New Free Rice Words VIII
Bill Long 5/17/08*
Another Ten Four-Letter Words
[*Today is my father's birthday. Were he alive, he would be 83 years old today. He died in 1981, at age 56. I owe much of my inquisitive spirit and diligence in tasks to his example.]
Short words trip you up. You would think that clarity would be served by shorter words, especially if they have a precise meaning. So, let's focus on these 10, to see what kinds of precisio we can reach: (1) mogo; (2) pian; (3) raga; (4) bren; (5) leat; (6) roup; (7) snib; (8) skep; (9) pung; (10) pong. I think I may also have time for a few three-letter words, but let's see how it goes.
1. Mogo comes from the aboriginal word mugu which is used, according to the OED, in the region around Sydney, Australia, and designates an Aboriginal stone hatchet. Here is a picture. The web site says that it was used by the Cadigal and Wangal people to, among other things, strip bark from stringybark trees when the people wanted to make canoes or huts. While I was looking for the word mogo in the Century (not there), I ran across mogilalia, which I hadn't previously seen. Derived from the Greek words for "hardly" (mogis) and "to talk" (lalein), it means "stammering speech." I wonder if it is still used today...
2. Pian is a tropical infection, also known as "Yaws." Pictures of young people with these ulcerous sores on their arms are easily found on the net. Here is one, if you want to know. The Century says that it is identical to framboesia, the French word for "raspberry" (framboise), because of the "raspberry-like" excrescences. Various web pages tell you all about contracting, treatment and geographical extent of the disease, but I will spare you the details. The word pian is French, probably derived from the Portuguese pia. The Wikipedia article says that pian was substantially eradicated in the 1950s (from 50,000,000 sufferers to zero), but it has made a bit of a comeback in rural areas beginning in 2007. So many diseases suffered by so many millions of people around the world, I understand, are easily preventible--if people just had access to clean water and rudimentary health care. Perhaps that is a goal to be working towards...
3. Raga is, in Indian music, a melodic expression which provides the framework for improvised melodies. There are tons of "raga" tunes on "Youtube." I listened to one the first time I ran across this word. Here is a tune played by Ravi Shankar. EM Forster used the term in Passage to India: "The song is composed in a raga appropriate to the present hour, which is the evening."
4. Bren is a pretty rare word, and denotes a type of light, quick-firing machine gun used mostly in WWII. Here is a pic. It was designed in Brno, Czechoslovakia and then made in Enfield, England--the site of the British Royal Small Arms Factory. Hence the name. Small or large worlds, at your pleasure, are also opened through this word.
5. A leat is a water trench, used to conduct water for household purposes, mills, mining works, etc. A 1671 usage has a note that "Commissioners of Sewers" were to survey "Streams, Gutters, Letts, and Annoyances." The last word, by the way, has a rather technical legal meaning--what we today call "nuisances." When I moved from CT to CA in 1967, I noted the presence of "drainage ditches" in our new town; I wonder if in other context they might be called "leats," and whether the word just had prevalence in certain English locations (such as Devonshire)...
6. Roup is a simple word for a poultry disease. It can also be an auction or the selling of something at an auction (the verb "roup" means to "cry, shout, roar"). The "poultry disease" meaning is said to be "of obscure origin," and the first appearance of the word in English was in 1551. It is characterized by "morbid swellings on the rump," according to the OED.
7. If you know something about doors, chances are you have run into the word snib. It is that section of the latch parallel to the floor which is lifted up at an angle when the latch is raised to open the door. The sneck is often mentioned in the same breath as the snib, and is a metallic unit twisted from the inside of a screen door to lock it. It probably is more complicated than that, but not today--at least not in this article!
8. A skep is a specific quantity of grain, malt, charcoal, etc. being the amount contained in a baset or other vessel of a certain size. So says the OED. I think an easier or simpler definition is just to say the first phrase--a measure of corn, grain, etc. In fact, the Century is much more helpful for us. It is, first of all, a vessel of wood or wickerwork (various European langauges have words simillar to "skep" which mean a "chest" or "cupboard") used especially as a receptacle for grain. It might vary in size, shape, material or use according to the locality. A second definition is the amount contained in a skep. So, a skepful and a skep would mean the same thing.
9. A pung is a one-horse boxlike sleigh popular in New England and the Maritime Provinces of Canada. Here is a picture. No one is quite sure where the name comes from, but I wouldn't be surprised if it owes its origin to one of the Maritime Indian Nations.
10. Pong has four entries in the OED, one of which relates to the game of table tennis, but the word used by freerice.com means "a strong smell, usually unpleasant; a stink." "The offensive pong of dirty laundry assaulted her nose as she entered into her teen's bedroom."
That's enough for now. I will save the three-letter words for a future essay.
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