Today's Broadcast

Topic: Pulchritude & whited sepulcher

What's in a sound? That was our question when we got wondering about the association between pulchritude, meaning "physical comeliness"; "beauty"; and whited sepulcher, naming a "hypocrite," a "person inwardly corrupt or wicked but outwardly or professedly virtuous or holy."

You might guess that pulchritude and sepulcher share some pulcher ancestor that refers to something corporeal, something concerning the human form. You would be wrong.

In fact, pulchritude (and pulchritudinous) count a linguistic ancestor in the Latin pulcher meaning "beautiful." They are the only English words to harken back to that Latin ancestor.

Sepulcher, meanwhile, was born of a different Latin ancestor, sepelire. The Latin sepelire means "to bury," and the English sepulcher names a place for the internment of a body. Sepulcher commonly names a "tomb," and a long-ago sepulcher was one constructed of stone or set in a cave. In biblical days, Jewish tombs were whitewashed so that passersby would know they were there and not approach too closely. The phrase whited sepulcher has its roots in the words of Jesus, according to the Gospel of Matthew. According to the first Book of the New Testament, Jesus condemned the Pharisees as hypocrites, saying, "ye are like whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness."

Questions or comments? Write us at wftw@aol.com Production and research support for Word for the Wise comes from Merriam-Webster, publisher of language reference books and Web sites including Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.