zealious

[Laurence Horn]

At 4:54 AM +0000 11/9/10, Robin Hamilton wrote:
>On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 9:26 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
>wrote:
>>Google finds a number of individuals sporting the given name "Zealious."
>>
>>Just now an "entertainment attorney" on CNN by phone from Stamford, Conn.,
>>spoke of "a zealious prosecutor" and a "zealious prosecution."
>>
>>I expect the spelling will be cleaned up in the transcript. Maybe.
>>
>>/ 'zElj at s /
>>
>
>Has anyone named "Mischevious" turned up?
>--
>-Wilson
>____________________________________________________
>
>I think (though I haven't checked) that this was an acceptable Elizabethan
>spelling (indicating a four-syllable pronunciation), often associated with
>the surname "Machiavel".
>
>Thus Sir Walter Ralegh (pronounced "raw-ly", as in raw meat) was on
>occasion, and perhaps justly, described as a "Mischievious Machiavel",
>rhyming with "fiend from hell."
>
And "mischievious" itself rhymes with "devious".  More to the point
perhaps is that it rhymes with "grievious", and seems to partake in
the same pattern of denominal adjective formation:

grief : griev(i)ous :: mischief : mischiev(i)ous

There are "about" 28,900 (or anyway, a whole bunch of) raw ghits for
"grievious" (angel, fault, sin, error, etc.)--dwarfed by "grievous"
to be sure, but far from negligible.

I'm more surprised by "zealious", given "jealous", but then the
latter isn't as obviously a denominal (and few speakers, I'd wager,
recognize that "zealous" and "jealous" are doublets).

LH

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