Wordcatcher

by Phil Cousineau

  SKEW

  To make oblique, slanting, distorted; to twist and turn; to shy away from. To discover the roots, this is the route we have to take. Skew derives from the Middle English skewen, to turn aside, which came from the Old High German sheuen, to avoid, and its adjective, sheu, shy, as in timid, but also “to shy away from.” In Middle English shey is “a shy horse.” Thus to skew is to turn aside, out of fear, like a shying horse, or to distort out of recognition. The modern sense appears in a December 2009 edition of the Hollywood Reporter: “Advance ticketing for James Cameron’s sci-fi actioner Avatar is skewing heavily toward male moviegoers, but sales are going so strongly that it shouldn’t represent a problem.” Companion words include the whimsical slantandicular, a posilutely vibrant synonym for perpendicular.

  SKYLARKING

  An old nautical term to describe an English sailor’s game of climbing the rigging to the masthead, and then sliding down the backstays for the sheer fun of it. Once deemed a sport for “English thrill-seeking sailors,” skylarking has slid down the language to become one of our most vivacious verbs, generally referring to a pleasant jaunt, a getaway. Originally, it was skylacing. First recorded in 1809, skylacing was “wanton play about the rigging, and tops,” later corrupted to skylarking, a compound of sky and lark, an old English word meaning “to frolic or play.” Metaphorically, it now encompasses the modern European sense of the songbird, from Middle English larke and Old English lawerce, though there is also evidence of a Greek proverb, “With even the unmusical, the lark is melodious.” The old English phrase “to rise with the lark,” meant to get up early in the morning. Nowadays, a lark is a “spree or frolic or pleasant jaunt.” Companions include: “To a Skylark,” a poem by Shelley, Skylark, a popular Buick from 1953-1972, and “Skylark,” the love song written by Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer in 1941.

  SLANG

  Street talk, abusive language, a colorful rap. Uncertain origins, but most scholars agree it appears first in secret language of the underworld in the 18th century. John Ayot argues that slang is the direct descendant of cant. The most vivid theory takes it back to the early Icelandic slyngva, to sling, which influenced other words across Scandinavia such as the Norwegian sleng, to throw around offensive language, and slengja, to toss abuse, from slengjakjeften, to sling the jaw. Thus, slang is the tossing around of wild words, insults, hipster talk—what is sometimes called in American slang “jaw-boning.” Leave it to Robert Frost to give it a modern twist. “Slang,” he said, is “a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.” Companion words include slang-whanger, a nickname for the English essayist William Hazlitt. In his classic work American Slang, H. L. Mencken writes, “College slang is actually made by the campus wits, just as general slang is made by the wits of the newspapers and theaters.” Companion words include argot, an old French synonym for slang that meant “to tear, from beggars’ clothes”—an effective way to describe how educated people rip—borrow—so many colorful words from people reduced to living on the streets and sling them around in their music, poetry, movies, dissertations.

  SLOGAN

  A saying, advertisement, a shout to the sky. In ancient Scotland and Ireland sluagh-ghairm was the war cry of the army, the host-cry, or gathering word of a border clan; “a war cry, meaningful one, perhaps name of chief of clan, or place, so a rallying cry or password by Highlanders and Borderers.” In 1808, Sir Walter Scott introduced the word into English use in his novel Marmion: “The Border slogan rent the sky, A Home! A Gordon! Was the cry!” First an Indian, then a cowboy, always a brilliant Cherokee comedian, Will Rogers got the contemporary sense of it right when he quipped, “You shake a slogan at an American and it’s just like showing a hungry dog a bone.” Companion words include the modern sloganeering, which generally means reducing complex ideas to whatever can fit on to a placard. A popular synonym is brand, compressing the qualities of a product to a slogan or tagline that stands for the brand.

  SNEAK

  To creep along; to move stealthily. The furtive verb has slithered along the linguistic path from the Irish snighim, “I creep.” Other crawling derivations include the Anglo-Saxon snican, to creep, from the Middle English sniken, to crawl, a close cousin of the Old English snican, to desire, reach for, and Old Norse snikja, related to snake. On the island of Guernsey the old Gurns say snequer, which means “to rob slyly,” and in Iceland snik-inn, which means “to hanker after.” Thus, to sneak is to creep along and reach for something you deeply desire or hanker for, even if you have to steal it. That illicit aspect of the word can be heard in the long “ea,” which sounds creepy, like a loose board in the attic. Companion words include Sneaky Pete, a personification of cheap booze, from 1949; slink, to creep, crawl, from Anglo-Saxon slincan; and the Dutch slinken, to shrink, shrivel. The sexy slinky, as in a sinuous and slender woman or the clothes she slid into, slithers into the lexicon in 1921. The Slinky toy became all the rage in 1948. Companion quotes include the Milwaukee Braves’ first baseman Joe Adcock’s “Trying to sneak a fastball past Hank Aaron is like trying to sneak the sunrise past a rooster.”

  SORCERER

  A wizard, a reader of fate, foreteller of the future. Originally, one who predicted the future by drawing lots, so sorcery is rooted in the lore of the Roman god Sors, the god of chance. Lucky for us, because Sors inspired the Latin sors, lots; sortes, the responses made by oracles; and sortarius, caster of spells. Ultimately, our everyday phrase “sorting out” derives from sortilege, which combines sors, lot, plus legere, to read. Coming full circle, as word hunts often do, sorcery cast its own spell when it was taken into Old French as sorcier, which became the English sorcerer. It pours through the language in “To read one’s lot in life,” and in “to accept one’s lot,” “to trust in the luck of the draw,” “Sort it out!” and “all sorts,” literally “the dregs,” “the “drippings” in the bottom of beer mugs, to be sold later at a lower price to the poor and undiscerning. Thus a sorcerer is someone who “sorts out” all the conflicting messages about the future and seems to cast a spell when explaining how the fates have arranged for things to unfold. Companion words include soothsayer, one who tells the truth, figuratively, about the future, from sooth, from southe, to assent, confirm, prove to be true. And a sorcerer’s apprentice of a word, which Helen Keller used audaciously: “Smell is a potent wizard.”

  SPOONERISM

  Corkscrewing words; words turned inside out. A spoonerism is what happens when you get your “turds wurned around.” Named after William Archibald Spooner (1844-1930) dean of New College, Oxford, for whom language often inverted itself as it came out of his mouth. Here are three of his classics: “Our Lord is a shoving leopard,” for “Our Lord is a loving shepherd,” “Let us raise our glasses to the queer old dean,” for “ …the dear old queen,” and “It is kisstomary to cuss the bride,” for “It is customary to kiss the bride.” Companion words include malapropism, from mal, bad and proper, word usage—a coinage from Dickens, “Mrs. Malaprop,” who is lampooned for using the wrong words at the most inappropriate moments. Also Bunkerisms , after Archie Bunker in the 1970s television show “All in the Family.” Finally, a noteworthy anecdote reminding us that even reading dictionaries can be dangerous, from the story of Omai, a Tahitian brought back to London by Captain Cook. After reading Johnson’s Dictionary, Omai confused “pickle” with “preserve” when introduced to Lord Sandwich. “May God Almighty pickle his Lordship to all eternity,” he said.

  STIGMA

  A mark, a brand. The Greek stizein, to tattoo, seared its meaning into our stigma. An obsolete meaning refers to a scar left by a hot branding iron, probably in reference to a mark of shame left on a thief, prostitute, coward. Companion words include stigmata, a religious phenomenon in which bodily marks resembling the wounds of the crucified Christ appear, and the botanical term stigma, the part of the pistil of a flower that absorbs pollen. Alexander Theroux writes, in his beguiling The Primary Colors, “It
takes 200,000-400,000 dried stigmas of the violet flower to make two pounds of saffron. And moreover each flower only has three stigmas, which must be picked by hand at dawn before the sun gets too hot.” He adds that the ancient roads of Rome were strewn with saffron whenever emperors or statesman passed over them. Brewer adds the Latin phrase Dormivit in sacco croci, “He hath slept in a bed of saffron,” meaning “light-hearted” because of its exhilarating effects. Thus, stigma is a deep mark, ranging from a brand to a tattoo to a subtly beautiful flower.

  STORY POLES

  The sticks that mark out the foundation of a house-to-be. Story poles are an ancient custom to remind the builders what is actually to be constructed, but also to signal to the community what is about to change. Synchronistically, across the street from the North Beach café where I’m writing at this very moment, story poles are being raised to inform the neighborhood where the new library—and a new story—will be erected. Figuratively, stories are the foundation of our lives. For me, a significant story is an account of something worth telling, a narrative telling how things happen. The oldest version of the word comes from Latin historia, an account, and the Middle English storie, and Old French estoire, a tale. The longest example may be the Hindu epic the Mahabarata; the shortest story may be Sandburg’s “Born. Played. Died.” Companion words include storiation, the architectural feature of narrative images carved into the side of a building. Confabulation is psychology-speak for the “generally unconscious, defensive ‘filling in’ of actual memory gaps by imaginary experiences.” The Irish banaghan refers to someone who tells terrific stories. A taleteller is a storyteller nonpareil, someone hired to “tell wonderful stories of giants and fairies, to lull their hearers to sleep.” A talesman is the author of a story or report; a tale bearer is a mischief maker, the incendiary in the family. Of story tributes there is no end. Ray Bradbury said, “Don’t you know, it was my stories that led me through my life?” Of his role as choreographer for West Side Story, Jerome Robbins observed, “What are they dancing about? What’s the story? You danced to fit the character.”

  SULKY

  A lightweight, two-wheeled harness-racing vehicle; a sullen, illhumored, aloof person. If you can visualize a carriage with room for one and only one person, or a horse trap, you can learn, by what word mavens call “back-formation,” the inner meaning of its root word. Searching for le mot juste for the one-seated vehicle, someone’s mind alighted on the image of a loner, a brooder, one who goes it alone, suspiciously solitary. In a word, a sulker, one who sulks, acts petulantly, broods in an obstinate way. Originally from the Old English solcen, slothful, idle, remiss, disgust, languid. The 1913 edition of Webster’s Revised Dictionary provides an obscure but useful origin for sulk as deriving from the Latin sulcus, a furrow, and possibly Old English sulke, sluggish. The usage we recognize is “to mope or brood, to be sullen, resentful silence, out of humor, as reflected in the sulker’s furrowed brow.” William Blake puts it in perspective: “When I saw that rage was vain / And to sulk would nothing gain, / Turning many a trick and wile / I began to soothe and smile.” Companion words include sullen, morose, but originally meaning “solitary, hating company,” as in The Sullen Art, Colin Wilson’s book about the lone, brooding pursuit of poetry; boudoir, a place to brood in, from French bouder, to sulk, perhaps also from English pout; and glouping, a splendidly sonicky word for “sullen and brooding.”

  SUTURE

  To sew; a seam, a thread. This venerable word refers to the ties that bind us, whether it’s in the sutras, the sacred Hindu writings, or the surgical stitches after an operation. If you follow the thread of the word from its origins in the Proto-Indo-European syu- or su-, to bind or sew, you will come to the Latin sutura, a sewing together, and eventually to the English seam and seamstress. Similarly, a stitch is “a passing through stuff of a needle and thread.” Centuries of drawing out these threads gave us the Old English spinnan, to spin, as in the spinning of yarns by sailors while mending their nets, and the expressions “three sheets to the wind” and “know the ropes.” Gray’s Anatomy, first published in 1858, defines sutures: “The bones of the cranium and face are connected to each other by means of Sutures. … The sutures remain separate for a considerable period after the complete formation of the skull. It is probable that they serve the purpose of permitting the growth of the bones at their margins, while their peculiar formation, together with the interposition of the sutural ligament between the bones forming them, prevents the dispersion of blows or jars received upon the skull.” In the fall of 2009, at a dinner in San Francisco, Deepak Chopra told me that ancient Hindu sages taught that “the sutras stitch together consciousness, and every sutra is a reflection of all the threads of the universe.” Metaphorically, sutures not only tie things together, they also expand to allow growth, to connect us to ourselves and to each other.

  SWAFF

  To come one over the other, like waves upon the shore, like waves of sleepiness upon a man who has been up for three days, like waves of nausea upon someone on a ship in heavy seas. “Drenched with their swaffing waves,” in the wondrous phrasing of Taylor’s Works, 1630. Swaff is also a noun in English dialect for the amount of grass a scythe cuts with one bold stroke. A plangent word worth reviving, a word that sighs and soughs. Companion words include the Scottish dwam, the trancelike feeling that washes over a person, rendering them unaware of what’s occurring around them. Similarly, a fugue is a flight of consciousness, from the Italian fuga, for flight, a wavy, dreamlike state of altered awareness that may stretch for hours or days with little memory of what happened.

  T

  TABOO

  Forbidden, prohibited, out of bounds. A complex series of prohibitions related to things holy or unclean; an ancient Polynesian practice to protect and ensure the sacred. Captain Cook wrote in a journal entry from 1777 that the word “has a very comprehensive meaning; but, in general, signifies that a thing is forbidden…. When any thing is forbidden to be eat, or made use of, they say, that it is taboo.” In the spring of 2009 I caught sight of the word while walking along a beach in Samoa. Written in bright white paint on a towering palm tree was the word TABOO. Beneath the warning was a strip of yellow police tape that stretched to the next tree about ten yards away and to the tree beyond it. Then I saw the reason for the warning. Within the semicircle of towering palms was a small flotilla of outrigger canoes. Clearly, intruders, strangers, nonsailors, were meant to keep away. This bold word has meant exactly that for millennia throughout Polynesia, to prevent the desecration of sacred objects such as sailing vessels, or virtually anything that the tribal kings had touched. “Furthermore,” wrote Margaret Mead of her time in Samoa, “among true taboo prohibitions, those whose breach is followed by automatic punishment, there are in Polynesia two main classes: taboos associated with the inherent sanctity of the gods, chiefs, and priests, and taboos associated with the inherent uncleanness of certain occurrences, such as menstruation, [childbirth], blood-shed, and death.”

  TEST, TESTAMENT

  A quiz, an exam, a questioning. In Roman times a man would swear to the truth by tugging his beard, crossing his heart, or making a vow on the lives of his family or fortune. Or—he would grasp his own testes, testicles. (Some say it was those of the man to whom the oath was made.) The word picture gets curiouser and curiouser, as Lewis Carroll said, in the Latin word for “witness,” which is testis, and for “testifying,” which is testificari, to bear witness. These words led to testament, from testis, witness, and facere, to make—meaning both the written record of a statement and “an open profession of one’s faith and devotion,” in 1526, or “publication of a will,” from testamentum. In its annual contest for the most humorous malapropisms, the Washington Post reported that one contestant defined testicle as “a humorous question on an exam.” Companion words are legion: testimony, evidence; testudo, tortoise; textile, from textere, to weave; and test tube, a vessel for conducting simple chemical tests. Test-tube baby is recorded from
1935; test drive is first recorded in 1954. Thus, a testament reveals your deepest truth, what you would swear to. To which the soul man, Motown singer Marvin Gaye, sang, “Can I get a witness?”

  THESAURUS

  A treasure trove of synonyms. An upside-down dictionary; whereas a dictionary provides meanings for words, a thesaurus provides words for meanings. While ruin-hunting in Olympia, Greece, after the 2004 Olympics, I was startled to see the original use of the word thesauros on my map of the ancient grounds. There in black and white was the Greek word for the six buildings that lined the path leading to the famous stadium (from stadia, a 200-meter running track). For centuries, visitors and dignitaries attending the Olympics would contribute spectacular gifts—treasures—from their cities or homelands, which were housed in a newly constructed thesauros, from the root of tithenai, which later gave us both treasure and tithe. The term Thesaurarie was used by compilers of dictionary as early as 1592, for a collection of rich information about words. In 1823, thesaurus made its first appearance as an English word, around the time an eccentric British physician, inventor, and lexicographer, Peter Mark Roget, known for his discovery of the “persistence of vision,” began a lifelong project of collecting his “treasure house of words.” First published in 1852, Roget’s Thesaurus was originally titled Collection of English Synonyms Classified and Arranged, and proved to be so popular it was reprinted twenty-eight times during his life, expanded by his son John in 1879 and again in 1911, and reprinted and expanded more than a hundred times since then, in many languages. Curiously, his Thesaurus was long considered a “difficult book”—at least until the crossword puzzle fad transformed the book into an indispensable prompt. And the 1550 term treasure trove, from the Anglo-French tresor trové, via the Latin thesaurus inventus, found treasure, which refers to the old custom of rendering to the lord of the land or the king any treasure that is found on his land.