Ruthlessly : a bit of word-nerdery

When I was weeding last, I found a whole pile of little bachelor's button seedlings coming up. Flowers that reseed often get a start when the cooler days of fall arrive. In actuality, they should be thinned so as to grow into healthy, well-spaced plants. It has always been so very hard for me to nip off newly born little plants, even for the betterment of the others. Usually I tell them to just fight it out, little guys, and may the strongest win! This time I decided I would do it. I will be ruthless, I said to myself. I will ruthlessly thin these flowers for their own good. 

That was when all the word-nerdery bells went off in my head and I rocked back on my heels...

Ruth-less-ly.

I thought it just that way, like they teach you in grade school to put your hand beneath your chin to count the syllables in a word. So, my mind said take off the suffix -ly, which denotes a condition. In this case, the condition of being ruthless. If you take that off you are left with ruthless. I know what that means- to be merciless or cruel. But -less is also a suffix, attached to a root word, a suffix meaning "without". To be without ruth.

Say the word ruth and I instantly see the picture in my old Bible, of the woman, Ruth, gleaning in the fields. So, if ruthless means to be without mercy, did ruth mean what I though it must? Plants forgotten, I ran willy-nilly back inside to the massive tome that I inherited from my grandpa- the beautiful Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. I do not google words. It seems a bit of sacrilege not to look up a word in a dusty old book with marbled edges and four-leaf clovers pressed between the tenderly transparent pages, one that weighs as much as a small animal. 

I flipped through quickly and carefully, holding my breath. My finger skimmed down and there is was-

Ah, so satisfying. Which leads me to wonder, did the name Ruth mean this in Bible times, or did the definition of the word come from the remarkable woman? Research for another day. A lovely, old-new to me word. And one to be sprinkled into conversations for days.

"Good-bye, dear son, show ruth unto your co-workers!" Yes, you really have to talk like that with a word like ruth. It deserves it. And for your answer, the son only sighs and doesn't even ask...

My tiny plants are still struggling, but the moment of decisiveness has passed, so who knows when thinning day will come again. But I have a new word, and that's worth more than diamonds

* I was going to put in a foot-note, and then my word-nerdery got the better of me. Why is it called a "foot note"? Because it's at the bottom, where a foot would be? Or is it because you're throwing in something "to boot"? In that case, I'll give you both a foot and a tail note, for a little something extra. Ahem- now, on to what I was actually going to tack onto my post...

I saw something the other day that said book geeks are still upset over the burning of the Library at Alexandra. And I am. I have even spent nights laying awake wondering what types of knowledge were in those thousands of scrolls that went up in flames. And then I daydream that some were rescued and hidden away, much like the dead sea scrolls. I have a burning hope that I will see them rediscovered! Hmmm, maybe they hid them where they tucked Atlantis away.

What do you mean, you've never heard of the Library of Alexandra??!! You need to know about this. Go look it up. Now. And 10 points to Griffindor if you look it up in a dusty set of 1940's encyclopedias.