More Terms Beginning with "T" Second Essay

The words beginning with "t" that interest me tonight are trommel, tincal, tinchel, theca, tarakihi, timwhiskey, tibicinate, timenoguy, and tocodynamometer.

1. Here is a video, with exactly 889 viewings, illustrating the "Mountain Goat Trommel." A trommel is a rotating, circular system which separates heavier from lighter material so that the ore or gold is separated from heavier stones. The word trommel is derived from the German word meaning "drum," and that is exactly what this rotating cylinder looks like. Thus, if you buy one of these trommels you can take it out to the local stream and search for gold all day. You could be the aqueous version of those guys running their little round machines over the grass to pick up pennies. Be the first in your neighborhood to own a trommel; then you will never have to look up the word again...

2. If trommel is German, so thwaite is also derived from Northern Europe. It is the Old Norse word for a piece of land or a paddock. So, it is "a piece of ground, esp. a piece of ground cleared from forest or reclaimed from waste." Coke's Littleton, one of the major legal textbooks of the 17th century (by the way, "Coke" is pronounced "Cook"), first used the word: "Twaite signifieth a wood grubbed up and turned to arable." Thus, from 1825: "Thwaite, a level pasture field." This List of Words and Phrases by Francis Milnes Temple, has nearly a page on the evolution of thwaite from the Icelandic through Anglo-Saxon to Chaucerian English. There is a corresponding evolution of meaning from fenced off fields and meadows to farms to villages to parishes. Then it became a surname, not uncommon in England today..

3. A tocodynamometer is an instrument for measuring uterine contractions during childbirth. The Greek word for offspring is tokos. Then we have tocogeny, which is propagation by parents as distinct from spontaneous generation and tocologist, an obstetrician. Tocology is midwifery. Hm.. Maybe we can have his & her instruments. He could get a trommel and she a tocodynamometer. The family might always be hopping.

4. A timwhisky is a kind of light carriage, for one or two, drawn by a single horse or by two horses driven 'tandem.' Well, the following is surprising. Did you know that a "whisky" is a "kind of light two-wheeled one-horse carriage, used in England and America in the late 18th and early 19th century'"? No one is sure why "tim" is added to it, but a timwhisky is the same as a whisky. A whisky is is so called because the lightness of the carriage meant that one could be whisked around very quickly. This article says that such a carriage is also called a one-horse shay. The American version of it originated in Union, Maine... OW Holmes, Sr. wrote a poem "The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay," which, similarly to my grandfather's clock [sung here nicely by Johnny Cash], ran 100 years to the day and then fell to pieces all at once.

5. Tibicinate is a verb, derived from the Latin tibicinare, which means to play on the flute. The word tibia in Latin means "flute" or "tibia." I guess that long leg bone could be mistaken for one.. A floutist can also be called a tibicinist, though the latter is quite rare.

6. A timenoguy is, in extended use, a gadget, though every attestation I have seen connects it with nautical life. Timon or temon is a ship's rudder. I wonder if it was named after the Homeric helmsman, if that was indeed his name. In any case, the first appearance of timenoguy was in 1794: "Timenoguy, a Rope fastened at one end to the fore-shrouds, and nailed at the other end to the anchor-stock, on the bow, to prevent the fore-sheet from entangling." I think I need a tour of a ship to help me out here. By the way, one of the oldest definitions of guy is not a male person but "a rope used to guide and steady a thing which is being hoisted or lowered."

7. and 8. Care should be taken to distinguish tincal from tinchel, though it first might be helpful to know what each is. Let's begin with the latter. In Scotland, a tinchel is "a wide circle of hunters driving together a number of deer by gradually closing in upon them." The Gaelic word similarly sounding is timchioll, which means "circuit" or "round." Tincal, on the other hand, is a Malay word, related also to the Persian, Arabic and Urdu (I am just taking the OED on faith here) meaning "Crude borax, found in lake-deposits in Tibet, Persia and other Asiatic countries." A systematic geology text from 1762 defined it this way: "Borax...Its species are a bluish kind called Tinkal, and the proper borax, which is a purified Tinkal and appears white." An 1811 book called its color "grey yellowish or greenish white." Too bad my pages, at least at this stage, aren't a chemistry handbook, because there is much to say about boron, borax and tincal. Some day, however, because of my interest in autism, I will have to write more on human biochemistry, especially the methylation and folate cycles...

9. Tarakihi is a Maori term to describe a marine silver fish with a black band behind the head. The Linnaean name is Cheilodactylus macropterus, and is pictured here. The Wikipedia article calls the tarakihi the Nemadactylus macropterus. Well, let's learn a few more New Zealand-type words. Its other name is the "jackass morwong." It is "similar to the porae but with a silver body color." Well, just as the gold digger in me should have known trommel, so the fisherman in me should have realized that tarakihi is a very common word. From 1959: "Tarakihi...second only in importance [as a commerical catch] to snapper, is trawled off the east coast..." I am humbled again. Millions of people know it; school children included. And today was the first day I took a good, long look at its picture. On this site you can compare the tarakihi to sea perches, snappers, kahawai's and other fish. Wait, here is a web site, with music, which claims that a very popular NZ folk song is called tarakihi, which celebrates the life of a cicada. Play the tune. It is soothing and ruminative. Apparently this ancient chant was made popular by Kiri Te Kanawa in her "Kiri Maori Songs" CD in 1999.

Reach deep, pay attention to the world, and it will yield you so much beauty that you will be staggered. That, friends, is enough for one more day...

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