My new favorite word

There's something really satisfying about adding a great new word to your lexicon. Many of my entries come from David Foster Wallace, whose legendary vocabulary is responsible for the lion's share of the words found in my Kindle Vocabulary Builder.* But I learned my new favorite word from a very different source—the young adult novel Booked (2016) by Kwame Alexander. The title is itself a play on words, since it refers both to the main character's obsession with soccer and to his eventual awakening to the magic of books. Nick initially resists reading because his father is a professor who forces Nick to expand his vocabulary by studying, from A to Z, a dictionary of unusual words that his father wrote. Every once in a while, Nick uses one of the words in the text, then drops a footnote, à la DFW, setting out the meaning and pronunciation of the word, together with a snide comment.

One of the words Nick uses is callipygous, but I prefer the related term callipygian, which is more mellifluous. (You can compare the two words here.) Either term is an adjective meaning "having beautiful buttocks" (＜Gk kalli-, combining form of kallos "beauty" + pyge "rump, buttocks."). There was a famous bronze statue at the temple to Aphrodite Kallipygos at Syracuse depicting Aphrodite—the Greek goddess associated with love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, and prosperity—and her booty in all their glory. The statue was described by Athenaeus in his 3rd-century AD work Deipnosophistae, but is now lost. There is, however, a marble copy from the 1st century BC, which is now in the National Archaeological Museum in Napoli:

This image shared from Wikimedia Commons under CCA 2.0

Because this statue was found in Rome, it is referred to as the Callipygian Venus, after the Roman goddess associated with the same attributes as her Greek counterpart Aphrodite. When the statue was rediscovered in the 16th century, the head was missing. The restorer decided to have Venus look back and down over her shoulder, which certainly succeeds in drawing attention to her shapely buttocks, hence the name of the piece. Of course, I can't read the word callipygian or look at this statue without thinking of your mother, both for the obvious reason (there is an uncanny resemblance, though Mom has much better legs) and because her own favorite word is "arse," as Brad knows all too well.

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*Including atavistic, belletristic, bushwa, concupiscent, dasein, diaphanous, erythema, fianchetto, hauteur, instantiating, Lacuna, lapidary, mordant, peripatetic, phatic, piacular, popliteal, preterite, rictus, saturnine, sedulous, senescence, sepulchral, simulacrum, spume, strabismic, sybaritic, titivation, and zygomatic.

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I'd been waiting until just the right moment to post this picture on UaKS:

And although I didn't actually use this callipygian tomato in making this dish (which is made with cherry or grape tomatoes and sun-dried tomatoes), the ideal moment had clearly arrived, so here it is, finally.

Sicilian Spaghetti with Burst Tomatoes

Adapted from Cooking with Italian Grandmothers (2010) by Jessica Theroux

Time: 30 minutes

1 pound (454 grams) ripe cherry or large grape tomatoes, rinsed
100 grams (~½ cup) extra-virgin olive oil
¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, or to taste
4 large garlic cloves, minced, pressed, or grated on a Microplane
75 grams (⅓ cup) sun-dried tomatoes packed in olive oil, drained, rinsed, drained well again, and finely minced or puréed (with the flat edge of your chef’s knife)
1 to 2 tablespoons fine sea salt
1 pound spaghetti
a small handful of fresh basil leaves, roughly chopped
grated Parmesan or pecorino Romano cheese, for serving

    1. Bring 4 quarts of water to a roiling boil in a large pot over high heat.
    2. Meanwhile, cut half of the tomatoes in half from pole to pole. Heat the oil over medium to medium-high heat in a large skillet or sauté pan. Stir in all of the tomatoes (halved and whole) and the red pepper flakes, then the garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the halved tomatoes are droopy and the whole tomatoes look like they’re going to burst, about 8-10 minutes total from when the tomatoes go into the pan. Stir in the sun-dried tomatoes. Turn off the heat, but leave the pan on the burner.
    3. When the water boils, add the salt and stir to dissolve. Add the pasta and stir a few times during the first minute or two to keep it from sticking. Cook until al dente, reserving a mugful of the cooking water.
    4. Turn the heat under the tomatoes back onto medium. Add the drained pasta to the pan, and stir and toss for a minute until the pasta and the sauce are married. Add some of the reserved cooking water if the pasta seems too dry. Taste for salt. Sprinkle with the basil and serve promptly, passing the grated Parmesan or pecorino at the table. Serves 4.