Free Rice and Others--17th Essay of Delightful Words

What began with what I thought was going to be a short journey into knops, "a small rounded protuberance, a knob (esp. one of an ornamental character, e.g., upon the stem of a chalice, a candlestick, etc.)," ended up being a rather longer job. First, to dispose of the knop, all one needs to do is to look at this picture; the little bubble or knob or nodus on the stem of the chalice is a knop. But then, because I was on the subject of glass containers, I ran across several web sites that look at the history of "bottle bottoms." The rounded marks or scars on the bottom are usually known as pontil marks. The pontil, in a pre-Civil War bottle, is an iron rod used to hold or twirl molten glass for the purpose of shaping. This could also be called a punty. The word pontil comes from the French word for "little point."

Here is a picture of a few bottle bases, where you can get the notion of what a pontil is. As the site says, "A pontil mark is a variable size and type of scar left on the base of a bottle by a pontil rod." The pontil rod (or "punte" or "punty") was typically 4-6 feet long which was securely attached to the base of the just blown hot bottle. Here is a picture of the actual bottle-making process. The description has an glass-blower (called the gaffer) using shears to detach the blowpipe from the bottle which is being held by an assistant using the pontil rod.

I wasn't familiar with the word gaffer, except its modern usage as the chief electrician in a film or television production unit (esp. in a lighting crew), and so I discovered that, according to the OED, it was originally applied by country people to an elderly man or one whose position entitled him to respect. In the 17th-18th centuries, it was applied to the name of a man below the rank of those addressed as "Master." But someday I think I will have to sort out the historical terms to designate rank in British society: gaffers, masters, goodmen, lairds, yeomen, etc. A secondary meaning of gaffer is "the foreman or overman of a gang of workmen; a headman." It is in that sense that the word was used in the illustration linked above.

A gaff is an iron hook or a barbed fishing spear. The Century, building on this definition, defines a gaffer as "an angler's assistant who with a gaff secures the fish caught." Interesting that the OED talks about a gaffer as a "headman," while the Century sees him as an "assistant." Who is really in charge here?

So as not to make a gaffe with the word, I will leave it here and return for a second to pontil. The pontil inevitably left a scar, sometimes very large, on the base of the bottle. There are various types of pontils, of course, but this irregular scar can be called, among other things, a "blowpipe (open) pontil" or a "glass tipped pontil." I wonder if you could tell anything about the date or the manufacturer of the bottle from the pontil; that is could one have a "signature" pontil? The process of blowing bottles, with the pontil on the bottom, was called empontillation, a word that appears almost nowhere you turn. The pontil was replaced around the time of the Civil War by the snap case. This web page also calls the snap case a sabot, but I couldn't find an attestation in the dictionary for that use of sabot. Now the handler is not called a gaffer but a servitor.

Isn't each profession a kind of little world in itself? We think of microcosms as microscopic things, but the more I live, the more I see each human activity as constituting almost a complete world. It has its "technique," its vocabulary, its leaders, its societies, its journals, its appeal.

By the way, some other bases were developed in the 20th century, the most famous of which was the "Owens ring." Made by the Owens-Illinois Glass company, an owens ring consisted of embossed letters, symbols and/or numbers which were molded onto the base of the bottle. Well, we can spend our whole lives on bottles, it seems, but let's return to reality.

Moving Quickly

I feel as if I need to make atonement for my extensive notes on obscure things. So, let's go quickly as we end this essay. The Latinate words subulate and levigation attracted me. Something subulate, the same as subuliform, is "awl-shaped" or "slender and tapering to a point." Here is a picture of a subulate auger. The Latin word behind it is subula, an awl. Indeed, an obsolete word from the 17th century is subulon, which is a young hart with straight, unbranched horns. Did you know this, from 1607: "The dung of Harts cureth the dropsie, especially of a Subulon or young Hart"? While aficionados of Louis Spohr's hymns might sing, "As pants the hart for cooling streams when heated in the chase," I think that those seeking treatment for dropsical conditions [swellings] 400 years ago might pant for the hart--the dung of the hart, that is.

Finally, levigation, derived ultimately from levis (smooth), is the action of rubbing down or trituration of a substance in mortar or on a slab, with sufficent moisture to make it soft. Trituration, derived from the Latin word for threshing, seems to be more of a brusing or pounding process. Indeed to triturate means to "pulverize, comminute" (don't you just love how the words keep rolling?), but can also suggest a mixing of solids or liquids. I like levigation, however, to describe the slow process of rubbing down or eroding. But, as usual, I am interested in taking the word away from the scientists and technical professionals who might use the term to describe some kind of erosive process in their 'world.' A figurative and suggestive use of levigate is from 1794: "Such a soul levigated by prosperity soon mounts into airiness of temper." But let's think of the things in life that are rough and need to be made smooth. This is where levigation lives. So, one might have the levigating influence of words or the levigating touch of the master buffer. An emollient to the soul might also levigate the heart. It has possibilites.

The end of another essay and, like in the fairly tale, where the elves made a few pairs of shoes from a small piece of cloth, and some was left over, so there are more words left over--for the next essay.

3729