#154, Excuse me I flattered

I always wonder about words, and when I don’t have an etymological dictionary handy, I sometimes wonder and wander a little far. I heard this preacher on TV the other day talking about being redeemed and I thought: Coupon. Are members of his flock coupons? Did someone promised to honor them or buy them back? And if you are a coupon, are you redeemable in other faiths, or just your own? Is the First Baptist coupon honored at the First Methodist church? Do the Catholics take you at communion, but only while supplies last? Can you be both a Buddhist and a Christian or are you not valid with any other offers?
Turns out the Latin meaning of redeem is “to buy back.” At some point in early Christendom, the idea emerged that Christ did, in fact, buy back your everlasting soul with his sacrificial blood. Fair enough. At no point were or are you an actual coupon. That whole redemption thing didn’t come up till the first supermarket. Like I said, I need to keep a dictionary close.
Because I was led in a similar direction the other day by the similarity between the first syllables in the words “flattery” and “flatulence.” Flattery, as we all know, is the empty praise heaped upon someone by someone else intent on getting something from them. A coupon perhaps. Flatulence is also empty, in the sense of solids. It is the scientific name for the act of passing air.
Passing air. How genteel. Sounds like a wanna be star quarterback doesn’t it? Going through the motions without actually having a ball in his hand to hurl. The fact that a sour note on a wind instrument is also spoken of as going “flat” seemed to clinch the case. Wind instrument--sour note, flattery--hot air, flatulence--, well, heck, fill in your own blanks. Bottom line, flattery and flatulence both involve hot air. And the origins of each are suspicious, or at least not socially honorable.
Wrong again. The word flatulence comes from flatus, which comes from the Latin flatus, meaning “breaking wind.” Nothing mysterious about that. Dead languages know no subtlety. The word flattery, it turns out, derives from the old French flatter, meaning to caress with one’s hand. Softly, with deference, gentleness and respect.
Still, I’m not that far off. Flattery is verbal caressing to puff up someone else’s vanity. And that puffing, I assume, must eventually find an outlet...
America, ya gotta love it.