Transcript for the Piece Audio version of genial - word of the day

This is the etymology moment, and I'm Charles Hodgson. Today we'll hear the story behind the word genial.
I did a search on the Washington Post's website on the word genial to see what would come up. Evidently Richard Causey, who was an Enron accountant and just got sent to prison for five and a half years, is a genial guy. By this I take it that he was a pretty nice guy, even if he turns out to have been a bit crooked. This meaning concurs with the meaning I see in the New American Oxford Dictionary which defines genial as "friendly and cheerful." But the first citation we have for the word genial in the Oxford English Dictionary relates to something that was anything but "friendly and cheerful." In that first citation the meaning of genial isn't "friendly and cheerful," but instead, something having to do with marriage. So that a genial bed was the marriage bed. The Latin root of genial actually goes back to the same root as that for genius, but I'll deal with geniuses another day. At the base of both words is an Indo-European root gen meaning to give birth. Hence the connection with marriage. That first citation was back in 1566, a year when Shakespeare was about three years old or so. Within a few generations we have a new meaning appearing, meaning festive. Now I'm only guessing, but I'm thinking that a word used in association with a happy event like a wedding might easily take on a festive meaning. Shortly after that we have citations with a new meaning, likely more closely related to the original Latin or Indo-European, genial meaning good for growing, as vegetables might find it genial in a sunny garden with good dark soil. This good-for-growing meaning morphed to mean nice weather. And by about 250 years ago, the meaning we recognize today emerged. Who wouldn't feel genial while attending a wedding feast on a lovely spring day? But as I said up front, the very first citation wasn't so friendly and cheerful. The book is an English retelling of a tale first told by the Roman Seneca who was born just about coincident with Jesus Christ. The story was of the Empress Octavia and her marriage to the Roman Emperor Nero. It was reference to that marriage that prompted genial to appear in the English document, and specifically it was Octavia's face in that marriage that was covered in tears. Y'see Nero was the type of leader who didn't shy away from a little murder or poisoning if it meant he stayed in control. He had agreed to marry Octavia because she was the boss's daughter?that boss being the previous Roman Emperor Claudius. But as the years went by, he just didn't seem to love her and so they had domestic spats including attempted uxoricide through strangling (that's killing your wife through strangling). Nero did fall in love with a few other gals and so divorced Octavia?which I suppose is better than being poisoned?but when she was exiled she had the bad judgment to complain about her treatment so her servants were tortured to give her the hit to shut up. The damage was done however and people took to the streets complaining that she was a great old gal and shouldn't be treated so shabbily. Nero couldn't put up with it so Octavia was tied up and had her wrists slit. As I said. Not very genial at all.