Tartarean (adj.) = hellish (pronounced ‘tahr-tar-ee-uhn’) for full explanation, see box below
e.g. My aunt was sleeping next door, and all night long I could hear the Tartarean depths of her smoker’s cough
‘Tartarean’ is from ‘Tartarus’, that place in Hades (the underworld in Greek mythology) where the wicked suffered terrible punishment for their crimes on earth.
One of the most famous residents of Tartarus was King Tantalus who languished there as punishment for one particularly terrible act. Desperate to please the gods, Tantalus got a bit carried away preparing a sacrifice to them, and ended up killing his own son, cutting him up and boiling him, before serving him as part of a banquet. But the gods were tipped off about the contents of their forthcoming meal, and avoided Tantalus’s gruesome (if fastidiously prepared) feast. Then the whole thing really backfired for Tantalus, when Zeus decided to punish him in a very cruel way.
The exact penalty? Zeus made Tantalus stand in a pool of water beneath a tree with some delicious-looking fruit on its low-lying branches; but whenever Tantalus reached for the fruit, the branches would lift themselves up, raising the fruit just out of his grasp; and, whenever he bent down to get a drink, the water receded before he could get to it in time. The English word ‘tantalise’ derives from this story (of the suffering of ‘Tantalus’, one of many tales of woe that took place in ‘Tartarus’); whilst the word ‘Tartarean’ evokes a generally hellish place or state of affairs (like ‘Tartarus’).
(the) taxonomy of (a group) (noun) = (the) division into related categories of (a group) (pronounced ‘tak-son-uh-mee’) from the Greek, taxis: arrangement + -nomia: distribution
e.g. Psychologists seem obsessed with compiling a taxonomy of all known human emotions
technocrat (noun) = a technical specialist who runs a government or a business (pronounced ‘tek-nuh-krat’) from the Greek, tekhne: craft + kratos: power
e.g. Now that financial woes have descended on Europe, many governments are being run by staid technocrats (rather than by the flamboyant autocrats of the past)
to telegraph (an emotion or thought) = to non-verbally convey (an emotion or thought) from the Greek, tele-: at a distance + -graphos: representing, writing
e.g. She said she was looking forward to being divorced, but her pained expression telegraphed the concern she was feeling
to temporise (verb) = to draw out a process in order to gain time (pronounced ‘tem-puh-rise’) from the French, temporiser: to bide one’s time, from the Latin, temporizare: to delay, ultimately from the Latin, tempus, tempor-: time
e.g. The junior arrived early for the client meeting, and so was forced to temporise, asking the client question after question, until finally the boss showed up
tendril (noun) = a hair-like tentacle (pronounced ‘ten-dril’) from the Old French, tendron: a young shoot, from the Latin, tener: tender; a ‘tendril’ literally means ‘a slender appendage of a climbing plant that twines itself around any object in its path’
e.g. Shakespeare wrote a series of plays whose tendrils of influence stretch through our language still; for example, our expression ’the green eyed monster’ – to describe jealousy – comes from his play The Merchant of Venice
tergiversation (noun) = the act of turning away from one’s opinions (pronounced ‘tur-ji-ver-sey-shun’) from the Latin, tergiversari: to turn one’s back on, from tergum: back + vertere: to turn
e.g. Politicians are quick to pounce, if their rival comes up with any tergiversations, labelling their foe weak for equivocating
tensile (adj.) = capable of being stretched (pronounced ‘ten-sahyl’) from the Latin, tensilis, from tendere: to stretch
e.g. Bungee-jump rope is composed of hundreds of thick elastic bands renowned for their tensile strength
tessellation (noun) = a pattern consisting of the repetition of one single shape, with no gaps (such as a honeycomb) (pronounced ‘tes-uh-ley-shuhn’) from the Latin, tessellatus: made up of small square stones, from tessella: a small square stone, the diminutive of tessera: a square stone
e.g. The floors of office foyers are often composed of marble tessellations that make your head spin if you look at their pattern for too long
tetralogy (noun) = a group of four related literary works (pronounced ‘te-tral-uh-jee’) from the Greek, tetralogia, from tetra-: four + -logia: discourse
e.g. Novelist John Updike was most famous for his tetralogy covering the life of Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom: Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit is Rich; and Rabbit at Rest; Updike said the series was about ‘what happens when a young American family man goes on the road – the people left behind get hurt’
Thanatos (noun) = (in psychology) the unconscious urge to die (expressed via an activity such as parachuting and other thrill-seeking sports, for example) for full explanation, see box below
e.g. Christopher Hitchens wrote, ‘Dr Martin Luther King…spent his last night on earth in some pretty rough fornication. It’s hard to blame him…he lived with the imminence of death and…Eros is the best way yet devised of warding off Thanatos’
‘Thanatos’, which refers to ‘the death instinct’ in psychology, derives from the Greek, ‘thanatos’: ‘death’. In Greek mythology, ‘Thanatos’ (‘Death’) was the son of ‘Night’ (his mother), and of ‘Darkness’ (his father). (Incidentally, the names of the other offspring of these two parents read like a litany of dysfunctionality: ‘Sleep’, twin brother of ‘Death’; ‘Old Age’; ‘Suffering’; ‘Doom’; ‘Deception’; ‘Blame’; ‘Strife’; and ‘Retribution’. Sunday lunch chez eux doesn’t bear thinking about.)
According to Sigmund Freud, humans have two conflicting desires. Firstly, a ‘life instinct’, which he named ‘Eros’. Note that the modern meaning of ‘Eros’ is ‘sexual love’, but for Freud, it meant something a bit different: the desire to create and propagate life, via the sating not just of sexual urges but also of hunger and thirst, for example.
‘Thanatos’, or ‘the death instinct’ is the conflicting drive to this ‘survival instinct’ and allegedly compels humans to engage in risky, aggressive and self-destructive acts that could lead to their own death: the desire to pursue thrill-seeking activities like swimming with sharks, for example, is explained by ‘Thanatos’.
threnody (noun) = a lament (pronounced ‘thren-uh-dee’) from the Greek, threnos: wailing + oilde: song
e.g. After Princess Diana’s death, Elton John rewrote his classic threnody Candle in the Wind as a tribute to Diana (the song was originally about Marilyn Monroe)
tincture (noun) = a tiny trace (pronounced ‘tingk-cher’) from the Latin, tinctura: the act of dyeing, from tingere: to dye, tinge; the sense is of a tiny trace or tint imparted by the process of dyeing (hence ‘tincture’ means ‘a tiny trace’)
e.g. ‘Thanks for the good times,’ she said, but she failed to disguise the tincture of sadness in her voice
to toady to (someone powerful)
to toady to (someone powerful) (set phrase) = to suck up to (someone powerful) for full explanation, see box below
e.g. She hated going out for corporate dinners with her husband and watching him toadying to his rich clients
‘toady’ is a contraction of ‘toad-eater’, the name in the early 19th century for a charlatan’s assistant, whose job it was to eat supposedly poisonous toads. But, of course – unknown to the crowd of onlookers – the toads weren’t poisonous at all, so the assistant was fine, not because of the potion he’d publicy imbibed before eating the toads (which the crowd believed had saved him), but because the toads really were harmless. As a result, the deluded crowd bought the potion, hoping it would be a cure-all for them, too.
Since eating a toad is not a pleasant thing to do, these assistants came to epitomise the kind of person who will do anything to get into their boss’s good books. Thus, a junior who sucks up to his boss by performing the modern-day equivalent of eating a supposedly poisonous toad (such as perhaps running off, mid-meeting, to get his boss’s favourite caramel latte from Starbucks), is still called a ‘toady’ today.
tokenistic (adj.) = (of an effort) going through the motions for the sake of form (especially of a workplace that recruits a small number of minorities purely to give the appearance of sexual or racial equality) from the English words token + -ism
e.g. Mark Thompson, when head of the BBC, admitted there weren’t enough older female newsreaders; yet any effort to address this imbalance appears to be tokenistic, for few such newsreaders are on screens still for any broadcaster
torpid (adj.) = lethargic from the Latin, torpidus, from torpere: to be numb
e.g. The day after the wedding, the guests were so hungover that they sat around in a torpid state, moaning occasionally
toque (noun) = a chef’s tall white hat (pronounced ‘tohk’) from the Spanish, toca: a woman’s headdress
e.g. Old-school cooks don a proper chef’s toque before preparing a meal
tour de force (set phrase) = an outstanding display of skill
from the French, tour de force: feat of strength
e.g. The critics all agree that The Great Gatsby is a literary tour de force
tracery (noun) = a delicate branching pattern (pronounced ‘trey-suh-ree’) from the Old English, tracery: a place for drawing, from the English words, to trace + -ery; Sir Christopher Wren then hijacked the word ‘tracery’ in the 1660s, using it to refer, in architecture, to intersecting rib work in the upper part of a Gothic window (and from then on in, ‘tracery’ has evoked a similarly delicate branching pattern)
e.g. She used to cut her arms with a knife when she was upset; you could still make out a faint tracery of scars on her forearm
tract (noun) = a short piece of writing (on a subject) (pronounced ‘trakt’) from an abbreviation of the Latin, tractatus, from tractare: to handle, the frequentative of trahere: to draw
e.g. He was so happy to have met his new girlfriend that he wrote a 3,000-word tract about their first date
to traduce (someone) (verb) = to expose (someone) to ridicule (pronounced ‘truh-dyoos’) from the Latin, traducere: to lead in front of others (and expose to ridicule), from trans-: over + ducere: to lead
e.g. Obama knew his political opponents would seek to traduce him
transcendent (adj.) = beyond the normal range of human experience from the Latin, transcendent-: climbing over, from transcendere: to climb over, from trans-: across + scandere: to climb
e.g. Militant atheists ridicule anyone claiming transcendent experiences
transfigured (adj.) = made more beautiful from the Latin, transfigurare, from trans-: across + figura: figure
e.g. After two glasses of wine, the world seems transfigured
treatise (noun) = a lengthy written discourse on a subject (pronounced ‘tree-tis’) from the French, tretis, from the Old French, traitier, from the Latin, tractare: to handle, the frequentative of trahere: to draw
e.g. Academic Noam Chomsky is renowned for his controversial treatises such as Media Control: the Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda
tremulous (adj.) = shaking slightly; timid from the Latin, tremulus: tremulous, from tremere: to tremble + -ous
e.g. On her first public appearance as Prince Charles’s wife, Diana gave a tremulous smile: she wasn’t used to all this attention
to triage (verb) = to sort a group according to a particular quality or some other criterion; for example, in hospitals, ‘triage’ refers to the sorting of injured people based on how urgently they need medical treatment from the French, trier: to separate out
e.g. She was dating four guys simultaneously but soon, she knew, she’d have to triage them according to suitability for marriage, and pick just one
triangulation (noun) = (derogatory in tone) a political policy that cynically adopts the middle ground, so as to neutralise opponents (but also betrays supporters in this way) for full explanation, see box below
e.g. Critics of Tony Blair say his decidedly conservative stance on crime and immigration, along with his other triangulations, meant he betrayed his party’s core principles
The word ‘triangulation’ was coined by Bill Clinton’s chief political adviser, Dick Morris, to describe a way of getting Clinton re-elected in the 1996 Presidential election. Morris’s crafty plan was for Clinton to present a set of policies that were both ‘above’ and ‘between’ the traditional political divisions of ‘left’ and ‘right’ (and thus could be said to occupy the top corner of a ‘triangle’, with ‘left’ and ‘right’ making up the other two corners). In this way, any political opponent would be neutralised, because Clinton had adopted for himself at least some of their ideas, thus taking credit for these policies.
So Clinton’s adviser Morris had Clinton advocate certain stances – such as ‘deregulation’ (i.e. lesser government involvement in the way businesses operate) – that were different to traditional Democratic principles and actually closer in tone to the rival Republican Party’s goals. Enthusiastically espousing Morris’s advice, Clinton famously declared in 1996 that ‘the era of big government is over’ (a strong hint that ‘deregulation’ was on the cards). Other politicians worldwide soon adopted Clinton’s pursuit of ‘triangulations’, notably Tony Blair with his ‘New Labour’ Party.
However, ‘triangulation’ is now a dirty word, following its failure in the US Presidential election in 2000, when Democrat Al Gore’s call for more military spending – traditionally a cry of the Republicans – was seen as an admission that his opponent, George Bush Junior, was correct on this issue. Here, the triangulation backfired. In his book The Audacity of Hope, Obama seems to allude admiringly to Clinton’s ‘triangulation’ strategy, but cleverly never used the dirty word, referring instead to a ‘pragmatic, non-ideological attitude’.
troglodyte (noun) = an ‘out of date’ person (pronounced ‘trog-luh-dahyt’) from the Greek, troglodytes: a cave-dweller (hence a backward person)
e.g. Some secularists refer to religious people opposed to same-sex marriage as troglodytes
trompe l’oeil (set phrase) = an artwork that deceives the eye (pronounced ‘trawmp loi’) from the French, trompe l’oeil: deceives the eye
e.g. In the art gallery, the visitor made to open the door in front of him; then he realised this was no door after all, but a trompe l’oeil painted onto the wall
Trotskyist (adj.) = advocating socialism via a violent revolution (as opposed to being Fabian – see earlier – which can refer to the achievement of socialism through a more ‘softly, softly’ approach) for full explanation, see box below
e.g. When British politician George Gallaway allegedly described journalist Christopher Hitchens as a ‘drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay’, Hitchens was said to have responded ‘only some of which is true’
‘Trotskyist’ literally means ‘relating to the economic principles of Leon Trotsky, especially the theory that socialism should be established in all countries, explicitly via a revolution’.
Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) – along with Vladimir Lenin – was one of the founders of the Bolshevik Revolution (a key part of the Russian Revolution of 1917 that removed the Tsars from power) and, as such, he was one of the few people who had enough prestige in Russia to be able to challenge the dictatorial rule of Stalin. So Stalin – a paranoid schizophrenic at the best of times, who was always worried that people were plotting against him – made plans to get rid of Trotsky as a potential rival. On 20 August 1940, an assassin sent by Stalin murdered Trotsky by plunging an ice axe into his head when Trotsky was distracted reading.
Anarchism – the abolition of all organised government – was the specific path recommended by Trotsky, but the term ‘Trotskyist’ is now used as a blanket one, to refer to any form of socialism achieved violently, by revolution. Incidentally, calling someone a ‘Marxist’ is nowadays pretty much the same thing as calling them a ‘Trotskyist’; for Karl Marx (the German philosopher who lived from 1818–83) also advocated a violent revolution, to be carried out by underprivileged people, in order to topple capitalism. (Finally, ‘popinjay’ – the end of the insult levelled at Hitchens in the example above – means ‘a vain talker’, and was originally the Middle English word for that great talker of a bird, the parrot.)
trove (noun) = a store of valuable objects from the English expression, treasure trove, which comes from the French, tresor trouvé: found treasure
e.g. The US military was heartened at their discovery of a trove of al-Qaeda documents near the Syrian border
tub-thumping (adj.) = (derogatory in tone) ranting from the English word, tub, the 17th-century slang for pulpit; hence ‘tub-thumper’ (1662) meant ‘a speaker who thumps the pulpit by way of emphasis’
e.g. Kim Jong Il gave another tub-thumping speech, which was greeted with yet more applause
to be riding the tumbrel to the guillotine (set phrase) = to be on your way out (literally: to be in the open cart – or ‘tumbrel’ – used to transport aristocrats to the guillotine in the French Revolution, 1789 –99) from the Old French, tomberel: tumbrel, from tomber: to fall (for the cart’s contents – the artistocrats about to be beheaded – would unceremoniously fall over when the cart was tipped to the ground in front of the guillotine)
e.g. In his final years, the Alzheimers-striken Ronald Reagan looked tired and anguished, like a man riding the tumbrel to the guillotine
tundra (noun) = a wasteland from the Lappish, tundar: elevated wasteland; the ‘tundra’ is a desolate region around the North Pole, where the subsoil is frozen, meaning no trees can grow
e.g. When he got the email saying his divorce was final, he suddenly felt cut off from all humanity, as if alone on a tundra
turbid (adj.) = (of a liquid) cloudy, disturbed (pronounced ‘tur-bid’) from the Latin, turbidus, from turba: a crowd, a disturbance
e.g. The depressed man surveyed for a moment the turbid Thames below, then jumped
tyke (noun) = a small child (pronounced ‘tike’) from the Old English, tyke: mongrel, from the Old Norse, tik: bitch
e.g. My plane journey was terrible because I was sat next to a mother with a screaming tyke on her knee
tyro (noun) = a novice (pronounced ‘tiro’) from the Latin, tiro: a novice soldier
e.g. With publishers preferring writers who are already celebrities, it’s increasingly tough for the tyro novelist to get a break