Centillions Ensouled

More on Lafcadio Hearn and late November vegetation

Language Studies (Kennerschaft)

Our word for it, connoisseurship, is an 18^th century hybrid—French and Old English. The German word was coined around the same time, but with elements that had existed in the language since the High Middle Ages. When I think of connoisseurship, or Kennerschaft, I think of the café society that was forming at about the same time, when Western society’s dalliances with the “Turkish mistress”, as an English wag once called coffee, eventually turned her into a kept woman.