Mind your language
I THINK we have had quite enough of Mr Livingstone for the time being. I shall only add a semantic consideration — that the Standard newspaper in Lon- don announced in 112-point type that he was going to run. I thought that that was what Messrs Bush and Gore did, and that English candidates stood. I admit that it all seems very long-running.
Meanwhile Mr Sam Whitbread of Biggleswade asks if I can explain the difference between assiduous and sedu- lous. I don't know that I can, though both words have an interesting history.
Sedulous is not connected with sedate or other words to do with sedentary matters. It comes from se (a Latin pre- fix signifying 'without') and dolo, 'guile' in Latin, hence, as the adverb sedulo, `honestly', whence, as the OED puts it helpfully, 'diligently, assiduously'. So it seems that sedulously means exactly the same as assiduously.
Synonyms are seldom matching all round. Milton wrote: 'Your sedulities in the Reception of our Agent were so cordial and so egregious', and he was meaning to be polite. Nowadays egre- gious has pejorative connotations. I do not think anyone would seriously thank you for your sedulity (or sedulousness, the alternative noun form) today.
Assiduous does have the etymological connection with sitting, the Latin assidere meaning 'to sit by'. From that came the Latin assiduus, 'sitting down to', as I am now at the kitchen table, carefully unpicking my philological knitting.
Jeremy Taylor in his folio 'great instru- ment for the determination of cases of conscience' called Ductor Dubitantium (1660) — a sort of theological 'Dear Mary' compendium — reminds us that Christ commands us 'to be assiduous in our prayers'. He means persevering. But assiduities, like sedulities, can be over- done. A book of manners from Taylor's time mentions the possibility that people might want 'to be rid of our troublesome assiduities'. And the doctors used an alternative form of the adjective, assident, to mean 'attendant' symptoms of a disease. There are two more related adjectives, used earlier and certainly obsolete now: assidual and assiduate.
A little backwater, showing how the development of words will not be tamed: the mediaeval kings had an asseour (from French asseoir 'to seat, set') who laid the royal table. By 1315 (Edward II) the word had become hopelessly mixed up with assayer, 'one who tries', i.e. a food-taster. That would be one dining companion never held guilty of too much assiduity.
Dot Wordsworth
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