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• caesura •

Pronunciation: si-zur-ê, si-zhur-ê • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. A break in a line of verse, usually made to take a breath. 2. A break, hiatus, or interruption in anything else, such as, "A vacation is a happy caesura in work."

Notes: Here is a word we hardly ever hear outside academia. You are more likely to encounter it in writing. Its adjective is caesural. If you want to be extremely arcane, you may even use the Latin plural, caesurae. Written, this plural is rather eye-catching. If you want to push the arcanity even further, use a-e ligatures: cæsuræ, available now on most word processors.

In Play: The original reference of today's Good Word was to verse: "The poet had no sense of caesura, so his gestures were misplaced, destroying the harmony of the reading." But this word may be used in referring to any hiatus of any sort of flow or series: "The novels of Leo Tolstoy entered a 20-year caesura, during which time he wrote short philosophical stories and children's stories, like 'The Three Bears'".

Word History: This Good Word was taken whole from Latin caesura "a cutting" based on caesus, the past participle of caedere "to cut off, cut down, kill". Latin inherited the word from Proto-Indo-European kaê-id- "to strike, hit". Latin was apparently the only Indo-European language that received this PIE word; there is no trace of it in Germanic languages like English and German. English did borrow a Latin suffix based on this PIE root in -cide "kill", as in homocide, suicide, genocide. Chisel is another word borrowed from French cisiel, a reduction of Late Latin cisellus "cutting tool", a diminutive of caesus, again, the past participle of caedere. (Our gratitude should be bestowed on George Kovac, who has contributed Good Words like today's to our series without noticeable caesura for many years.)

So, little Julius's mother, having incurred a caesura in her person, opined: what better reminder of the woes attendant on the birth of this infant than to append the word to his name.

I wonder at the pronunciation that is offered. It would seem to have come from early Latin, when there was no letter 'K' in the alphabet, the letter 'C' serving to represent that sound. As well, the vowel combination of 'ae', was pronounced as two sounds, starting with 'ah', and changing to what we now call 'a'. The closest approximation we have, is found in the Germanic word 'Kaiser', which they adopted from what they heard the Romans call their head of state, probably never seeing it written. 'Caesar' was a title, rather than a name.

Related to Caesarian Section?

See my post, Perry.

Yes - to elaborate a bit - the process, of course, is to 'cut' (referred to in the Good Dr.'s Word History) into the mother's uterus to deliver the infant - Julius' supposed method of having been born, but also related to the shape of the scar that it leaves, a rather shallow, but discernable, 'C'. Why he should have received such a designation from that surgical procedure - most likely rare, and rather dangerous at the time, might have been due to the fact that he survived it, and lived quite an accomplished life. Perhaps that also might point to a source for the phrase, 'a cut above' the normal. We might also recall that Macduff was 'from his mother's womb untimely ripp'd', suggesting a similar, distinguishing birth.