Schedulus Interruptus
This week: We take a beat to discuss interlude, intermission, and interregnum. We're going to keep it short this week, so just the discussion and the footnotes and then we're out. Here we go.
In a bitter surprise to no one but my ego, my plans for the week did not survive contact with the enemy1. I had thought we would seamlessly transition from our previous section on poetic terminology to the glorious chaos that is advertising vocabulary. And so we find ourselves taking a brief intermission. A little time out. A breather. A rest stop on the road to enlightenment. And at least two-dozen other synonyms2 for:
an interval between the parts of an entertainment
Now, if you're anywhere close to being of an age with me, then you probably best remember intermissions as those things that happen between movies during a double-feature at the drive-in3. And I would guess that that's where the word resides for most people - in pop culture. We see intermissions not only in between movies but during very long movies, or during concerts, or plays, or any other variety of long-form entertainment.
But how about interlude? Is it a true synonym with intermission or are there nuances lost to everyone except the most pedantic dictionary writers? Let's start by going back to Merriam-Webster:
1: an intervening or interruptive period, space, or event : INTERVAL
2: a musical composition inserted between the parts of a longer composition, a drama, or a religious service
3: a usually short simple play or dramatic entertainment
What's immediately interesting is that both intermission and interlude equate to interval and yet interlude has the second and third, very specific use cases that intermission lacks. So let's break these words down and see if that yields any nuance.
Etymology Online gives us the shared prefix inter:
word-forming element used freely in English, "between, among, during," from Latin inter (prep., adv.) "among, between, betwixt, in the midst of"
and this mouthful for intermission:
early 15c., "fact of intermitting, temporary pause," from Latin... Meaning "lapse of time between events" is from 1560s; specifically of performances (originally plays, later movies, etc.) from 1854.
and then this for interlude:
Originally the term for farcical episodes... drawn from real life introduced between acts of long mystery or morality plays. In 17c.-18c. it meant "popular stage play;" transferred (non-dramatic) sense of "interval in the course of some action" is from 1751.
Reading between the lines a bit, we can infer some of the usual4 hodgepodge of influences on English speakers as we began to codify English into its own language which, in turn, led to people choosing different Latin-derived words for similar ideas. Over time, while the specific use cases changed and expanded, the words themselves did not substantially change in meaning, leaving them the near synonyms they are today where it is down to the preference of the individual5 as to which they use.
Now, just for fun, I wanted to look up another word that I had only ever seen in print in one particular source - interregnum. In Steven Brust's Jhereg series of novels the Interregnum (note the capital letter) is a period of time between empires. I first discovered these novels when I was a young teen and have read them several times over the years but never quite got around to actually reading the dictionary definition of interregnum. I'll guess that it is, by definition, the time between monarchs, but let's head back to Merriam-Webster for round three:
the time during which a throne is vacant between two successive reigns or regimes
Would you look at that? Nailed it. However, just to make sure we're crossing all the i's and dotting all the t's, here's Etymology Online one last time:
literally "between-reign," from inter "between" + regnum "kingship, dominion, rule, realm,"
Good to know. But, of course, we who grow up reading know the curse of the read vocabulary - how do you actually say the word? Here you go: in·ter·reg·num, or, in modern IPA format6, ɪ́ntərɛ́gnəm.
And, for one last bit of trivia about an admittedly obscure word, because it's a Latin derived bit of nonsense, it's got a funny plural: interregna7.
And that's all I've got for this week. Next week we'll begin a long-ish look at the advertising words that we find ourselves surrounded by, particularly as we head into the holiday season. Until then...
Stay curious,
J
The enemy in this case is my appalling lack of time-management skill.
This is the Merriam-Webster definition, by the way.
Cue it up: Science fiction, double feature, Doctor X will build a creature...
For the English language
And convention, habit, society, organization, and chance, of course.
Is using Modern IPA instead of standard a weird flex? Yeah, okay.
I mean, you could just use interregnums but where's the fun in that?