The other day while reading John Ransom's Civil War Diary, a gripping, literate account of surviving the notorious Andersonville Prison, I came across a three-letter word I hadn't seen in ages. One so uncommon in print, I'd just guess its meaning contextually.
The word is viz. Viz, a word I associate with old books, like Ransom's from 1863-65.
What does viz mean? It's a contraction of the Latin videlicet and means--from my Webster's Unabridged (comprising issues 1864-1900)--"To wit; That is; namely." Or more literally in the Latin, "look, it is permitted."
If I might unpack this simple three-letter word, I doubt if it is or was ever spoken. No, by default viz has the impress of written English.
I think a case can be made for viz as a marker for the rise and fall of a Western Civilization from which we seemed to have knowingly disengaged, favoring a post-literate worldview. I make that assertion observing a few things going on with viz.
First, viz is print-specific and ties directly to readers of books. Second, the literate reader is not uncomfortable with a Latin contraction.
Consider what a Google Ngram Viewer graph here shows for viz. I looked for frequency of use in a large “corpus” of books in English from 1500 through 2012. Clearly, viz has lost favor, almost flat-lining after 500 years of our having Gutenberg's gift.
Although John Ransom in the 1860s could knowledgeably use viz in his Civil War diary, its peak usage was 1731. That year was part of high tide for our Western Civilization heritage: viz, French Revolution, American Independence to follow.
This seemingly insignificant contraction of a Latin term is bundled with intellectual history in America too. The first public school in America was the Boston Latin School (1635). Latin was, obviously, de rigeur. Latin was a requirement for study in the Harvard College that opened seven years later. The founding of these two renowned institutions was with an elevated priority given Latin, viz included. Latin was understood as the timeless keystone in a Western Civilization that brought us, for example, a humanism of the Renaissance, dating from 1450 and, not unexpectedly, Gutenberg.
John Ransom wrote his diary in a hell-on-earth. He knew writing helped his spirit survive. I have to think his literate style, complete with that viz was emblematic of something we've lost today. Does a modern-day, post-literate John Ransom thumb-typing tweets on his iPhone gain anything for his will to survive?
Image credit: google.com
Read Charlie Dickinson's story collection The Cat at Light's End, as an ebook in these downloadable formats:
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