RAVEN

[Dr. Goodword]

• raven •

Pronunciation: ræ-vên • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Verb, transitive

Meaning: 1. To eat greedily, i.e. ravenously. 2. To rob and plunder, pillage, confiscate, take by force.

Notes: I recall growing up assuming that ravens were pigs in their eating habits, since ravenous seemed to be an adjective meaning "like a raven". For years this was how I differentiated ravens from crows: I assumed the latter ate more slowly since they had to dodge cars as they ate. All untrue. Ravenous comes from a verb that is wholly unrelated to black birds; it is even pronounced differently. Both ravenousness and ravenage serve as qualitative nouns for this adjective, meaning "voracity, rapacity". Older, distantly related nouns ravin and rapine have more or less the same meaning.

In Play: Today's Good Word is a particularly good one to introduce around the house: "OK, kids, no need to raven your food; we have plenty of time before the soccer game." It will rid the family vocabulary of that turkey of a word, gobble. This word applies equally to larger ravenous bodies, as in, "The invading forces ravened the countryside for all the Coca-Cola they could find."

Word History: Today's Good Word descended to us from Middle English ravin and raven "rapine, plunder, prey". Both these forms originated in Latin rapina, from rapere "to seize". Surreptitious "stealthy" came from the same root in Latin, surreptitius, from the past participle of surrepere "to take away secretly", based on sub "below, secretly" + rapere. Other English words that owe their existence to this root include ravishing and rapid. The former originally meant "seizing forcibly" while the latter came to us via French from Latin rapidus "seizing or tearing away quickly".

[sluggo]

One particular blackbird would caw like clockwork every time the full moon came up. They called him a raven lunatic.

[carkopp]

Sluggo...you are very funny! Dr. G.: Why didn't you list the corvine bird, raven, as one of your definitions? You referred to him, but in my Webster's College there is a definition for the bird and the spelling is the same.

[sluggo]

My guess is Doc reveres the right to single out a single part of speech for the GWotD, and in this case chose to focus on the lesser-known verb, a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. Only this, and nothing more.

And it was only waiting for this moment to arrive...

[Stargzer]

They are two different, unrelated words that just happen to be spelled the same, although they are not pronounced the same.

... Ravenous comes from a verb that is wholly unrelated to black birds; it is even pronounced differently. ...

Word History: Today's Good Word descended to us from Middle English ravin and raven "rapine, plunder, prey". Both these forms originated in Latin rapina, from rapere "to seize". ...

raven
O.E. hræfn (Mercian), hrefn; hræfn (Northumbrian, W.Saxon), from P.Gmc. *khrabanas (cf. O.N. hrafn, Dan. ravn, Du. raaf, O.H.G. hraban, Ger. Rabe "raven," O.E. hroc "rook"), from PIE base *qer-, *qor-, imitative of harsh sounds (cf. L. crepare "to creak, clatter," cornix "crow," corvus "raven;" Gk. korax "raven," korone "crow;" O.C.S. kruku "raven;" Lith. krauklys "crow").

"The common raven is easily tamed, but is mischievous and thievish, and has been popularly regarded as a bird of evil omen and mysterious character." [OED]

O.E. also used hræmn, hremm. The raven standard was the flag of the Danish Vikings.

Main Entry: [sup]1[/sup]ra·ven
Pronunciation: \ˈrā-vən\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English hræfn; akin to Old High German hraban raven, Latin corvus, Greek korax

Date: before 12th century

: a large glossy black corvine bird (Corvus corax) of Europe, Asia, northern Africa, and America

ra·ven [ ráyvən ]

noun (plural ra·vens)

Definition:

large black bird of crow family: a large bird belonging to the crow family with glossy black feathers, a wedge-shaped tail, and a large beak. Native to: northern hemisphere. Latin name Corvus corax.

adjective

Definition:

shiny black: of a deep lustrous black ( literary )


[ Old English hræfn. Ultimately from a prehistoric Germanic word, thought to be an imitation of its croaking]


raven (2)

rav·en [ rávvən ] (past and past participle rav·ened, present participle rav·en·ing, 3rd person present singular rav·ens)

transitive and intransitive verb

Definition:

1. eat greedily: to eat something voraciously or greedily


2. take something away by force: to take something away by force, especially prey or plunder


[15th century. Via Old French raviner "seize" < Latin rapere "seize"]


rav·en·er noun

[carkopp]

Um...yes, thank you, I think... It was my understanding, however ignorant, that when two (or more) definitions are listed under the same word, that they are both stated for purposes of illumination. Please pardon me for using so simple a dictionary as the Webster's Collegiate. I won't make the same mistake again, Stargzer. Thank you, Sluggo.

[gailr]

You can reference whatever dictionary you like here; part of the fun is finding different information from different sources. Gzer was just providing additional documentation for his reply.

American Heritage Dictionary is always a good source around here, as is etymonline but quote from whichever one(s) you like, carkopp.

[Stargzer]

Um...yes, thank you, I think...

You're welcome!

It was my understanding ... that when two (or more) definitions are listed under the same word, that they are both stated for purposes of illumination

Well, the GWOTD isn't just a regurgitation of a dictionary definition, nor is it merely a list of weird words or unusual usages.

To make a long post short, carkopp, I suspect that The Good Doctor wanted us to know that raven and raven are two different words with different etymologies, and that he mentioned the raven-hued avians in passing ...

Ravenous comes from a verb that is wholly unrelated to black birds; it is even pronounced differently.

... to emphasize that the words are not related.

And don't mind me; there are times when, if you ask me the time, I might end up not only telling you how to build a watch, but how various civilizations developed their calendars.

Stargzer is infamous.

[carkopp]

Thank you, Stargzr...I do know what "infamous" means (I think). I feel a bit like Disney's Alice after she descended into the caterpillar's territory. The air was getting a bit thin as he smoked his hookah and (like Alice) I am beginning to feel the lack of oxygen. Thank you all for your input and good humor. (The Good Doctor's puns are what brought me in the first place.) I want to leave a special thank you to gailr for her helpful comments. It makes me so happy to know that I can use my Webster's.

[gailr]

You're quite welcome, and quite welcome, carkopp.

For more oxygen:

gaseous chemical element, 1790, from Fr. oxygène, coined in 1777 by Fr. chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-94), from Gk. oxys "sharp, acid" (see acrid) + Fr. -gène "something that produces" (from Gk. -genes "formation, creation"). Intended to mean "acidifying (principle)," from Fr. principe acidifiant. So called because oxygen was considered essential in the formation of acids. The element was isolated by Priestley (1774), who thought it an altered form of common air and called it dephlogisticated air.

I wouldn't have looked this up and learned about "dephlogisticated air" without your comment! Now, I just need the opportunity to deride the lack of 'dpa'...


For further evidence of no one standard dictionary here, cast your peepers over grogie's wierd and wonderful word suggestions.
And keep that oxygen mask handy...

[Stargzer]

Funny you should mention Joseph Priestly, Gailr. A Dissenting cleric, creator of soda water, discoverer of oxygen (even though he didn't know what he had really discovered), and one of the founders of Unitarianism, his birthday is the same as mine (albeit in the Old Style), and he left England after a mob burned down his home, believing that he and his family were still in it. Benjamin Franklin convinced him to move to America instead of the Continent and he settled in Northumberland, PA, just a few miles down and across the river from Lewisburg, home of the Alpha Agora and Doctor Goodword.

[Dr. Goodword]

Funny you should mention Joseph Priestley. We frequently take visitors to visit his house in Northumberland in the summer. It is a lovely place with a well-preserved laboratory located about 7 miles from my home in Lewisburg.

The guides leave something to be desired, though; none of them know what we breathed before Priestley discovered oxygen.

[carkopp]

Dear All: I think my anoxia made me an oxymoron...

[Bailey]

If I weren't a chimp, I'd be a raven idiot. I never even knew that oxygen needed discovering, shoot another job opportunity lost!

mb
_The carpenter said nothing but, "The butter's spread too thick."

[Perry]

The guides leave something to be desired, though; none of them know what we breathed before Priestley discovered oxygen.

Thank God I was born in 1954. I was spared the difficult decision of what to breath until someone would come along to discover oxygen.