Back An olive branch that extends to oil
D. Murali
Efforts to control oil prices often slip, so we may never, after all, come to terms with the rupee numbers we see on petrol bunk displays. So, instead, how about studying the word `oil'?
Oil is "a viscous liquid derived from petroleum, used especially as a fuel or lubricant," defines Concise Oxford English Dictionary. But that, as a primary meaning, is only of recent origin.
"Use of `petroleum' was first recorded 1526, but not common until 19c," states www.etymonline.com. "It meant `olive oil' exclusively till c.1300, when meaning began to be extended to any fatty, greasy substance."
Latin oleum, meaning `oil, olive oil', olio in Spanish and Italian, and Greek elaion for olive tree, from elaia (that sounds like leaf in Tamil!) are all cited as having a hand in the formation of `oil'. As a prefix, `oleo', from oil, means `relating to or containing oil'.
Normally, oil smells, which is why perhaps olfactory, about the sense of smell, and redolent, meaning strongly reminiscent or suggestive of (but literally, strongly smelling), are from `oleo'.
It would cost you to be oleophilic because it's about affinity for oils or oily substances. `Oligo' is different; it means containing a relatively small number of units. One may say that in oil industry, there is oligopoly — where the smallness smells.
When oil becomes rare in the not too distant future, you'd rather be inclined to preserve it in small vials, as you do with perfumes, and occasionally smell it, for old times' sake.
Oil slips into many idioms and usages, such as: You burn the midnight oil to work or study late into the night. Oil someone's palm to get the job done fast! To make things go more smoothly or successfully is to oil the wheels. Pour oil on troubled waters, to soothe or calm a person or situation.
But adding fuel to fire is just the opposite. "Bring oil to fire, snow to their colder moods," Kent would urge in King Lear.
To strike oil is not as when petroleum dealers in Kolkata go on a strike, but to discover some source of wealth, usually rapid wealth.
Oil bath is not the Saturday ritual familiar to South Indians but a receptacle that contains lubricating oil through which part of a machine passes.
Oil cake is not available in bakeries because it is feedstuff for livestock. Oil can make you bankrupt, but oilcan is for applying lubricating oil. You know somebody is oily, not by rubbing a finger on his face but by finding his behaviour to be smooth, unctuous, servile and flattering.
In Shakespeare's King Henry IV you'd hear Prince Henry say: "This oily rascal... " In King Lear, there is Cordelia who says, "I yet beseech your majesty, If for I want that glib and oily art."
If you remember the soothsayer snatch in Antony and Cleopatra, there is Charmian saying: "If an oily palm be not a fruitful prognostication, I cannot scratch mine ear."
A proverb from the Old Testament is instructive: "He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man: he that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich". A luxury, then, as now, one may add.
Oil and nodding donkeys go together, but I'm not referring to how price hikes are silently acquiesced to by the public; these are the over-ground drives for submersible pumps in an oil borehole. "
A nodding donkey pump is usually driven by an electric motor and `nods' at a regular rhythm. Depending on the size of the submersible pump, it produces 5-40 litres of oil-water mixture at each stroke," explains Wikipedia.
"Crude oil, a malodorous yellow-to-black liquid, is a product of the decayed remains of prehistoric marine animals and terrestrial plants." Thus, when we burn fuel aren't we burning our ancestors?
No oil, no fire; and there is the lament of John of Gaunt, in King Richard II: "My oil-dried lamp and time-bewasted light shall be extinct with age and endless night." In King Henry VI, Mortimer says something similar: "These eyes, like lamps whose wasting oil is spent, Wax dim."
Falstaff, however, sounds resilient in Merry Wives of Windsor: "I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that's in me should set hell on fire."
`Olive', the origin of oil, has strong links with Greece and Olympics. The Web site of the Hellenic Republic's Ministry of Foreign Affairs informs how the Goddess Athena gave the first olive tree to the Greeks, and how olive oil had a direct connection with sports activities.
"The athletes of ancient games had the habit of smearing their bodies with oil before exercising in the gymnasiums in order to maintain the elasticity of their muscles.
The prize for the winners of the Olympic Games was a wreath of wild olive, kotinos." It seems olive oil's therapeutic uses are in the Hippocratic code of medicine.
"The winners of the men's and women's marathons at the Athens Olympics will be crowned with wreaths fashioned from branches of the two oldest olive trees in Greece — planted more than 3,000 years ago," informs a recent Reuters story.
The Old Testament speaks of the white dove that brought an olive leaf to Noah on the Ark; it was a sign that the great deluge was over.
As a symbol of peace and prosperity, it finds a place in the right claw of the bald eagle on the great seal of the US, the dollar, and also the UN flag.
"A gold plated olive branch was left on the moon by Neil Armstrong on July 29, 1969 as a symbol of universal peace," recounts www.experienceplus.com. A different Greek site informs us that Homer in the Odyssey refers to olive oil as `liquid gold'. But, at current prices, that appellation has now become more appropriate for petroleum.
No money or medals were given at the ancient Olympic games, but only a simple olive tree branch, cut with a gold-handled knife from a wild olive tree.
The Greeks believed that the vitality of the sacred tree was transmitted to the recipient through the branch," informs www.explorecrete.com. "Men who contend with one another, not for money, but for honour," Herodotus wrote in The Persian Wars.
As a baby name, Olympia is for girls, and it means `heavenly', perhaps obliquely referring to olive, which came from the heavens. It is paradoxical that George Bush had to wage a war for oil, which is supposed to be from the symbol of peace.
To get benign prices, would it help if we started sticking olive branches to our vehicles when driving into retail outlets for refuelling?
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