New Free Rice VI
Bill Long 5/16/08
Four-Letter Words and A Few Five-Letter Words
Five four-letter words in the free rice lists in its advanceed words are snog, grok, skua, scut, and toff. The OED only lists snog as "bristle," and has it as a rare word, but someone knows it to mean "to kiss," because that is how free rice had it. An online source (female) talks about "snogging" with her boyfriend, for example. To grok, in contrast, does appear in the OED, and is derived from Heinlein's 1961 Stranger in a Strange Land. The sentence of first appearance is this: "Smith had been aware of the doctors but had grokked that their intentions were benign." Though free rice said it meant "to comprehend," the definition in the OED says "to understand intuitively or by empathy" or "to empathize or communicate sympathetically (with)." It is a made-up word, and seems to have no relations with any other term, but carries with it a deeper meaning than simply "to comprehend."
The third word is toff, which is both a noun and verb, but originally was a name given by the lower classes to a man stylishly dressed, with a smart appearance. He could also be known as a "nob" or a "swell." From 1851: "If it's a lady and gentleman, then we cries, "A toff and a doll!" It is also applied to a person who behaves "handsomely," as in this sentence: "A Paisley bailie let off a man easier than the culprit expected, and was addressed, 'Thank you, sir, you're an old toff.'" A synonym for this type of person is a "brick." Sure enough, definition 6 in the OED has a brick as a "good fellow, one whom one approves for his genuine good qualities." Thus, we not only have toff, but swell, brick and nob. You can never learn too much!
The other two four-letter words take us into the animal kingdom. A skua is a predatory gull belonging to the genus Stercocarius, and it breeds in the Shetland Is., the Faeroes, and Iceland. By the way, if I remember my Greek properly, sterco means "dung." Thus, even the classifiers didn't think terribly highly of the skua. Here is a picture of an arctic skua, also known as a "parasitic jaeger" (hunter). They steal much of their food from other birds. A quotation from 1896 takes us to another bird: "The tarrock skims lightly along, and screams as the skua comes prowling round the cape." The word tarrock, the OED tells us, can be applied to various sea-birds--including the kittiwake, the young of the common gull, and the guillemot. A veritable feast of words confronts us, even as the skua takes the food from all the other birds...
While on birds, let me throw in the junco, a word in an advanced free rice page. I was embarrassed to learn that the junco, pictured here, is a "widespread and common small sparrow." Shows how little I know...
Then, concluding the four-letter words, we have scut. This is to be distinguished from a scud (a certain kind of tactical ballistic missile developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War) which, unfortunately, has tons of other meanings, and the "Cold War" usage isn't in the OED. There are also several meanings for scut, but the one on the free rice site means "a short erect tail, esp. that of a hare, rabbit, or deer." From George Turverbille's 1575 The noble arte of venerie or hunting, we have: "The tayle of an Hare and Conney is called their Skut." What further proof do you need? Well, maybe from Shakespeare, in Merry Wives, "My Does, with the blacke Scut?"
A Few Other Words--of Five Letters
Two five-letter words that you shouldn't miss are cairn and naker. Many folk know that a cairn is a pile of stones, a memorial first mentioned in Western literature, perhaps, in Gen. 31:45 though that passage, of course, was written in Hebrew. Actually a nice Scottish proverb developed around the practice of adding a stone to a cairn. From 1772, we have this explanation:
"As long as the memory of the deceased endured, not a passenger went by without adding a stone to the heap...To this moment there is a proverbial expression among the highlanders allusive to the old practice; a suppliant will tell his patron, Curri mi cloch er do charne, I will add a stone to your cairn; meaning, when you are no more I will do all possible honor to your memory."
But I hadn't known that a cairn was also a kind of Highland terrier, so named because they were trained to hunt among cairns. They are called the "smallest breed of terrier in Great Britain." Here is a picture.
Let's conclude, then, with a word on naker, a kettledrum. The word originated from the Persian, as I understand it, and meant "hollowed out." Apparently it is only a historical term, according to the OED. The fifteenth century Italian nacchera, kettledrum, shows its international usage. Chaucer used it first in English in 1385: "Pipes, trompes, nakers, clariounes..." Here is a pair of them, if you wanted to get more than one.
Building word-knowledge is like building your life. It happens slowly, but when things come together, you really know it. With that hope, we continue to study more words.
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