A cache of omnibus meanings

Some pairs of words are like twins separated at birth.

from the March 16, 2007 edition

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But cache and cachet, like twins separated at birth, have gone off on different paths. Cache started out as a hiding place for supplies, then became a hidden supply of something, and more recently has become a not-so-hidden supply.

Cachet, on the other hand, started as the personal seal, the one that was more or less hidden. But the part of cachet that developed was not its "hidden" quality but its connection with high-level approval.

Omnibus comes to mind as another example of widely divergent meanings springing from a single root. Omnibus is Latin and means "for all." In the 19th century it was applied to public conveyances – those providing "carriage for all." The word was shortened to "bus" and then applied to all manner of carts and conveyances.

But legislators often speak of "omnibus bills" – those with something for everyone, aka "Christmas tree bills." The emphasis is on the "everyone" rather than the transport, and "omnibus" is not abbreviated.

Fortunately bus and omnibus cause no particular pronunciation problems. Confusions over cache/cachet, on the other hand, are often the mark of the autodidact, who learns from his or her own reading but then may not get a chance to discuss it.

My own high-water mark in this regard came some years ago as I was getting ready to do a television interview in which I was to discuss the work of psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. As a production assistant was going through the ticklish business of running microphone wires through my sleeve, it suddenly dawned on me that for all the time I spent reading Csikszentmihalyi's book, I really wasn't sure how to pronounce his name.

Fortunately, a slightly panicked call to his publisher's publicists settled the confusion. Thank goodness for publicity departments.

• This weekly column appears with links at http://weblogs.csmonitor.com/verbal_energy.

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