Cloven, clove, cleaved, cleft
CLOVE, n. So I was baking again—as discussed previously I am always baking—and thinking about cloves (Syzygium aromaticum, the spice) and cloves (of garlic) and wondering why English would use the same word for two such very different things.
Various cloves.
The answer, naturally, is that it’s not the same word. Or at least it wasn’t in the beginning.
Cloves, as in the bulb sections of garlic or shallots, are related to the verb “to cleave.” This befuddling verb means both “to separate” and “to cling to”—in Old English, the two meanings had slightly different pronunciations, but the forms were similar enough that eventually people mixed them up until they both sounded like “cleave.” People confusing similar-sounding words is a recurring theme in this newsletter and also the entire world history of language.
Anyway, a bulb of garlic is split (cleaved) into parts. It’s cloven (split), like a deer hoof. So we call those cloves.
Cloves, as in the spice, come from a totally different root. In French, cloves are called clous de girofle, and this is the origin of our English word. A “clou” is a nail, and whole cloves do look like nails.
The “de girofle” bit means “gillyflower” (also spelled gilliflower). The French word actually used to be “gilofre.” The switching of the L and the R is a phenomenon that linguists call metathesis, and this newsletter has mentioned it before in a discussion of ricolisse/licorice. So English speakers imported “gilofre” and turned the ending into “-flower,” and the whole phrase became “clove gillyflower,” which is what we used to call the spice.
Confusingly, while the spice comes from the plant Syzygium aromaticum, “gillyflower” by itself also used to refer to Dianthus caryophyllus, commonly known as a carnation, a completely different plant whose flowers can have a clove-like scent. These flowers are sometimes called “clove pinks.” They’re not related to the plants that produce cloves, nor are they necessarily pink.
Here are some carnations I used to grow. (Alas, they did not make it.) I always thought these pink-and-white-striped flowers looked a little like peppermints, but indeed, they smelled more like cloves.
Speaking of things being split apart or clinging together or just of cleavage, here’s what I’ve read lately in small-r romance.
Hexbreaker (m/m, both cis and gay, fantasy, historical) by Jordan L. Hawk. Set in a turn-of-the-century New York City filled with witches and shapeshifting familiars, this is a romance with Jordan L. Hawk’s usual amount of action and adventure. I love it when romance novels pair a big, steady, loyal one with a little, slinky, sneaky one, and this did not disappoint. Content notes: murder, violence, gore, sex.
Honey Girl (f/f, both cis and lesbian, contemporary) by Morgan Rogers. Technically this might be more women’s fiction than romance, since the story focuses on Grace Porter, a twenty-nine-year-old Black lesbian doctor of astronomy who spirals into a mental health crisis after defending her dissertation, but since one of the things Grace does after her PhD defense is get drunk in Las Vegas and marry a stranger—classic romance novel behavior—I’m shelving it here. Romance readers should be warned that the ending is more Happy For Now than Happily Ever After, but it’s still a sweet, lyrically told story of two lonely creatures finding each other in the vastness of the universe. Content notes: self-harm, mention of suicide.
Act Your Age, Eve Brown (m/f, both cis and het, contemporary) by Talia Hibbert. Here is a book so immediately charming and immersive that you can read it by accident, which I more or less did. I don’t mean to say that I didn’t fully intend to read this book—I love Talia Hibbert’s writing and was saving this book for a day when I needed to boost my mood, so the purchase and careful hoarding and opening of this book were all one-hundred-percent deliberate. It’s just that once I’d started, well, the next day, I intended to reread my own draft for editing, which I do on my ereader, but then Act Your Age was already open and I just… read it. All of it. That’s how wonderful it is. Two autistic protagonists—one a delightful fat Black woman who loves bright colors and glitter and is a chaos muppet, the other a reserved and serious white man who, as a consummate order muppet, wants everything just so—fall into running a B&B that is open to everyone, but especially caters to guests who need particular accommodations, and then, of course, they fall in love. Each character is so very much themself and the writing sings with their individual voices. Also: it’s hot as hell. Content warnings: some ableism from minor characters (called out in the text), sex.
And in books that are neither Romance nor romance, though in this case, the book is adjacent to both, I also read fantasy novel The Unbroken by CL Clark, which takes place in a setting inspired by the French colonization of North Africa, albeit in a more low-tech world. (They do have guns, though. So many guns.) The story follows Touraine, a soldier taken from her home as a young child and conscripted into the imperial army, and Luca, a disabled princess in line for the imperial throne that is currently under her uncle’s regency, as the two of them arrive in the colonized land, both charged with quelling rebellion. Impossible situations abound. Touraine is caught between the culture that stole her and the culture she was stolen from, wanting to rise to power in the Balladairan (fantasy!French) military so she can protect her fellow conscripts, but already knowing she will never be fully accepted in Balladaire. Luca wants to negotiate a peace with the rebels and prove to her uncle that she’s ready for the throne, but these two goals are incompatible—her uncle would prefer “peace” enforced through military might, and he doesn’t want to give her the throne, besides. Luca and Touraine come together and split apart in a trajectory that’s more like lovers-to-enemies than the usual enemies-to-lovers, except they never quite arrive at either endpoint. They want to kill each other and fuck each other and save each other and that is absolutely what I’m here for. The tightly paced plot zigzags from assassinations to imprisonments to riots to wonderful and unsettling uses of magic that evoke the Exodus story. It’s brutal and complicated and captivating. And everyone is super queer.
One last thing of potential interest to readers of this newsletter: the most recent episode of Lingthusiasm is about etymology—including how the research is done and also that “cook” and “cookie” are not related, something that had never occurred to me.
This is the last Word Suitcase of 2021. It’s been a strange and difficult year for many of us, and I wish us better things in 2022. Writing this newsletter and hearing from readers remains a highlight of my year and I’m excited to continue into the next year. As always, if you have questions about words, reply to this email and let me know! I can’t guarantee that I’ll figure out the answer, but I promise to try.
