Friday Night Words

Friday night is here and, instead of going to a high school football game, I am at home thinking through some words. I hadn't known until tonight that Bananaland was another name for Queensland, Australia. I don't even have to go into detail about that one, do I? By the way, while studying that part of the world, I came across the Kermadec Islands, a group of four (or more depending on how you count) uninhabited islands belonging to NZ and located about equidistant between NZ and Tonga. The total area of the four island "groups" is 33 sq. km., with the largest being Raoul. I guess there are a few people who live on Raoul, in the vicinity of the government meteorological and radio station. I wonder if they play the "Top 40" there.... Hm. What if a few meteorologists got into a fight over which music the station should play? It would raise quite a storm.

To the Words

There are perhaps more rare words beginning with "ca" or "ka" in our language than any other sound. While wandering through the "ca's," I ran into caliology, and I just had to stop and imagine. Derived from the Greek word kalia, meaning "hut" or "nest," caliology is "that department of ornithology which relates to birds' nests." From 1884: the wide range of birds' habitats "furnishes one of the most delightful departments of ornithology, called caliology." Though the department may be delightful, just 9 years before this the Encyclopedia Britannica could say, "There are not many works on nidification, for 'Caliology'...has hardly been deemed a distinct branch of the science." I think if you said you were studying bird nidification, someone might think you a bit niddering, though maybe courage has little to do with it... The word nidification comes from the Latin nidificatio, the "action of nest-building." So, we have two words for the phenomenon, even though we don't know if it really a "field" of inquiry.

While in the neighborhood of caliology, we have calipash and calinda. The calipash is the "upper shell or carapace of the turtle," or the "part of the turtle next to the upper shell, containing a dull green gelatinous substance." From 1883: "The callipee [OED spells it calipee] is the white portion of the flesh which comes from the belly; the callipash is black in colour, and is taken from the back." Wow. Fun. But we are in a different world when we go up a few words in the dictionary and come across calinda.

Be sure to distinguish the calinda from the kalimba. The latter is a musical instrument played with the thumbs, consisting of metal strips along a small, hollow piece of wood. Shucks, then, here is a kalimba if you just scroll down the page. Wow, right under the picture of the kalimba is an "assignment" for whoever is studying the material of the page, which asks them to write a brief description of the following instruments:

"Marimbula, Calabash, Haban/Oud, Marimba, Shofar, Talking Drum, Kola..."

How would you do on such a test? By the way, an oud (UD) is a Middle-Eastern pear-shaped lute played with a plectrum. It is one of those instruments that has a bent neck. So, I got you started. Just think, you not only might want to learn the names of instruments; you might want to learn to play them. How rich are the opportunities that life presents us.

But I didn't want to get distracted on the kalimba, and so I return to the calinda. It is "An American Negro dance, found in Latin America and the southern United States. Well, I don't think that is the way we talk today, but I think we get the picture. We are brought into another word in this 1958 sentence: "Dances such as the bamboula and the calinda, which are still found in the West Indies." I don't suppose those who dance the redowa will feel threatened. Before leaving this "Ca" list of words, I just want to mention Caligulism. The OED says it is a "nonce word," but I see no reason why not to keep using it today to describe a mad extravagance such as committed by Caligula. After all, we have a lot of that stuff happening all around us, don't we?

Final Words

I could conclude with a few "ka" words, such as karaka or kalian but I think I will wait until tomorrow for these. Let's finish with a few freerice.com words that have some utility. A philibeg (or filibeg) is a kilt. Apparently the word filibeg is derived from the Gaelic feileadh-beag, where feileadh is a fold or plait, and beag means "little." A large kilt would be a feileadh-mor. Well, to change the subject completely (you show yourself a winsome conversation partner if you can lithely go from one subject to the next, with detailed, accurate and interesting knowledge of both or more areas), what do you think a surbase is? It is something "on top of" (sur) the baseboard in your living room, or elsewhere. Actually, it is a border or molding high enough to catch the rails of chairs, so as not to scratch or peel paint off walls. Here is a picture. It is generally known as the "chair rail" now, but why use two words when one will do? Surbase it is.. Then, in conclusion, I should note the speos, a word derived from the Greek, and means a cave or cave-like tomb or temple cut into a rock. I found pictures of it online on a web site advertising a 3-week archaeological tour of Egypt--for about $11,000! Surely many of your friends could afford that one... It seems that the word is mostly used in connection with some Egyptian temple caves...

Well, time's up, so let's conclude with one bonus word--the rotula is simply the patella or knee-pan. The word emphasizes the "roundness" of the shape. Thanks for joining me on these words. I believe we are making huge progress toward our goal of knowing all the words...

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