More Rare Words--Third Essay--

Let's begin with some good news. There really isn't any bad news, but the good news is that spending a considerable amount of time learning new words does pay off. I managed to win another bee tonight at the Mississippi Pizza Pub in Portland. The words I got to spell weren't too bad (metheglin and concinnity were the last two), but it is gratifying to win, nevertheless. So, let's use that as an impetus to dive back into words that are pretty rare, even if all of them aren't hard to spell.

1. English seems to have more than its share of derogatory words to describe another person. The first is drongo, which means a "fool" or "simpleton." But this usage only arose in 1942; for a century before that (and continuing to this day) a drongo was a name originally belonging to a Madagascar bird (Dicrurus forficatus), but then extended to other African and Indian species of Dicruridae. I don't know how it became associated with a simpleton, but the original use of it was in Australian slang: "Drongo, an R.A.A.F recruit." Then, a book on the Australian language from 1945 lists Drongo and sonky as "silly" or "foolish." Just as we saw that there was a listing for magnolious but not spanglorious, so the OED has drongo but not sonky.

2. A quoz, which the OED says is now only "historical," means "an odd or ridiculous person or thing." It first arose in 1790: "Mr World [sc. a newspaper] might retort that Mr. Herald was a Quoz, and a low print." Then, in the same year we have a sort of historical use of derogatory words: "Hum'd and then humbug'd, Twaddle, tippy, poz; All have had their day--but now must yield to Quoz." Since I am not that interested at this point in their historical development, I will continue...

3-8. A blooter is a Scottish word for an oaf, fool, blunderer; a noisy or babbling person. An 1825 dictionary calls it a "coarse, clumsy, blundering fellow." From 1914: "The auld bluiter has made a gey mess o't." A hooplehead, which appears in no dictionary that I have, appears often in the mouth of Al Swearengen on HBO's Deadwood. It is a dismissive insult and refers to a foolish or worthless person. Then, we have the word timberhead or timber-head, and you don't need to be a genius to realize this means a "blockhead" or a person of dense or obtuse intellect. A clodpoll is a word first appearing in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night: "This Letter being so excellently ignorant..he will finde it comes from a Clodde-pole." Well, a clod-poll is a clod-pate, which means a "thickhead or blockhead." We know that a "clod" is a thick hunk of dirt; a poll is "the part of the head on which the hair grows.." A lackwit is a "witless or stupid person." When I saw that the word first appeared in 1667, I thought that it would naturally have been invented by John Bunyan; it so sounds like a person that Christian would have met on the way to the Heavenly City. But Dryden first used the word: "A conceited lack-wit, a designing ass." Finally, a domnoddy, appearing in no dictionary I have seen, is a "nincompoop" or "simpleton." There are very few attestations of this on Google, so I don't know what to do with that...

Horrent and Abhorrent

We are all so familiar with abhorrent--something that we hate--that we never really pay attention to the word to learn how it came to mean that. So, let's begin with the word horrent, which means "bristling" or "standing erect as bristles." The Latin horrens means "bristly, shaggy, rough." The verb horrere means "bristle, shake, shiver, tremble with cold or fear, be terrified." Milton knew the word horrent (PL ii.513):

"him round
A globe of fiery seraphim inclosed,
With great imblazonry and horrent arms..."

Thus, it had bristling arms or arms with bristles on them. But how do we get to abhorrent, something hateful, from this? Well, abhorrere means to "shrink back in dread, to be far from." One of the early meanings of the English word abhor is "to shrink back from with shuddering, to view with horror or dread." I suppose you shrink back from something with bristles. Literally, then, abhor means to "go away from" (ab) and the act of "shuddering." But also from around the same time comes abhor as "hate utterly, loathe, abominate." I suppose if you draw back from something and shudder in dread, you probably hate the thing from which you are drawing back.

Shroffage

The dictionaries tell us that shroff is derived from a Hindi word meaning "a money changer or a banker." Yet, in China and Japan, a shroff, as the Century tells us, was a "native teller or silver-expert, employed by banks and mercantile establishments to inspect and count all dollars that reach the firm, and detect and throw out the bad or defaced ones." Thus, shroffage is the examination of coins by an expert in order to separate the good from the defaced. I love terms like murage, the money paid for keeping the walls of a town in repair, and shroffage.

Finishing Up with Bogglish and Ingordigious

The Italian word ingordo sounds so much more elegant than ingordigious. The Spanish word gordo means fat, and so someone ingordo is "greedy." Thus, ingordigious means "greedy" or "avaricious." The Phrontistery has the following sentence: "Your ingordigious ways are cruel and heartless; charity is the path to joy." Finally, bogglish means "inclined to boggle; skittish." The Century gives the words "doubtful" or "wavering" as synonyms for bogglish. As an intransitive verb boggle means "to start with fright" or "to take alarm, be startled." It also means to hesitate or demur. Jeremy Taylor used the word bogglish in this sentence: "Nothing is more sly, touchy, and bogglish..that that opinion of the many or common people."

This is enough for one day. Each day, however, brings us new words, and words which are good and solid words. After four years of working closely with words, I can say that I am beginning to get very comfortable with the English language. You can do so, too, though it takes a commitment and discipline to make it work. But take the time to do it, for there are few things more satisfying than to be able to reach into your "rucksack" and pull out words that you need, for every occasion.

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