čisuemse – n – sensitive, touchy [‘sharp-hearted’].
A rather lovely derivation. I’m sure we’ve all felt it, both in meeting the sharp-hearted, and, sometimes, in being them.
There are, in fact, three Verdurian roots that can serve to translate English ‘heart’ ‒ or more, if we go further into the figurative nuances of each language.
Uem originates in a slang usage of the Caďinor word UEMBOS, meaning ‘lump’. It is now apparently the most common word for the heart, particularly when seen as an inanimate object, but also figuratively. It clearly acquired its figurative aspect well before the time of Early Modern Verdurian, since it has bonded with čisy ‘sharp’ to create čisuemse.
Cör is marked in the Verdurian Dictionary as an archaic term for ‘heart’. Its ancestor, CUEDROS, is a derivation of CUEDOS, which also gave rise to Modern Verdurian cöd ‘core, pit, kernel, yolk’. The notion of nuclearity to an object evidently came first: the etymology of CUEDROS is given as “[‘(what’s) at the core’]”. We find cör in several colourful compounds such as trancöre ‘divorce’ [‘cut-heart’], čiscöre ‘apathetic, without will, slothful’ [‘weak-heart’] and ucörte ‘precious; dear, darling’ [‘close to the heart’].
Itian ‘spirit, soul, being; will, heart’ descends not from Caďinor but from its sister language Cuêzi, which called both the organ and the soul which was thought to reside in it itīran. The Verdurian reflex has a complex set of nuances derived from varied philosophical and spiritual traditions, including naming one part of the ‘quadripartite soul’ in traditional Eretaldan thought (an idea which certainly warrants an article of its own!).
Meanwhile, the notion of being ‘heartfelt’ is given over to rather different parts of the body. The creny (Caďinor CRENIS) encompasses the guts, trachaea and oesophagus, seeing them all as types of ‘internal bodily conduit’. Iscrenir is glossed ‘feel (with heart)’ but means literally ‘out of the innards’ ‒ thence iscreny ‘feeling, sentiment’, iscreniora ‘temperament, disposition’. The creny also birthed agreni ‘belief, conviction’ [‘at guts’], cuncreniy ‘heartfelt; vehement’ [‘with guts’], and samiscrene ‘heartless, inhuman, irresponsible’ [‘without feeling’].
Finally, we have olotan ‘feel (in guts)’ and olotë ‘feeling, emotion’, which have given rise to a number of emotion-related terms. These descend directly from Caďinor OLONTAN ‘feel’, OLONTILE ‘emotion’. There’s a particular heaviness to the reflexes of this root: olotëte ‘emotional, passionate, turbulent’; akolotan ‘dislike, disdain’ and ařolotë ‘prejudice, bigotry, unreasoning dislike’ [‘feel against’]; šuščolotan ‘mourn’ [‘death-feel’]. In Verdurian’s sister language Ismaîn, its sense has perjorated even further to olôtn ‘regret’.
Continuing this theme, the worst type of feeling in the guts produces one of my favourite Verdurian idioms: full marks if you can find it before I post about it!
Learning Verdurian 