It makes my heart ache that once again, I am writing about words that I learnt because of a terrorist attack. I am reminded of something that Katherine Rich wrote about studying Hindi in India just after the 9/11 attacks (in her beautiful book Dreaming In Hindi):
“We know how to say ‘terrorists killed the man.’ We don’t know the word for ‘side table.'”
Yesterday was the terrorist attack on the museum in Tunisia. Today I woke up to this headline on my phone:
Vague d’interpellations après l’attaque du musée du Bardo à Tunis
If you know that the Bardo is the museum in question, then you’re probably comfortable with all of this but the word interpellation.
This word has a number of meanings in English, which you can find here. (I think there’s an additional meaning in anatomy, where I believe it has to do with something being interleaved with something else, as in interpellated disc, but I actually haven’t been able to find any evidence that I’m not imagining that.)
In French, there are also a number of meanings, mostly related to hostile interchanges. Let’s start with the verbs:
- interpeller:
- (of the police) to take in for questioning
- (in politics) to interpellate (see English definitions above), to question
- (= appeler) to call out to
- (= apostropher) to shout at
- s’interpeller (reciprocal reflexive): to shout at each other
Now, the noun:
- (la) interpellation:
- (by the police) questioning
- (politics) interpellation, questioning
Sigh…
Zipf's Law 