Caca

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We are in the deep cack. It couldn’t be worse if it was raining arseholes.

Terry Pratchett: Monstrous Regiment

This week, we’ll look at the Proto-Indo-European root *kakka- ‘to defecate’ in all its pungent glory. A post with this particular theme as its faecal point requires some straight-talking, so forgive me for going dung-ho. Descendant words of *kakka- in different Indo-European branches include Greek κακά, Persian ککه (kaka), Russian кака and Irish and Old English cac, all of which mean ‘faeces’. The fact that none of these words have strayed far from their Proto-Indo-European root lends weight to the supposition that caca is a Lallwort – a babble word that is easy for young children to pronounce and is therefore acquired early and produced at a very young age. Other Lallwörter include mama, dada (and equivalents in other languages like Latin papa and Slovak tata), bye-bye and caca’s less evil French twin pipi.

Latin cacāre ‘to defecate’ is the source of English cack and its derivatives. The verb cack is first attested in the written record in the fifteenth century, but was certainly in use much earlier, and perhaps owes its late appearance to squeamishness about calling a log a log in print. The Anglo-Saxons weren’t known for their prevarication, however, as the Old English term for ‘latrine’ cac-hūs, literally ‘shithouse’, makes plain. Graphic cack-related words and phrases are a feature of many languages. Italian depicts the dramatic poonami of diarrhoea with the synonyms cacarella and cacaiola, both of which mean ‘the shits’. Both words also have a figurative, if vulgar, secondary meaning of ‘extreme fear’ to describe bowel-loosening terror. Other delightful cacky terminology includes Dutch kakker ‘shitter’, which is used to designate people deemed to be preppy, stuck-up and elitist, and the expression dat ging als kakken zonder douwen ‘it was like shitting without pushing’, used by natives of Rotterdam to mean ‘it was surprisingly easy’. Spanish also has a lot of terms in a similar bracket, including cagatintas ‘inkshitter’ for penpushers in routine office jobs, cagar dinero ‘to shit money’, for those who are filthy rich and deja de cagar el palo ‘stop shitting the stick’ to mean ‘stop pestering me’. And these are only the tip of the pooberg.

Proto-Indo-European *kakka- is believed to be the ancestral root of Greek κακός (kakos) ‘bad, evil, vile’ – all pretty crappy adjectives. Many derivatives of κακός and its Latinised form caco-have made their way into English through Greek and Latin loanwords. Possibly the most relevant in the 21st century is kakistocracy ‘government by the worst or least competent citizens of a state’ – we’re spoilt for choice here and there are no turds worth polishing. Among the others are cachexia, also known as wasting syndrome, a condition which causes ongoing muscle loss; cacoethes, literally ‘evil habit’, but more often used in the sense of ‘incurable itch to do something’; cacophony, the horrendous caterwauling that emanates from the stands of the Stadium of Light and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium if the home team is winning; cacography ‘bad handwriting’ and caconym ‘example of bad terminology or nomenclature’. While caconyms sometimes occur in biology and botany where names can be rejected for being overly complex, they can also be found in non-scientific contexts, e.g., when someone is misguided enough to call their kids X AE A-XII, Exa Dark Sideræl or Techno Mechanicus – nice one Elon and Grimes, they’ll appreciate that.

Other English cack derivatives are a bit more camouflaged. The cucking stool was an instrument of punishment in medieval times, used to humiliate ‘scolds’ – people considered a public nuisance for quarrelling with their neighbours and breaking the peace. In practice, women were far more likely than men to be punished for scolding and often flirting, eavesdropping or disagreeing with authority were enough for women to be labelled scolds and punished. The cucking stool, literally ‘defecation chair’ (cuck ‘void excrement’ is a variant of cack), is thought to have got its name due to its resemblance to a close stool, a primitive toilet which was essentially a chair with a box underneath in it. The scold – made to uncover her head and go barefooted – was tied to the chair and publicly vilified at her door or wheeled through the streets to be jeered at by crowds of ill-wishers. A later variation of the cucking stool was the ducking stool – a cucking stool attached to a long plank which was lowered into a river or pond to dunk the offender in water. Poppycock ‘foolish talk, rubbish’ is a borrowing from Dutch, but there are two schools of thought as to what the etymology for this word is. The second element is certainly kak ‘excrement, dung’, but opinion is divided as to whether the etymon is poppekak or pappekak. Poppekak ‘doll’s excrement’, is favoured by the OED, but seems to have been used in a different context in Dutch in the phrase zo fijn als gemalen poppekak literally ‘as fine as powdered doll's excrement’ – used to describe those who showed excessive religious fervour. On the other hand, pappekak, in which the first element pappe means ‘soft food’ would give the word the meaning of ‘excrement as soft as porridge’. Both etymologies seem nonsensical, but that’s poppycock for you.

Of course, not every caca is shit. In Roman mythology, Caca was a fire-breathing giantess and goddess of the hearth. Caca was the sister of Cacus – another fire-breathing giant – the son of Vulcan, the god of fire. Caca had a shrine on the Palatine Hill in Rome, where her sacred fire was kept burning by her virgin-priestesses. Caca seems to have been supplanted by the goddess Vesta (Vesta is the Roman counterpart of the Greek goddess Hestia – hestia (ἑστία) means ‘hearth’ in Greek), whose temple in the Roman Forum was also attended by virgins tending her sacred fire – vestal virgins in this case. Furthermore, the Brazilian footballer Kaká (born Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite) was demonstrably not a shit footballer, playing 92 times for Brazil and winning numerous trophies for Milan and Real Madrid as well as the 2002 World Cup. He got his nickname because his younger brother Rodrigo (better known as Digão) was unable to say his name properly when they were young boys, mispronouncing ‘Ricardo’ as ‘Caca’. Anyway, that’s more than enough of this cack-handed and rather unsanitary post, I’m sure you’ve been suitably becacked.