the only instance of Ivinskis’s use of this word; for example: The wolf ran without looking back, <...>, fearing that the billy goat and his family might pursue him, and that, if caught, they would beat him Ivinskis R 1995: 23. The connection between the word nukanoti and kanoti in LKŽ V 1959 became clear to me perhaps a couple of years ago, but as I was preparing to write, I learned of Bernd Gliwa’s much earlier article on a similar topic (Gliwa 2002).

The poisonous (and, incidentally, medicinal—homeopathic) plant nuokana is neither a word of “fairly ancient origin” nor a “coinage by unknown botanists” (Gliwa 2002), but a suffixal derivative coined by Laurynas Ivinskis from nukanóti, dialectal nukāñoti 1. transitive “to torment; to kill, to slay” (cf. kanóti, dialectal kāñoti 1. “to destroy, to kill; to torment, to torture”: By tormenting them, you’ll wear the horses down as a lord does people A. Juška’s dictionary; iškāñoti 1. “to destroy, to kill off” Šatės, užkāñoti “to kill” Kuliai); western Samogitian and eastern Aukštaitian kanóti 2. intransitive “to languish, to decline, to die” Punskas, Lazdijai, nukanóti 2. “to die” Būdvietis (Lazdijai District), Antaliepė. Thus kāñoti and nukāñoti are words found not only in a single dialect but also in classic old literature; it is no coincidence that Danutė Petkevičiūtė, together with nutvoti, švaistyti, characterizes it as a vivid verb in Ivinskis’s original poetry (Petkevičiūtė 1988: 205).

Etymology is not needed to establish the origin of a neologism, but the motivation of the formation nuokana might be made clearer by the closely related Aukštaitian word kanoti 3. (Rumšiškės), kanéti “to go hungry, to eat little; to be poorly clothed, to deprive oneself (of something)”: Our little dog goes hungry, goes hungry all day Salamiestis. My parents never went hungry: they ate well Bagotoji. The pigs have grown thin from hunger, unfed all day Dusmenys (although nukaneti “to perish” in Palanga is a Samogitian form), kanybà scom, derogatory, “a shriveled person, a thin person or animal,” Jonas Jablonskis (Veliuona),

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kanypà: Kanypa yra liesa mažà žmona A. Juška’s dictionary; also nukanėkoti “to kill, to slay” Joniškėlis, kanýkoti “to torment, to destroy” Pašvitinys, Linkuva (LKŽ V 1959).

Kãnoti and kanėti take different prefixes—not only nukãnoti, nukanéti (also nukanėkoti), but also iškãnoti, užkãnoti, iškanéti (also iškanýkoti)—which weighs heavily against the possibility of Gliwa’s second account, nuokana: náukoti “to torment, to plague” Viekšniai, Lazdynų Pelėda (LKŽ VIII 1970), quite apart from the considerable phonetic difficulties. The first—and true—account of the origin is supported not only by the Polish word mentioned by Gliwa, konać “to languish” (not “to be dying”!), and Russian до-кона́ть “to finish off, to kill,” but also by к о н-еu “end” (etymologists explain that н а-ч а-ло “beginning” is related to it as well). Thus a very apt gloss of nukanoti is “to bring to an end” (Ivinskis R 1995, Glossary).

Most importantly, nuokana is a suffixal derivative of nukanoti, not a formation from kanoti and the prefix nuo- (as Gliwa writes). It is constantly said that word formation must not be confused with word composition, yet the confusion persists.

Nuokanos analogy would suggest that núõdas is more likely derived not from nuduoti 13. “to poison” (A. Juška’s dictionary only; LKŽ II₂ 1969), but from apduoti 2. “to administer poison”—apdavãi 2. “poison” Vajasiškis—or from apduoti 2. “to be bewitched (by some herbs)”: I am sitting as if bewitched Karsakiškis (LKŽ II₂ 1969)—apdavãi 1. “various herbs or substances used to stupefy or bewitch someone; a love potion” Dusetos, A. Juška’s dictionary (LKŽ I₂ 1968). Nuodas is more likely derived from nudėti 9. “to kill, to slay” || reflexive “to perish, to die”: Two piglets are growing well, but one has died Karsakiškis (LKŽ II₂ 1969).

CONCLUSIONS

Laurynas Ivinskis’s neologism nuokana entered scientific botanical nomenclature through Povilas Matulionis’s Žolynas of 1906–1907 and was finally established in the 1938 Lithuanian Botanical Dictionary. In Classical Latin, cicuta means the plant hemlock mauda and, more generally, poison, whereas in scientific botany it denotes a similar but different plant—nuokana. The establishment of nuokana throughout Lithuanian usage was impermissibly delayed. Nuokana appears in normative lexicography only in 1972, in the Dictionary of Contemporary Lithuanian, while cikuta was marked in the 2001 Dictionary of International Words as non-recommended (not to be used), with nuokana given as the replacement. Translations still sometimes use cikuta; Socrates is said to have drunk either poison or cikuta, and, in Lithuanian, either mauda or nuokana. Why the Greek Socrates drank Latin cicutas (plural!)

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(cf. chamomile) and, more generally, what he actually drank—mauda or nuokana—should be determined by specialists in Classical philology, not botanical terminology experts. And to help the plant name nuokana (Cicuta) become established everywhere more readily, it is useful to explain its formation and motivation. Nuokana was coined by the Samogitian Ivinskis from nukanoti ‘to kill’ (kanoti ‘to destroy; torment’, cf. also nukanėti ‘to perish’).

REFERENCES AND SOURCES

Auksoriūtė A. 1995: L. Ivinskio „Prigimtu menės“ taksonų pavadinimai. – Terminologija 2, 58–65.

Auksoriūtė A. 1997: Lauryno Ivinskio „Prigimtu menės“ sistematikos kategorijų pavadinimai. – Lauryno Ivinskio kalendoriaus 150-mečiui. Straipsniai ir dokumentai, Vilnius, 33–39.

Auksoriūtė A. 2000: L. Ivinskio mikologijos terminai. – Terminologija 7, 48–57.

Auksoriūtė A. 2001: L. Ivinskio mineralogijos naujadarai. – Terminologija 8, 95–111.

Auksoriūtė A. 2002: Keletas L. Ivinskio augalų pavadinimų. – Terminologija 9, 95–102.

Auksoriūtė A. 2003: Individualieji L. Ivinskio Lenkų–žemaičių kalbų žodyno ir Prigimtu menės augalų vardai. – Terminologija 10, 135–142.

Auksoriūtė A. 2004: Neaiškios darybos L. Ivinskio Prigimtu menės naujažodžiai. – Terminologijos istorijos ir dabarties problemos, Vilnius, 127–149.

Auksoriūtė A. 2007: Lauryno Ivinskio keturkalbio žodyno terminai. – Terminologija 14, 72–91.

Auksoriūtė A. 2008: Keletas atgaivintų Lauryno Ivinskio augalų vardų. – Terminologija 15, 132–141.

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DŽ 1972: Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos žodynas, Vilnius.

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DŽ 2000: Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos žodynas, Vilnius.

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TŽŽ 1936: Tarptautinių žodžių žodynas. Sudarė K. Boruta, Pr. Čepėnas, S. Sirutytė-Čepėnienė, redagavo J. Žiugžda, peržiūrėjo Vacl. Biržiška, Pr. Dovydaitis, Kaunas.

TŽŽ 1951: Tarptautinių žodžių žodynas. Redagavo I. V. Liochinas ir F. N. Petrovas, vertė O. Katinskaitė, Ch. Lemchenas, J. Talmantas, lietuviškąjį leidimą redagavo Ch. Lemchenas, Vilnius.

TŽŽ 1969: Tarptautinių žodžių žodynas. Redagavo I. Liochinas, S. Lokšina, F. Petrovas (vyr. redaktorius) ir L. Šaumianas, vertė O. Doveikienė, J. Kabelka ir Ch. Lemchenas, lietuviškąjį leidimą redagavo Ch. Lemchenas, Vilnius.

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TŽŽ 1985: Tarptautinių žodžių žodynas. Ats. redaktorius V. Kvietkauskas, Vilnius.

TŽŽ I 1999: Vaitkevičiūtė V. Tarptautinių žodžių žodynas A–K, Vilnius.

TŽŽ 2001: Tarptautinių žodžių žodynas. Ats. redaktorius A. Kinderys, Vilnius.

Дворецкий И. Х. 1986: Латинско–русский словарь, Москва: „Русский язык“.

Нерсесянц В. С. 1977: Сократ, Москва: „Наука“.

Received 2010-12-29

Jonas Klimavičius, Erfurto St. 56–14, 04107 Vilnius, Lithuania

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