Most writers prophesy eternal fame for themselves. I was joking with my friend Keith Thomas about how immodest your average scribe is when the subject turns to glory after death. I offered the doctored engraving above as a possible joking sketch of what might be appropriate for my tomb.

Keith emailed me back with an apt neological pun, writing “Your necropalace seems commensurate with your modesty, but the motto may stay those most inclined to visit. I suggest something a bit more under-stated, like: “My name is William Casselman. Look upon my works, ye literati, and despair.” Keith’s pun on necropolis (Greek ‘city of the dead,’ that is, cemetery) as necropalace is nifty.

The Latin above the mausoleoid edifice: “Here lies Bill Casselman.”

The Latin inscription ‘Procul, O procul este profani’ is taken from the great Latin epic poem by Publius Vergilius Maro, The Aeneid. Virgil puts these words into the mouth of the Sybil of Cumae who is preparing to utter some major-league prophetic bibble-babble and who with this speech shooes off the vulgar outsiders by saying, “Keep away, away, you trashy rabble.”

Profanus in Latin means literally one who is condemned to stand “outside in front of (Latin, pro) the temple (Latin fanum).” The original profani were heathen scum not permitted within the sacred confines of the inner holy of holies because they were non-believers or had stained themselves with the taint of other pagan shenanigans. The kind of low language such ruffians were likely to speak was, of course, profanitas, profanity, just as those who uttered it were profane.

If you lingered by the sacred portals too long and blathered religious twaddle, you were said to be fanatic, a word coined in England in the middle of the 16th century. Nowadays you would have your own religious television show and coax “love offerings” out of innocent, sclerotic, cross-clutching grannies to finance your “foreign mission work” at that hotel chain you own in Fiji.

In the 17th century, the adjective fanatic was shortened to become the noun fan, a keen devotee of any sport or amusement or of the persons associated with these ephemera.

Now obsolescent even in poetic use is the word fane, a rare synonym for temple which first appeared in late Middle English, derived from the Latin noun fanum ‘temple.’

A normal person will say, “I'm going to church.”

But you might encounter a person who says, “I would betake me to a propinquitous fane.”

Be assured, such a person is a pedantic and bombastical ning-nong.

Bombast meaning pompous overblown language, or speech stuffed with more words than necessary has a neat origin. It was borrowed into English from French early in the 16 th century and is used by Shakespeare. Bombace was a French word for downy cotton-wool. Bombax was a Late Latin word for cotton, itself borrowed from Greek βóμβυξ where bombux was a word for silkworm, then for silk. The semantic leap from cotton padding or down stuffing to speech or writing stuffed full of excess verbiage is a natural and a short one.

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