LICORICE, n. This is the name of a plant whose roots can be dried and use to flavor food. It comes from a Greek term meaning “sweet root,” glykyrrhiza, which became “liquiritia” by the time Late Latin speakers got a hold of it. The way we spell it in English has changed, but you can still hear a connection.
Why are we talking about licorice? Because I’ve been reminiscing about when we were still allowed to go to other countries. One of my favorite things to do while traveling is to stop in a convenience store and buy a bunch of candy and junk food I don’t recognize. In Iceland, there was more than one shelf dedicated to various licorice-flavored candies. Here’s a bad photo of a chocolate bar that is both coconut- and licorice-flavored—you can see that the Icelandic word for licorice is “lakkrís,” which is delightful to me, unlike the contents of the package. (The mystery snack game satisfies my taste for adventure, but not always my actual tastes.)
“Licorice” is not especially linguistically exciting in English, but in French it’s ”réglisse” and in Italian it’s “regolizia,” and those are examples of a linguistic process called metathesis. Metathesis happens when speakers of a language transpose sounds or syllables within a word. An example in US English example is that some speakers flip the “sk” sound in “ask” and say, e.g., “let me ax you a question.” Similarly, some US English speakers pronounce “nuclear” as nu-cle-ar, while others say nu-kyu-lar.
So what’s happening in the French and Italian words for licorice is metathesis of l and r. It’s a little more obvious in the Old French form, which is “ricolisse,” originally “licoresse.” One of the common sound changes over time in Romance languages is that a [k] sound between vowels becomes [g], so ricolisse becomes rigolisse. People are lazy—or efficient, or talking with mouthfuls of licorice—and they end up dropping the least-stressed syllable in the word (this is called syncope in linguistics), so ultimately in French we get “réglisse.”
Or some people get it, anyway. Not me. But I look forward to some day resuming the mystery snack game.
Reading romance novels is not much like playing the mystery snack game because I spend so much time in conversation with other readers that I almost always know what I am getting into. This week in small-r romance, I read
The Companion (m/f/f, all bi and trans, historical) by EE Ottoman. This is a lovely, quiet, sensual book about three people healing and taking refuge in each other and their art. One of them says “I am good at being hurt and bad at being loved,” which is such a gut-punch of a line. This is such a kind book, one that really loves its characters and its readers. I enjoyed all the little domestic details about cooking and gardening and making a life on a farm in upstate New York in 1948. Content warnings: brief references to rape culture and transphobia, sex.
Team Phison Forever (gay m/bi m, both cis, contemporary) by Chace Verity. This follow-up to Team Phison, previously mentioned here, delivers the same sweetness as the first one. It’s from Tyson’s point of view instead of Phil’s, which was fun because they’re so different, and it shows us Tyson dealing with the discovery of a sister he never knew and figuring out what “family” means while he tries to plan a proposal. Content warnings: a main character is estranged from their family, sex.
Broderick (m/f/f, all bi and cis, erotic) by Katee Robert. This is the second book in a series set in a sort of dystopian valley divided among three violent, ruthless factions, but I’m here to watch the two women fall in love. Monroe is a cunning and fearsome future queen and Shiloh is quiet and sweet and loyal with a painful secret in her past. And, as always, Katee Robert writes scorching sex. Content warnings: abuse (in the past), sex.
To Be Alone With You (? m/bi f, both cis, contemporary) by Jodie Slaughter. This is the first romance novel I’ve read that’s set in the pandemic present! Naomi, a thirty-one-year old whose job is eating up her whole life, needs a break and goes to stay with Ira, a family friend who has a home in the desert near Joshua Tree. She’s hoping to use his guest house for a week and not see much of him, since ten years ago she hit on him and he turned her down, but the world has other plans and they end up quarantined together for months. Good thing they’re perfect for each other. Ira is a sculptor and he uses their time together to make a beautiful sculpture of Naomi, which is just one of the many ways he shows his love. Content warnings: sex.
I did not read any Capital-R Romance this week, but I did watch a lot of Dix Pour Cent, a French TV show about people making bad choices and yelling at each other and also incidentally working as agents who represent actors. It stresses me out, but there is a devastatingly hot lesbian character and I like to hear people speaking French, so that’s my review of that.
See you next week!
