The words covered in this article are penchant, banish, commend, disparage, parity and disparity, and reproach and irreproachable. Previously done words that will reoccur today are caprice, arbitrary, whim, and manifest.
In Day 20, I briefly described how the Roman emperor Caligula wielded his power arbitrarily and capriciously. Today, I will expand on this theme.
‘Caligula’ was in fact the nickname of this ruler; his proper name was Gaius Ceaser. Born in the year 12 AD, he ascended to the throne at the age of 25 and was assassinated just four years later.
Caligula had a penchant for violence. One of his contemporaries, the Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger describes him as a man who “spilt blood as greedily as if he were to drink it . . . in my opinion Nature produced [him] in order to show what unlimited vice would be capable of when combined with unlimited power.”
Penchant
The noun penchant means a strong taste or liking for something.
Caligula’s biographer Suetonius Tranquillus gives many examples of Caligula’s cruel and unprincipled conduct, of which four are shared below:
- Meat prices soared so high once that it became prohibitively expensive to feed the royal wild animals. Caligula simply ordered that the people imprisoned in royal jails should be fed to the animals, without any thought about validity of their cases or the seriousness of the crimes they had been charged with.
- When his beloved sister Drusilla died, Caligula ordered for temples and shrines to be built in her honor and announced a period of state of mourning, during which citizens who did not manifest sufficient sorrow at her death – for example, if they laughed, bathed or had normal family dinners – were punished with death.
- After bringing back to the capital a person who had been exiled long ago by the previous emperor, Caligula asked him how he used to spend his time. Seeking to flatter the new ruler, the man replied, “I was always praying the gods for what has happened, that [the previous emperor] might die, and you be emperor.” From these words, Caligula concluded that those whom he had himself banished also prayed for his death and sent orders to have them all put to death.
Banish
To banish someone is to make them leave a place by official orders. Such formal removal from a place is called a banishment. A good mnemonic for this word is to notice the ‘ban’ in it – to banish someone is to ban them from a place.
Before sharing the fourth example, I’ll introduce two GRE words.
Commend
The verb commend means to praise.
- The adjective form commendable means praiseworthy. Example phrase: ‘a commendable achievement.’
- The noun form commendation means praise. Example: ‘a letter of commendation.’
Disparage
The verb disparage means to belittle, to speak of someone in a disrespectful way.
Origin: Latin dis-, deprive of + par, equal.
When two things are ‘at par’, they are equal. For example, you will want your compensation to be at par with your effort. The noun ‘parity’ means equality and ‘disparity’ means inequality.
When you disparage someone, you bring them down, you talk as if they are not your equals but are less than you or below you in importance or worth. The act of doing this is called disparagement (noun). The adjective form of the word is disparaging, which means belittling.
We are now ready for the fourth example of Caligula’s arbitrary use of his powers, quoted directly from Suetonius’ biography:
“There was hardly any lady of distinction with whom [Caligula] did not make free. He used commonly to invite them with their husbands to supper, and as they passed by the couch on which he reclined at table, examine them very closely, like those who traffic in slaves; and if any one from modesty held down her face, he raised it up with his hand. Afterwards, as often as he was in the humor, he would quit the room, send for her he liked best, and in a short time return with marks of recent disorder about them. He would then commend or disparage her in the presence of the company, recounting the charms or defects of her person and behavior in private.”
The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Volume 4. [CALIGULA], by C. Suetonius Tranquillus
The Roman philosopher Seneca, Caligula’s contemporary, also describes a similar incident. At a public dinner, after he had had many drinks, Caligula reproached a close friend and ally of his named Asiaticus Valerius with the way his wife behaved in bed. Seneca writes,
“Good gods! that a man should hear that the emperor knew [such a private thing], and that he, the emperor, should describe his adultery and his disappointment to the lady’s husband, . . . a man of consular rank and his own friend.”
Chapter XVIII, On the Firmness of the Wise Man, by Seneca
Valerius was later one of the men involved in Caligula’s assassination.
Reproach
As a verb, reproach means to tell someone or to show him by your actions that you are unhappy or disappointed about something he did. Such an expression of disapproval is called a reproach (noun).
Someone whom no one can criticize, whom no one can reproach, is called ‘irreproachable.’
In his essay Of Anger, Seneca gives more examples of Caligula’s unpredictable and monstrous behavior. He writes that one evening, Caligula was walking in a garden by the river with some senators and ladies when, on a whim, just like that, he struck off some of their heads.
After informing us that before the people whom Caligula had legally condemned to death were executed, Caligula had sponge stuffed in their mouths, Seneca remarks,
“[Caligula] feared that the last agony might find too free a voice, that he might hear what would displease him. He knew, moreover, that there were countless crimes, with which none but a dying man would dare to reproach him. When sponges were not forthcoming, he ordered the wretched men’s clothes to be torn up, and the rags stuffed into their mouths.”
In Day 22, I’ll share a particularly hair-raising example of Caligula’s whimsical cold-heartedness. See you soon there, but before you go, here are a few more usage examples of the words you learnt today:
- The Chief Minister of Purva Pradesh had a penchant for erecting stone statues of herself. In her five years in office, 2,000 such statues were made and installed in the state, averaging to more than one statue per day.
- Reproaching his brother for lying to him, Ravi said, “I didn’t expect this from you. I trusted you.”
- Driven by the belief that if their work is not irreproachable in every way, they have failed, and anxious to avoid such failure, perfectionists struggle with finishing a project.
- A police constable who risked his life to save a toddler from being hit by a speeding truck has been commended for bravery.
- The word ‘herd’ is applied disparagingly to a mass of people who unthinkingly do what they are told.
- “A woman in Minnesota . . . pointed out that her mother called herself a housewife. She, on the other hand, called herself a stay at home mom. The change in nomenclature reflects the shift in cultural emphasis: the pressures on women have gone from keeping an immaculate house to being an irreproachable mom … Back in the fifties, women were told to master the differences between oven cleaners and floor wax and special sprays for wood; today they’re told to master the differences between toys that hone problem solving skills and those that encourage imaginative play.” Jennifer Senior
- “There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us.” Oscar Wilde
- In The Ramayana, prince Rama, being the eldest of four sons, is set to inherit his father’s throne. However, his stepmother wanted to see her own son, Bharata, become king. She had saved her husband and king Dashrath’s life once, as gratitude for which he had promised to grant her any two wishes of her choice. Exercising this right now, she demanded that Rama should be banished and Bharata should be crowned in his stead. Dashrath pleaded with her to ask for something else but, as she remained firm, he had no choice but to order Rama’s banishment for fourteen years. Rama accepted the order unquestioningly.
- “It is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more. And this is said in disparagement, whereas it is one of the greatest talents the species has and one that has made it superior to animals that are satisfied with what they have.” John Steinbeck in The Pearl.
- “Vices are simply overworked virtues, anyway. Economy and frugality are to be commended but follow them on in an increasing ratio and what do we find at the other end? A miser!” Laura Ingalls Wilder
- A usage example from Kory Stamper’s Word by Word:
“The force of [a] word’s full meaning is contained in something that lexicographers can’t measure: the interplay between intention and reception.
What’s more important: the intention of the speaker or the reception by the hearer? If I walk down the street and hear a man I do not know, hanging out of his car window, yell, “Nice, bitch!” at me, I will probably not respond as if he had yelled “Nice day!” I will feel disparaged; therefore, I will assume that he meant to disparage, even if he meant to compliment.
Would I feel differently if a woman yelled it at me? Maybe—that depends on my previous experiences with women calling me and each other “bitch” . . . Is this my own bias against men using “bitch”? Absolutely, one informed by a lifetime of having men sneer “bitch” at me for any reason, all reasons, and no reasons.”