Third Essay on "C's"

Well, since the last essay introduced terms that really weren't very pretty, such as capelin and chinch, I think I will begin here with capoeira, a most remarkable Brazilian combination of dance and martial arts. As the OED says, it "resembles unarmed single combat but with little or no physical contact." It is traditionally performed in a circle with accompanying music. The word was first used in English by the NY Times in 1928, but now is all over the Net. You just have to see it, however, to appreciate it, and here is a great video of two capoeirists almost locked in martial dance. See it. I really get endless enjoyment from this video.

2. While on bodily motion, let's look at the cachucha, which the Third International defines as "a gay Andalusian solo dance done in triple time with castanets." Interestingly, there are several YouTube videos online with a scene from Act II of Gilbert & Sullivan's Gondoliers, where the cachuca is danced by all. Here is one video of that "gay" dance. Johann Strauss I wrote a "Cachucha-Galopp," Opus 97, which you can hear here. The world looks so much more wonderful where there are lively dances and vigorous people prancing around the stage. Thus, from tzigane to redowa to cachucha to oberek to sarabande to carmagnole and dozens of other dances we learn the world as we learn our bodies and our words.

3. Well, everything can't be song and dance, though a good part of life can be, you know. But let's retreat to another creeping insect, the chigoe. Known also as the chigger or jigger, this small species of flea (Pulex, Tunga or Sarcopsylla penetrans), is found in the West Indies, South America and even, as I am told, some parts of North America. As the dictionary vividly describes it: "The female burrows beneath the skin of the human feet (and sometimes of the hands) and becomes greatly distended with eggs, which are sometimes hatched there, causing itching and painful sores." Here are some truly yucky pictures of Tunga penetrans, showing the head of the female, first of all, and then the toes of a foot infested with the chigoe. "All things bright and beautiful" indeed!

4. The cardoon is a thistle plant, pure and simple. Well, it is a bit more complex than that. It is the Cynara Cardunculus from the family Asteraceae, and is pictured here. The OED tells us, as do other sources, that the plant is cultivated for its fleshy stalks, which are made tender by blanching or braising. As this article says, the cardoon was popular in Greek and Roman cuisine, in medieval cuisine and in colonial America but fell out of fashion in the 19th century. Why does a plant fall out of fashion, especially if it has some "taste" to it? Maybe it appears too bland; but you would think it would be the perfect plant for Whole Foods Market to sell and then overcharge you for it.

5. Chaffer has a few meanings, but they all are useful to pause on. Its oldest meaning is derived from medieval language for sales and means "buying and selling" or "dealing." But this definition has fallen away and now means something like bargaining or haggling as to price. From 1878, "I was unable to purchase anything more than a few ground-nuts, because it involved such serious controversy and chaffer as sickened the hungry stomach." It is synonymous with chaffering. But the word chaffer can also mean one who engages in banter; i.e., one who chaffs. To chaff means "to banter, rail at..in a light and non-serious manner, or without anger, but so as to try the good nature or temper of the person 'chaffed.'" So, it is quite different from chafing another person--which would mean to rub him/her raw by irritation. I think the various usages of this word almost beg us to employ it. Next time I feel like haggling over something, I will say I am chaffering over it; I hope no one chafes in the process.

6. Collet (KOL it) is more difficult than it deserves to be. We see the Latin collum (neck) deep in the history of the word, and, indeed, that was its earliest significance. It was a small collar or band worn by the lesser clergy of the Roman Catholic Church. I just ran across an order of priests known as the Recolets or Recollects; nothing to do with the "neck" here, but I think I will have to write briefly about them tomorrow... So, a collet can also be a ring or collar, a circular ferrule or socket. It has a meaning in jewelry (the circle in a ring in which the stone is set) and glass-blowing (the neck or portion of glass left on the end of the blowing-iron after the removal of the finished article). But its most common usage today is, as the Wikipedia article says, as a "holding device--specifically, a subtype of chuck--that forms a collar around the object to be held and exerts a strong clamping force on the object when it is tightened via a tapered outer collar. Here is a section of various metal collets. Sometimes I just go walking in home improvement stores, rarely to improve my home but always to try to improve my vocabulary. Next time I am in Home Depot I will seek out the collets, just as the last time I was there I learned all about spline.

Conclusion--A Bonus Word

You have been so good to follow me in these peregrinations that I will give a reward (not a reword) by the Italian term collegno. Like many Italian terms in English, this finds its home in music. Pronounced ko LANE yo, it literally means "with the wood" and is used as a direction in music to players of bowed instruments to use the wood and not the hair of the bow in playing. The Wikipedia article has it as col legno or col legno battuto ("hit with the wood"). The result of collegno is a "quiet but eerie percussive sound." The strings play this method in the last movement of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. Here is a YouTube video of that eerie movement. This, then, is our study of words for today. One day closer we are...

3849