Words Left Over From "Fad" Essay (II)

The nine leftover words from the previous essay are: shunpike, robalo, solan, crocket, bostangi, sorosis, shabrack, fastigiate and busk. Not a terribly impressive collection of words, but they have their moments. Where to begin?

1. When in doubt, start easy. Every task has an easy first step; if it doesn't, you don't yet understand the task correctly or it hasn't been assigned to you carefully by the teacher. So, let's begin with shunpike. It really is a trivially simple word once you stop and give it five seconds of attention. First used by a New York newspaper as a two-word noun phrase in 1853, the OED (confusingly) defines it as a verb: "to drive along minor roads, avoiding the toll on turnpikes, or for pleasure." We can say, then, that it is either a noun (the road) or a verb (the activity). A shunpiker is someone who "shunned" the major "turnpike," primarily to avoid tolls. Well, what kind of "pikes" did we have in 1853 in America? Ah, yes, the canals. So, from 1853: "The Oswego Canal..has been called a 'shun pike.' Produce sent by Lake Ontario and the Oswego Canal, avoids tolls on the canals west of Syracuse." From the Saturday Review in 1967 we have: "Smooth roads, beautiful scenery--what more could a shunpiker want?" This word is useful and ought to replace the overused "back roads" or "off the beaten path" in American English. Except when I am in a hurry, I tend to be a shunpiker when I travel.

2. A robalo is the Spanish name for the common snook, an "elite gamefish in Florida and central or south America." But, I guess it is also an English word, though trying to figure out when a word used by Spanish-speaking people becomes an English word is a task too wonderful for me. Here is a picture of this common fish--I feel a bit abashed that I didn't know the word robalo. It is a small fish, though I am sure that there are some who love it...

3. Speaking of all creatures great and small, we next have the solan, a rather rare term to describe the northern gannet, a very large white goose with black wing tips. As the OED tells us, it "frequents a few rocks and small islands of Britain, the Faeroes, Iceland, and Canada." Here is an interesting drawing, pre-photography, from the 1820s book Illustrations of British Ornithology. But we can do better than this. The solan (old name is Sula bassana, new name is Morus bassanus...Who, by the way, decides on new names? For what reason? Everyone agree? What if there is a "sula holdout crowd" that wants to sabotage the next meeting of an international ornithological association?) is described many places online; here is one, with picture. I bet there are people who devote much of their life's work to the solan, and here I "dispatch" of it in a matter of minutes. Therefore, be alert in all you do, so that you may gather up the morsels which those who have long-studied something are gracious enough to provide for us.

4. A shabrack is also an object, something that can be seen and touched, and therefore, can be easily learned. It is a saddlecloth used in European armies. The OED isn't sure which Eastern European language bequeathed the word to us, since there are similar-sounding words in Russian, Czech, Magyar and Turkish. The website of the Massachusetts Canine Response Team has one of its rescue dogs outfitted in a shabrack. I think it can also be called a numnah, which is the most famous word in any recent kids National Spelling Bee.

5. We are doing well; let's go to crocket. We see in crocket the word "crook" which is a hook or curl. Its most common meaning today is from the architecture of Gothic cathedrals. A crocket is "one of the small ornaments placed on the inclined sides of pinnacles, pediments, canopies, etc...usually in the form of buds or curled leaves, sometimes of animals." You just have to see a picture, don't you? Well, here we have one. Just scroll to the bottom of the page and you have a three-flowered design on an inclined surface. Here is another picture of the curved foliage used to improve the aesthetics of the building. The word, then, is incredibly useful, not simply in describing architecture but also as an all-purpose word to describe things hanging off objects...

6. Bostangi is a word I almost skipped, since we really don't use the word in the West, but it is in the OED (unlike robalo), and it is the name of a painting by Louis Dupre. I have reflected elsewhere on how we learn words through what artists name their paintings or drawings (sauterelle, saltimbanque, diseuse, etc.), and thus feel the word should be learned. The Turkish word means "a soldier of one of the corps of guards of the Sultan's palace." Literally it means "a keeper of the garden" since the Persian word for garden is "bostan," but I guess it seems more "masculine" to call the guy a Turkish palace guard. It was used in English as long ago as 1694, along with another word we have studied recently: "A Capigi [I spelled it capidgi], with seveal Bostangies was dispatched after him to bring him back." Luis Dupre, born in the late 18th century, traveled to Greece and the Ottoman Empire in 1819-20 and made many paintings of noteworthy individuals. Here is a wonderful YouTube video on it. Here is his painting of "Un Janissaire du Palace Bostangi" from 1839. Which is which, however? Well, you may now have to study about janissaries. Sorry..

7. Fastigiate is a term coming to us from the study of trees. We have loads of terms describing shapes of leaves, but this word, derived from the Latin and meaning, in botany, "Having flowers or branches whose extremities form a tapering or cone-like outline," perfectly describes the upward-longing parallel branches of the Lombardy poplar. Here is a picture of the branches of a tree with "clusters of erect branches (often appearing to form a single column)."

8. Busk has so many meanings I almost thought of skipping it. It can be derived from the Spanish buscar and mean "to look around" or "seek" ["Go busk about.."] or, alternatively, it might be derived from the French busc, which means a "stiffened body-garment, as a doublet, corset, or bodice." It can also be a flexible strip to wood, steel, whalebone, etc. placed in front of stays to keep them in form. There is also a meaning of it as "To hurry": "Many busked westward for to robbe eft..." Why so many meanings of such a simple-looking word? Well, maybe to teach us that confusion rests in small and unassuming places...

9. Finally, sorosis relates to certain fruits. I think the definitions won't be that helpful, since they are too technical, but pictures help. Here is a picture of a mulberry, with a description that says, in a nutshell, that all those little nodules on the mulberry aren't separate fruits or drupes, as in the blackberry, for example, but is a sorosis. As it says, "Fruits are a single-seeded red achene, aggregated into a fleshy fruit (sorosis) that resembles a blackberry." But the key here is that it is a single fleshy fruit, even though formed from a group of flowers. This page tends to explain things well, even though fruits can be quite confusing.... We all need love, to be sure, but we all need botany...

Enough for one day. Enjoy your various journeys of life, and may words be one of your most pleasant traveling companions.

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