Sunday's Best Words--A Delightful MIscellany

After just penning an essay on "words going nowhere," I wanted gently to return to "responsibility" by looking at some fun and suggestive words which will really spruce up your writing and speaking. So many people are in the field of "communication" today; you would think they would be fascinated by words that might aid them in that process. So, here goes.

Phrases: Sequacious Snool, Snivelling Smoodge(r)

As with many suits of clothes, so words can be mixed and matched. Thus, out of the bolded phrases we might be able to get four (or even more), rather than two, useful phrases. But let's take them apart slowly and then see how you want to put them back together. The word sequacious derives from the Latin verb sequor, meaning to follow. A sequacious person is, in a neutral sense, just someone who follows along. But soon after its coining in English it became associated with a person given to "slavish and unreasoning following" of others. An 1885 quotation uses the word nicely: "I had been drawn to Tractarianism not by the contagion of sequacious zeal, but by the inner force of an inherited pietism." Noun forms are sequaciousness or sequacity. One might speak of someone's abject or pitiable or regrettable sequaciousness. So, now we have the picture. A sequacious person is one who too readily gives up independence of thought in order to follow another.

A snool is a "tame, abject, or mean-spirited person." Though this emerged in Scotland in the 18th century, I think the word has lots of room to grow today. Thomas Carlyle used the word in 1822: "You or any one of us will never be a snool; we have not the blood of snools in our bodies." The word can also be a verb, whose intransitive meaning is "to submit tamely; cringe; crawl meekly or humbly." So, now do you see the allure of sequacious snool? I think we need far more terms in English properly to describe people we can't stand than people we admire. Why? Because those laudatory terms are ready at hand; just watch the Academy Awards or any ceremony conferring benefits/prizes. But we need a good vocabulary of reproach or opprobrium--other than just swearing at another person. Let the other person die a death of "1000 (paper) cuts" with our words.

Now let's move to snivel, a word in common use today, having at first to do with a sniffle but then developing into a slight sniff intended to suggest suppressed emotion. The word snivelling can further suggest someone who is "mean-spirited" or "weak" and the verb occupies the following territory: "to act in a whining, tearful, sniffling, or weakly emotional manner" (Collegiate). Sometimes the demonstration of emotion is only a semblance of one's true feelings or an act in order to get something. Fielding used the word in 1743: "Without wine all human kind would be One stupid, sniveling, sneaking, sober fellow."

Now we are ready for the fourth term: smoodge. We surely have lost this term, though not for good reason. Actually, we have schmooze, a Yiddish-derived term for chatting, so we have the aural range to permit the term. The word smoodge is only attested as a verb in English, but I want to enlarge its linguistic field by calling it also a noun. But, as a verb it means "to act in an ingratiating or fawning manner; to display affection, to behave amorously." I suppose that the last definition might be related in some ways to smooch, but let's just focus on the first part of the definition. To smoodge means to act in a servile or sequacious manner. So, a smoodge would be a person so acting. Actually, the OED lists smoodger as "a flatterer, a syncophant," so maybe we don't have to use smoodge for this purpose. From 1899: "Lawson.. feels for the wretch who is out battling, and is kept out by servile 'smoodging' station lifers."

Putting it all together, then, I think we can have a sequacious snool or a sequacious smoodge(r), as well as a snivelling snool or a snivelling smoodge(r). One might also reverse the terms, so as to get a smoodging sniveller or a smoodging snool. Try them out and report back. I think you may be well on your way to really effective communication.

Rampike and Leechcraft

These two words are easy to spell and so, if my interest in words related only to how to spell them, I would ignore them. But each has an interesting story and each has a wide possibility for future use. Let's begin with rampike, which is "any dead tree" or "a tree having dead boughs standing out of its top." So, an author could say: "The aged rampick trunk where plow-men cast their seed." The OED suggests that the "pike" part of the definiton probably had to do with "pick," i.e., something sharp or pointed, and the "ram" is an Old or Middle English progenitor of "raven." In other European languages the "v" in "raven" is softened to a "b," and that, eventually, drops out and just becomes a "ram...." So it goes. A 1790 definition alludes to this: "Raunpiked: provincial of 'raven-picked; stagheaded, as an old overgrown oak; having the stumps of boughs standing out of its top.'" Well, this etymological trip is not altogether convincing, but you get the picture. But why use the word simply to describe a tree when it could be so useful to describe a person? A rampike, then, would be a person who is "dying from the top." Isn't this a useful way to say that a person is "dead from the shoulders up" or has lost the capacity really to think about something? "There he stood, at the head of the class, lecturing aimlessly, a hoary-headed rampike, at one time the lion of the lecture hall; now a mere shadow of himself."

Leechcraft is the art of healing or medical science. The OED calls it "archaic" but I call it hilarious. It isn't hilarious, however, if you know all the history, but at first glace it is funny. Its amusing character derives from the fact that leeches, those aquatic blood-sucking worms belonging to the order Hirundinea [medical leeches belong to the genuses Hirudo or Sanguisuga], were used in medicine for hundreds of years, and still have their uses today. Thus, a popular, but mistaken, etymology of leechcraft would emphasize its derogatory meaning--a doctor is merely a leech-doctor, and really only has specialties in applying this primitive insect to a situation. Actually, sometimes people feel this way about doctors, just as one feels that a lawyer might be a scrivener or pettifogger or worse. But the OED has separate entries for leech, derived from different medieval words. The first entry is a medical doctor; the second is a the worm; the OED stresses that they were assimilated "through popular etymology." But we don't have to inform eveyone of the history of the word to use leechcraft as our desired word for a doctor, especially if we aren't feeling that good about the quality of medical care we have received. Actually it may be good for a doctor to refer to him/her self as practicing leechcraft: it will bring them down a peg--which always is useful when you deal with people who think they know a lot. And, oh, a few more "leech" terms ought to be noted. A leechdom is an archaic word for a medicine or remedy; a leecher is a physician and leechery, to be distinguished form lechery, is also "the art or practice of healing."

Out of space once again, and guess what? There are still a few more words to exposit..

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