Two etymological fun facts: Emoji preposterousness!
[A preposterous pun that isn’t—and the mind-blowing emoticon/emoji disconnect]
I’m guessing that whoever made the Mr. Spock meme below1 thought they had stumbled across a pun that was too good to be true. Which, in a sense, it was,2 meaning that, of course, it wasn’t.3
The surprising fact is that what might at first look like a funny coincidence is actually just a straightforward reconstruction of the real etymology of the word “preposterous”!
This sounds like a folk etymology, but it’s true: “Preposterous” derives from the Latin compound prae-posterus, meaning literally “before-after,” with a sense of “topsy-turvy, up is down, backwards.” Originally “praeposterus” had a sense much like “putting the cart before the horse,” suggesting a reversal or inversion of the normal, proper, or sensible order.4 Over time, somewhat like the phrase “turned upside down” coming to connote general chaos or disorder, “preposterous” acquired a general sense of absurdity or ridiculousness, and the more specific meaning of reversal or inversion faded.
Surprising but true!
Not nearly as surprising, though, as this second etymological fact, which sounds as if it can’t possibly be true:
What if I told you that the similar-sounding, seemingly obviously related words for the typographical smiley symbols called emoticons and the pictogramatic smiley symbols called emojis … are false cognates with no actual etymological relationship?!
It sounds preposterous,5 I know! Surely the “emo” in “emojis” (which are used to provide emotional color to text) must have the same root as “emotion,” “emote,” and, well, “emo” … right?
But no. In fact, the roots of “emoticon” and “emoji” are in wholly unrelated languages: Latin and Japanese!
Here’s a linguistic connection available to English-speaking fans of Silence, the 1966 novel by Japanese Catholic novelist Shusaku Endo adapted in 2016 by Martin Scorsese, in which persecuted Japanese Catholics were forced to step on holy images of Jesus or Mary. These images were called, perversely (but literally and accurately), fumi‑e, meaning “stepping-on pictures.”
That’s right: The Japanese word for “picture” is represented in English by a single character, the letter “e.” And the Japanese word for “character” is … moji.
So e + moji is literally and accurately (and not at all perversely!) “picture-character.” Yes. Not emo + ji, but e + moji!
I know, mind blown, right?! 🤯
Unhappily neglecting in the process to hit the space bar after the prefixes pre- and post-, resulting in the unintended neologisms “pre-means” and “post-means.”
(Was) too good to be true.
(Wasn’t) true (i.e., a true pun).
The obsolete English verb “preposterate” likewise meant “to invert or pervert.”
Speaking of emoji preposterousness, the two-faced emoji image at the top of this piece (before–after, get it?) is partly the outcome of my very first experiment with ChatGPT’s image function—although in several attempts, no matter how carefully I worded the prompt, GPT almost infallibly misunderstood what I wanted and created something completely different. I even gave GPT a sketch of what I wanted, but it still got it wrong. In the end I wound up doing quite a bit of Photoshop remediation, although it was still easier than doing it from scratch.
This is the good stuff!