A friend dropped me a note recently asking a very sensible question, and I thought I might share the answer with you.
Quote:
I was wondering about the use of the word "enormate" in the Motherland and among Aristasians in Telluria. I have heard it used as if it were a very strong expression indeed, and yet at other times I have seen quite minor irregularities described as "enormate". Is enormacy a serious breach of thamë or a minor fault, of can it be either, or anything in between?
"Enormate" is often translated as "rude", but actually means a breach of the Golden Order or "Norm" and so implies a quite serious breach of thamë. The difference in its usage that you correctly note is almost entirely dependent on who is using the term of whom.
It is often used of one's self or one's own actions fairly freely in cases where one would never use it of another or her actions. To exaggerate one's own fault is considered polite, and in a sense "safe" (avoiding the danger of minimizing it and seeming complacent about offense one may have caused).
On the other hand to say to another "your behavior is enormate" is a very serious criticism and would only be made in quite extreme circumstances. Indeed this would have something of the "taboo" quality of using "strong language" (which, in the sense of indecent words, does not really exist in the same way in the Motherland), but it is more serious, because the accusation is real. Such an accusation creates a breach and is only used where the speaker feels with great certainty that a breach of thamë has already been committed by the person addressed.
There are other cases between the two extremes. A mother, apologizing for her child's behavior might use the word almost as freely as she would in apologizing for her own. Using the word of one's own in-group to an outsider is done far more lightly than it would be used
of or
to an outsider, though there are complex questions of seniority, degrees of "in-group-ness" etc. involved here.
In speaking of a third party not group-related to either speaker (or equally to both) the term will be used "objectively" - only when a serious breach is being discussed but without the degree of "taboo" attached to making the accusation
to someone.
In this same "objective" spirit it can be used more lightly when discussing matters of protocol. For example "placing Miss Joans higher up the table than Miss Candre would be a little enormate" - remembering that such matters
are considered to be questions of thamë and ritually significant, therefore not as "lightweight" as West Tellurians would be prone to consider them.
I hope this clarifies the usage of the term somewhat. Naturally it is affected by the subtleties of individual circumstance, but this is broadly how it works.
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