Words Going Nowhere

At times I can be so seemingly purposeful in my word expositions that you might get the impression that every word has meaning and richness to it, with great possibilities also for future use. But such is not the case. This essay is dedicated to those words that may have begun with promise but which have, for whatever reason, fallen out of use. I can see trying to bring a few back to life; most, however, are only exhumed here in order to prepare for reburial. Maybe, like the exhumantion last year of George "The Gipper" Gipp, I am digging them up only to see if they have spawned verbal offspring. Seven words will be my focus: limerence, smaze, spiflicate, susso, nullo, munga and smickly.

1. I think the reason limerence was invented in the early 1970s was for the author to try to put herself "on the map." Psychologist Dorothy Tennov's wrote the book Love and Limerence, which an anthropologist three hundred years from now would pick up and say, without looking at the publication date, "Hm, this looks SO 1970s..." Well, in 1977 she explained: "I first used the term 'amorance' then changed it back to 'limerence'...It has no roots whatsoever. It looks nice. It works well in French. Take it from me it has no etymology whatsoever." Not a promising beginning, I think... Well, what is it? This page, giving some reviews of her book, speaks of it in two ways. First, it is the experience of being in love. Not an unusual experience, to be sure, and one that doesn't really need a new word. But she really was interested in the second thing: "The state of being romantically infatuated or obsessed with another person, typically experienced involuntarily, and characterized by a strong desire for reciprocation of one's feelings but not primarily for a sexual relationship." Ah, now we are getting somewhere. So, it is a feeling somewhere between infatuation, lust and what we would call "chemistry" today. Perhaps the word "obsession" is the way it is most spoken of today. Because of the rather primitive state of brain research in the 1970s, she hypothesized that this state is triggered by chemicals in the brain. No doubt, but it may take quite a while to identify the "obsession" or "infatuation" gene. I think the term arose out of soft-core feminism (even though men have this feeling, too) to empower women, who mostly experience this, by giving them a new word for their experience of "falling hard" for someone. But even if the word tries to get at something important in life (the almost involuntary attachment and preoccupation with another that grows, and longs for reciprocation), it doesn't sound like something that people will want to pick up on. So, it is fading, I believe.

2. Susso is an example of Australian slang. It arose in the Great Depression of last century as a shortened word for "sustenance," and it meant "state government relief paid to the unemployed." In the USA we speak about being "on welfare." I actually like the phrase "being on the susso" better, though I think it has now long faded from use. The London Times Literaery Supplement from Feb. 15, 1974 looked at the term: "We're on the Susso now. In the 1930s Melbourne schoolchildren grew up chanting this (to them) cheerful song..."

3. While still in Australia, and listening to "Tie Me Kangaroo Down" in the background, let's move to another Australian slang word: munga. It meant, simply, "food; a meal." Though it originated in 1907, it seemed to flourish briefly during WWII, only dying thereafterwards as the "Greatest Generation" returned to normal life and got real meals to eat. The OED suggests its origin in mungaree, a word going back to the mid-19th century to denote food. And, mungaree is probably derived either from the Italian mangiare (to eat) or the French mangier. The "a" in Italian is even pronounced like a "u" in English. I don't think that "gimme some munga" would go over well today, though it could have a comback among youth at summer camps with terrible food.

4. I have spoken about smaze before; it is a portmanteau word for smoke + haze. I argued there that it actually is a better word than smog to describe that unhealthy urban thickness, but since it was invented about 50 years later than smog, the word-field was already occupied by the word, and smaze never caught on. Maybe later.

5. Spiflicate is a word I would like to recapture. I describe it at length here. The verb means to destroy or overcome, but if one is spifflicated (the usual spelling, even thought he OED lists it as spiflicated), one is "overcome" or "destroyed" or "wasted" or "drunk." The verb was common in the 19th century, as the OED says, and the past participle spifflicated appeared in a 1928 list (linked above) of 49 terms for being drunk, but I think the word has fallen out of use in our day. So has the related word squiffed, also of "fanciful" formation, though I like them both. Actually, the four words for intoxication from that 1928 list beginning with "s" all have a future, I believe: spiflicated, squiffed, stewed, stuccoed. Try them out; there are ample occasions in American life where they are appropriate.

6. Smickly only has one attestation in the OED, from the 17th century, but is a good word. It means "elegantly, finely." "He looks so smickly." The older English word, smicker means "beautiful, elegant, fair, handsome." The OED lists this Glouscestershire ditty: "Smoke will to the smicker: meaninge, If many gossips sit against a smokey chimney the smoke will bend to the fairest." What does this mean? That if you, the "fairest" person, "lower" yourself to engage in gossip, the resultant "smoke" from it will cling to you? I think it has lost something over the years. Nevertheless, I think we should invent the hendiadys "smartly and smickly" to mean a person who is dressed "to the nines." It could also denote someone who handles him/herself well. "Smartly and smickly he greeted the guests, one by one."

7. Let's conclude with nullo, another word originating in the 19th century but with limited usefulness today. Actually, its meaning as a "zero" goes back much further, but I am referring to its more popular meaning in the 19th/20th centuries as "a contract in some varieties of bridge and in certain other card games, in which the object is to win no tricks..." By 1897 this term, in this latter sense, had made it into the Complete Hoyle. But then, in a 1903 quotation, we are connected to another word, misere (two syllables): "This [i.e. Auction Bridge] is a rather interesting variety of bridge, and introduces the element of a misery, or nullo, for the consolation of players who always hold poor cards." What is a "misery" or a "misere"? Well, misere, "a declaration [in various card games] by which the caller undertakes not to take a trick," goes back to 1814: "When the eldest hand thinks he can get 5 or more tricks, he is to say 'Boston'; if otherwise, he says 'Pass', unless he plays Misere, that is, so as to lose every trick."

This would get us into the development of the card game Boston (named after the siege of Boston in the US War of Independence), allied to whist, but I don't want to go there now. Get yourself an old "Hoyle" or check online for rules to old card games; it will keep you busy for some time...

Now, with my nod to inutility, let's return to some other words.

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