Table of Contents
Praise
BOOKS BY PHIL COUSINEAU
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Acknowledgements
Introduction
A
ABRACADABRA
ABSURD
ACADEMY
ACCOLADE
ADUMBRATE
AFTERMATH
AGONY
ALLEGORY
AMAZON
AMUSE
ANIMATEUR
APHILOPHRENIA
ARACHIBUTYROPHOBIA
ARGONAUT
ASSASSIN
ASTONISH
ASTRAL
ATHLETE
ATLAS
AUGUR
AWARE
B
BAFFLE
BAKSHEESH
BAMBOOZLE
BANDERSNATCH
BARBARIAN
BATHOS
BEAUTY
BEDSWERVER
BEKOS
BERSERK
BEWILDER
BIBLIOTHÈQUE (FRENCH)
BONA FIDE
BONDMAID
BOONDOCKS
BORBORYGMUS
BOUDOIR
BRICOLEUR (FRENCH)
BROADCAST
BROWNSTUDY
BUCCANEER
BUDGET
BULL
BUMMER
BUNDLING
C
CAHOOTS
CALCULATE
CALM
CAMERA
CANADA
CANOODLE
CANT
CAPPUCCINO
CATAWAMPUS
CATCH
CHANTEPLEURE (FRENCH)
CHARACTER
CHICANERY
CHIRM, CHYRME
CLICHÉ
CLOUDERPUFFS
COMPANION
CONTEMPLATE
CONVERSATION
COOL
CORNUCOPIA
CRAIC (IRISH)
CRAZY
CRUISE
CUSHLAMOCRE (IRISH)
D
DAMN
DASTARDLY
DAYMARE
DELPHIC
DESULTORY
DICTIONARY
DINOSAUR
DRACHENFUTTER
DUDE
DUENDE (SPANISH)
DUNCE
DUPE
E
ECLIPSE
ELDRITCH
ENCYCLOPEDIA
ENIGMA
ENTHUSIASM
EPIPHANY
ESPÉRANCE (FRENCH)
ESPRIT DE L’ESCALIER (FRENCH)
F
FADO (PORTUGUESE)
FALSE FRIEND
FIREDOG
FLNEUR (FRENCH)
FLIRT
FLIZZEN
FLOCCINAUCINIHILIPILIFICATION
FLOUNDER
FOCUS
FORNICATE
FORTUNE
FREELANCE
FRIBBLE
FUNGO
FURY
G
GALAXY
GLAMOUR
GLEE
GLOM
GNOME
GODSEND
GORGEOUS
GORGONIZE
GOSSAMER
GRAMMAR
GREGARIOUS
GROGGY
GYASCUTUS
GYMNASIUM
GYNOTIKOLOBOMASSOPHILE
H
HAPPY, HAPPINESS
HECKLE
HERO
HIP, HEP, HIPSTER
HOAX
HONEYMOON
HOPSCOTCH
HYPERBOLE
HYPOCRITE
I
ICONOCLAST
IDIOT
IGNORASPHERE
INSOLENT
J
JAZZ
JINX
JUGGERNAUT (HINDI)
JUKE
K
KALEIDOSCOPE
KAVLA (TURKISH)
KENNING
KERFUFFLE
KIBOSH (IRISH)
KINEPHANTOM
KITE
L
LABEL
LABYRINTH
LACONIC
LADY
LAGNIAPPE
LOGROLLING
LOUCHE
LOVE
LULLABY
M
MEERSCHAUM
MELANCHOLY
METAPHOR
MONDEGREEN
MUM
MURMUR
MUSE
MYTHOSPHERE
N
NEMESIS
NOCTAMBULATION
NOSTALGIA
NUMINOUS
O
OBFUSCATE
OSTRANENIE (RUSSIAN)
P
PANACHE
PERIPATETIC
PETRICHOR
PHANTASMAGORIA
PHONY
POCHADE (FRENCH)
POLTROON
PORTMANTEAU
PREPOSTEROUS
PRETZEL
PROTEAN
PUBLISH
PUN
PUSILLANIMOUS
Q
QUICK
QUIRKY
QUIZ
R
RANKLE
RASA (HINDU)
REBATE
RED-HANDED
REMORSE
RHAPSODY
RIVAL
S
SALARY
SARDONIC
SAUDADE (PORTUGUESE)
SAUNTER
SCAPEGOAT
SCHEDULE
SCOOCH OR SCOOTCH (SCOTTISH)
SCRUTINIZE
SEEKSORROW
SHANGHAI
SKEDADDLE
SKEW
SKYLARKING
SLANG
SLOGAN
SNEAK
SORCERER
SPOONERISM
STIGMA
STORY POLES
SULKY
SUTURE
SWAFF
T
TABOO
TEST, TESTAMENT
THESAURUS
THOLE
THRILL
TOPSY-TURVY
TRANSLATION
TRAVEL
TRIVIA
TROPHY
U
UNTRANSLATABLE
URCHIN
V
VANILLA
VAUDEVILLE
VENERATE
VERBICIDE
W
WABI/SABI (JAPANESE)
WEASEL WORD
WEIRD
WHATCHAMACALLIT
WHISTLE
WISDOM
WIT
WORDFAST
WRITE
WRITHE
X
XENOGENESIS
XENOPHILIA
Y
YEARN
YELLOW DOG CONTRACT
YOUTHY
YUMA (CUBAN-SPANISH)
Z
ZAFTIG (YIDDISH)
ZEMBLANITY
ZEPHYR
ZITCOM
ZOMBIFICATION
THE TEN MOST BEAUTIFUL WORDS
SOURCES AND RECOMMENDED READING
AFTER TALE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Copyright Page
PRAISE FOR WORDCATCHER
“I am awed by Phil Cousineau’s scholarship and the overall view he has of inner matters. He has a genius for the soulful dimensions of words, and a rare intelligence for communicating the numinous dimension of language. Wordcatcher will grace the lives of all who read it, and inspire them to respect, even revere words as much as its author does.”
—Robert A. Johnson, author o
f He, She, and Slender Threads
“Phil Cousineau’s Wordcatcher is a wonderful meditation on words that can be read from beginning to end if you are obsessed with speech, greedy for mountain air, and into enlightened verbal play. Not a dry lexical listing, each word Cousineau chooses sings with cellos, vagabonds through tongues and history, and bounces like a balloon on the moon, and as high as his quirky imagination takes us. Compelled reading for residence in the ancient synagogue of the word.”
—Willis Barnstone, author of The Restored New Testament and Ancient Greek Lyrics
BOOKS BY PHIL COUSINEAU
The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work 1990
Deadlines: A Rhapsody on a Theme of Famous Last Words 1991
The Soul of the World: A Modern Book of Hours (with Eric Lawton) 1993
Riders on the Storm: My Life with Jim Morrison and The Doors
(by John Densmore with Phil Cousineau) 1993
Soul: An Archaeology: Readings from Socrates to Ray Charles 1994
Prayers at 3 A.M.: .: Poems, Songs, Chants for the Middle of the Night 1995
UFOs: A Mythic Manual for the Millennium 1995
Design Outlaws: On the Frontier of the 21st Century (with Chris Zelov) 1996
Soul Moments: Marvelous Stories of Synchronicity 1997
The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker’s Guide to Making Travel Sacred 1998
Riddle Me This: A World Treasury of Folk and Literary Puzzles 1999
The Soul Aflame: A Modern Book of Hours (with Eric Lawton) 2000
The Book of Roads: Travel Stories from Michigan to Marrakesh 2000
Once and Future Myths: The Power of Ancient Stories in Modern Times 2001
The Way Things Are: Conversations with Huston Smith on the Spiritual Life 2003
The Olympic Odyssey: Rekindling the Spirit of the Great Games 2004
The Blue Museum: Poems 2004
A Seat at the Table: The Struggle for American Indian Religious Freedom 2005
Angkor Wat: The Marvelous Enigma (photographs) 2006
Night Train: New Poems 2007
The Jaguar People: An Amazonian Chronicle (photographs) 2007
Stoking the Creative Fires: 9 Ways to Rekindle Passion and Imagination 2008
Fungoes and Fastballs: Great Moments in Baseball Haiku 2008
The Meaning of Tea (with Scott Chamberlin Hoyt) 2009
City 21: The Search for the Second Enlightenment (with Chris Zelov) 2009
The Oldest Story in the World: A Mosaic of Meditations on Storytelling 2010
Wordcatcher: An Odyssey into the World of Weird and Wonderful Words 2010
Atonement: The Next Step in Forgiveness and Healing [forthcoming]
Who Stole the Arms of the Venus de Milo? [forthcoming]
This book is dedicated to
Gregg Chadwick,
friend, companion,
fellow believer in the
power of the painted word
The Korean Brush
In Eric Partridge’s book The Gentle Art of Lexicography, there is a story about an elder lady who, on borrowing a dictionary from her municipal library, returned it with the comment, “A very unusual book indeed—but the stories are extremely short, aren’t they?”
—Henry Hitchings, Johnson’s Dictionary
I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of the earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.
—Dr. Samuel Johnson, preface to the Dictionary
You know well that, for a thousand years, the form of speech has changed, and words that then had certain meanings now seem wondrously foolish and odd to us. And yet people really spoke like that, and they succeeded as well in love as men do now.
—Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, 1372
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
n. 1594. Act of acknowledging influences; a token of due recognition or appreciation; a favorable notice; an expression of thanks. Its roots reach back to the Medieval English aknow, from the Old English oncnawan, to understand, recognize, know, and the old verb knowlechen, to admit, especially the truth.
If asked how long this book took to write I would have to say it’s been in the works all my life, so my first acknowledgment goes to my parents, Stanley and Rosemary Cousineau, who imbued in me the discipline of consulting dictionaries1 and encyclopedias whenever I had trouble with my boyhood studies. For better or worse, I’ve been in thrall to words ever since. While still in my teens I was blessed with an offer to work at my hometown newspaper, the Wayne Dispatch, where I’d appear every Thursday night to “put the paper to bed,” and it’s to Roger Turner, my first newspaper editor, I’d like to offer a token of recognition for that blazing red pencil that sent me scurrying to the dictionary. A nod of deep appreciation is also in order to the late Judy Serrin, my journalism teacher at the University of Detroit. Writing this book revived a dormant memory of how she began the first class each year with two simple questions: “Who reads the Op-Ed pages?” “Who reads the dictionary?” After seeing all the blank stares, she would ask, “How else are you going to learn to think for yourself ?”
As sure as heliotropic plants turn to the sun for light, so does the logotropic soul turn to words for illumination. In that light I would like to acknowledge with a raft of favorable notices my early lorefathers, the mentors who reminded me of the love of learning, the animateurs, Joseph Campbell, Huston Smith, and Robert A. Johnson, all of whom contributed words to my vocabulary, such as metaphor, cornucopia, and numinous. I would also like to broadcast my thanks to Ernie Harwell, the Detroit Tigers Hall of Fame broadcaster, who illuminated for me the origins of boondocks, a word I learned from his home run calls on WJR, the sound of the Motor City. Thanks to Jeanne and Michael Adams for their offer of the use of Ansel’s cabin in Yosemite, where I found the rest and respite to finish a large portion of the book, and discovered the wonderful citations for beauty, camera, and scootch in Ansel’s well-thumbed library. Others who have shown special fellowfeel for this project over the years include County Clare’s own favorite son, P. J. Curtis, who helped clarify several of the euphonious entries from Ireland, such as cant and cahoots, and my logodaedalus Dublin friend Jaz Lynch, whose use of the old term kibosh caught my attention at McDaid’s Pub in Dublin many years and many pints ago. The versatile wordmonger R. B. Morris supplied me with the marvelous Tennessee riff on “help” and “hope” and true companionship over the years as we discussed the imponderabilia of language in bars from Knoxville to North Beach. To the late Frank McCourt, I want to acknowledge the craic we shared while we lectured together on the Silversea Silver Shadow. I’ll never forget how he described over lunch one day his introduction to the beauty of words in his first reading of Shakespeare, which he said felt like jewels in his mouth.
I would also like to extend a susurrus of thanks to the librarians at the San Francisco Public Library, the Detroit Public Library, and the New York Public Library, where I discovered much of the research for this book, as well as a round of accolades to the Two Kevins, the chrestomathic owners of Green Apple Books, in San Francisco, and George Whitman, at Shakespeare and Company, Paris, for years of serendipitous inspiration.
To my fellow bibliomancer Brenda Knight, I offer profuse thanks for thinking of that simple request that I look in my rolltop desk for any old manuscripts, or notebooks with book ideas, which is how this book was born. Thanks to copyeditor Mark Rhynsburger for his perspicacious help, Elena Granik for her marketing savvy, Frank Wiedemann for his elegant book design, Scott Idleman for his cover design, and to my publisher Frédérique Delacoste, who gave the green light to this project. Profuse thanks to my agent, Amy Rennert, for her graceful efforts in turning the idea into a reality and fighting for the best possible artifact. And I would like to enthusiastically offer a palette of colorful thanks to Gregg Chadwick for his gorgeous illustrations, and even more, his doughty dedication to the cause of “the painted word,” which helps bring poets and painters together
. Final acknowledgments, in the third sense of the word, understanding the truth of something, are due to my family, Jo Beaton and Jack Cousineau, who gracefully dealt with my long disappearances into my writing studio and distant libraries, as I rode my hobbyhorse of word fascination.
May all who read this book learn to love the riffling of pages in their favorite dictionaries.
INTRODUCTION
Every word, without exception, is an enchantment, a wonder, a marvel, aphorisms compressed to single words, sometimes single phonemes.
—Lewis Thomas
Every Friday night of my boyhood my father pulled out the plug of the old Philco television and pulled down one of his favorite books from the oak bookshelves in the living room. After asking my mother to pour him his nightly shot of Jack Daniel’s, he asked her to join my younger brother and sister and me around his favorite leather reading chair. There he would lead us, one page at a time, through the classics that he loved, Homer, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson, or Tales from the Arabian Nights.
Naturally, there were a few words in those difficult but powerful books that we kids didn’t understand. But my parents encouraged us to admit when we were stumped and to ask questions. To this day I can recall being enchanted, as Lewis Thomas writes above, but stymied by such unusual words as shanghaied in The Sea Wolf; mentor in The Odyssey; rapscallion in Huckleberry Finn; or bohemian in Van Gogh’s letters. Tentatively, I would ask my father, whose knowledge of words was encyclopedic , the meaning of the ones I didn’t understand. But rather than give me an easy answer, he would point to our hefty edition of The Random House Dictionary, whose covers were always open like the wings of a giant bird, on the ottoman next to his chair.
“Look it up, Philip,” he’d say. “That’s why I bought the damned thing.”
But his pedagogic tricks didn’t end there.
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