Joshua Malbin

I learned a beautiful new word tonight, “haecceity.” Wikipedia:

Haecceity is a term from medieval philosophy first coined by Duns Scotus which denotes the discrete qualities, properties or characteristics of a thing which make it a particular thing. Haecceity is a person or object’s “thisness”.

It should be distinguished from “quiddity”, which refers not to the “thisness” of a thing but to the “whatness” of a thing, its universal rather than particular qualities. Quiddity (a word I’d much heard but never heard defined — is it the name of a board game? No, it seems, a literary journal).

Do you know the herring joke?

A jokester in Chelm once thought up a riddle that nobody could answer: “What’s purple, hangs on the wall, and whistles?”
When everybody in Chelm gave up, he announced the answer: a herring
“A herring?” people said. “A herring isn’t purple.”
“No,” replied the jokester, “this herring was painted purple.”
“But hanging on a wall? Who ever heard of a herring that hung on the wall?”
“Aha! But this herring was hung on the wall.”
“But a herring doesn’t whistle,” somebody shouted.
“Nu, so it doesn’t whistle.”

Maybe it’s not so complicated it needs an example, but if it does, there’s your joke. The haecceity (what a pair of dipthongs) of this herring is considerably different from the quiddity of herrings. Therein lies the humor.

Share on Facebook