It's pandemonium in here

#17—Household chaos and adventures in etymology.

Welcome to Mind Flexing, your weekly thought expedition to everywhere and anywhere. Strap on your boots (or put your feet up), take a deep breath, and let’s get flexing.

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Pandemonium. What a terrific word. I’ve been thinking about pandemonium this week as it’s the perfect description for my life as it exists at all times except, when the opportunity arises, I sit down to write. Pandemonium and chaos. Most days, the brave who enter my household are required to tiptoe through an obstacle course of pointy objects, half-eaten morsels of food, pegs, and clothing strewn from where it once lay neat in draws, all while avoiding plush toys that apparently fly themselves, and navigating the fine line between tantrums and fits of laughter, which will inevitably end in a request for a Band-Aid. Nights, when any reasonable person would hope for sleep, are not exempt from the bedlam, which I assure you, unfolds at a pace of four times the speed of light, which is definitely faster than I can keep up with.

Pandæmonium, by Alia Parker.

Things weren’t always this way—very young children have a way of instigating such circumstances—and I am hopeful that the antithesis of pandemonium will return someday. But for now, pandemonium it is.

Thankfully, I like the word.

I’ve fallen into a habit of late of looking up the etymological origins of words since, just a few weeks ago, I was introduced to Etymonline.com, the Online Etymology Dictionary. I couldn’t quite believe I’d never stumbled upon this source—which presents the history and development of a word. This is possibly because it’s not ‘official’; Etymonline.com is a one-man passion project painstakingly compiled by Douglas Harper, a historian, author, journalist and lecturer based in Pennsylvania, USA.

It’s a wonderful wormhole to have found and it sure has sucked me in with delightful little discoveries, such as the origin of the word pandemonium.

These days, pandemonium is understood to be: a situation in which there is a lot of noise and confusion because people are excited, angry, or frightened.¹ But, travel back 357 years and you’ll see it meant something different. You’d find the English poet John Milton who, now blind, is dictating his epic poem Paradise Lost to his aides. And within this tale of temptation and sin, he creates a place named Pandæmonium—the high capital of Hell, a palace for Satan and all his demon peers. To form the name, Milton took the Greek word pan, which means ‘all’, and combined it with with the Late Latin word daemonium, which means ‘evil spirit’, and which also had Greek origins in the word daimonion, meaning ‘inferior divine power’.² You’d be right in seeing the connection to the word demon.

…through the Gate,

Wide open and unguarded, Satan pass'd,

And all about found desolate; for those

Appointed to sit there, had left thir charge,

Flown to the upper World; the rest were all

Farr to the inland retir'd, about the walls

Of Pandaemonium, Citie and proud seate

Of Lucifer, so by allusion calld,

Of that bright Starr to Satan paragond.

— John Milton, Paradise Lost (Book 10, 1674 version)

It’s easy to see how the capital of Hell evolved to mean what it does today. And while I wouldn’t go as far as to say my house is the capital of Hell, I do sometimes wonder if my little cherubs are intermittently possessed, so is the degree of chaos they can create.

Chaos. This word, also rooted in Greek khaos, once meant an ‘abyss’, something that ‘gapes wide open, that which is vast and empty’.³ I happened to have read the etymology of this word prior to reading Paradise Lost today, which proved to be very useful as Milton used it fairly frequently, and understanding what it meant in 1667 as opposed to now adds significant depth to the poem.

In the 1530s, the Vulgate version of the book of Genesis used chaos in a theological sense to describe “the void at the beginning of creation, the confused, formless, elementary state of the universe.” This meaning takes some direction from ancient Greek, but with a heightened sense of confusion in the abyss. Chaos is a tumultuous place of nothingness, and it is this sense of chaos that Satan travels through in Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Then Both from out Hell Gates into the waste

Wide Anarchie of Chaos damp and dark

Flew divers, and with Power (thir Power was great)

Hovering upon the Waters; what they met

Solid or slimie, as in raging Sea

Tost up and down, together crowded drove

From each side shoaling towards the mouth of Hell.

— John Milton, Paradise Lost (Book 10, 1674 version)

So there you have it. I don’t think another word will ever pass me by without me going in search of its past. I could go on all night about other words I’ve looked up… bedlam was a surprising one if you’re half interested in these sorts of histories. But I’ll leave it here as it’s getting late, and instead ask you to share with me any words with interesting histories that you’ve come across. I’d love to hear them.

Things I’ve enjoyed on Substack this week

• Subtract… comparison—by Charlotte Wood

  Each month, Charlotte shares an essay in which she ‘subtracts’ something from the writing process, and life. I look forward to receiving these essays and can highly recommend them (they’re behind a paywall, but you can read them in part to gauge your interest).

• 15 Tracking Shots to Blow Your F@cking Mind—by Cole Haddon

  Watching this, it struck me that I’ve never seen the film Atonement—I assumed I had because I’ve read the book. After seeing this tracking shot, I’ve added the film to my list.

• Franz and Max Discuss Politics—by Kent Peterson

  Who would a cockroach vote for in the upcoming US election? You should see this answer coming, but you won’t.

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I’ll be back next week. Until then, keep 💪.

1. Pandemonium definition, Cambridge Dictionary online.

2. Pandemonium etymology, Etymonline.com.

3. Chaos etymology, Etymonline.com.