Some Random Words for You

One of the things I like to do is to make lists of words I run into in my normal routine, through my reading or talking to people, with which I am not very familiar. Instead of passing them by, like we do with so many things, I make lists of them, bringing them home like little treasures which I can then open and celebrate to my heart's content. For example, I stopped by a neighbor the other day who was out digging in her garden. After talking for a while, she confessed to me that her physostegia wasn't doing that well this year. At first I didn't know whether to call an ambulance or look at a flower, but when I got home, I looked it up and realized that it was derived from two Greek words meaning "bellows, bladder, bubble" and "roof," and refers to the "inflated calyx" around the fruit of the flower. My friend's calyx wasn't inflating this year, I guess. Here is a picture, if you want to see an inflated calyx. I also learned that physostegia is called "obedient plant," which name is derived from the ability of individual flowers to be twisted on the stem and then remain as arranged. "Stay there! Good flower...."

So, this experience got me thinking--that I should continue to write down words that I run across regularly and in my special searches, and then stop and let them speak to me. For example, in yesterday's news there was the sad story of a man mauled to death by actor Ving Rhames' dogs. The dogs were Brazilian mastiffs, known as Fila Brasileiro. I started reading a little bit about these dogs and was pretty horrified. They are the quintessential example of dogs who will be obedient towards your family but utterly hateful towards anyone they don't recognize (unless you train them not to be). The Portuguese word to describe this latter behavior is ojeriza--a nice word to use. It literally means to have bad will, dislike, aversion or hate against a person. The phrase "tener ojeriza a alguien" means to "be on someone's bad side." You can read more than you want to know about this breed here.

Going Beyond Conversations

What other things do you read and come across words that arrest you? Well, I was studying a biblical passage in preparation for writing an essay, and the image used in the passage was a race. The old movie came to mind "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner" (early 1960s), and I decided to "look it up." I discovered that it had been re-issued in 2002 and that therefore several reviews were online. Three words in the reviews stopped me. One described the main character as having burgled a bakery and therefore being sent to a "borstal." This isn't a term we use in American English but means what we used to call a "reform school." The 1902 Britannica tells us that a "juvenile-adult reformatory" was opened in 1901 at Borstal, near Rochester in Kent. By the 1930s or 1940s one could be called a "borstal girl" or "borstal boy." The Wikipedia article says that the Gladstone Committee (1895) proposed the concept, which would separate boys from men, and would emphasize a highly regulated regime with emphasis on education, routine, discipline and authority. Breaking of rules would result in various kinds of beating. They were widely imitated in Britain and the United States, but were abolished in England in 1982. It would be interesting to know about the models currently used both in this country and the UK for dealing with "wayward" young people. But, you see the interesting journeys you can go on just by stopping to listen to a word...

Some of the reviewers talked about the boys in the borstal who would be whingeing all the time. To whinge (a word in the 2007 National Senior Spelling Bee) is to "whine." Finally, one reviewer talked about the scanty provisions owned by the young man in the film--Colin. He just had his clothes and plimsolls ie., shoes. Actually, this word is an interesting one, with two meanings. It was ultimately derived from Samuel Plimsoll (1824-98), a member of Parliament, who introduced the Merchant Shipping Act of 1876. In recognition of his effort, the word plimsoll (or Plimsoll) first designated a marking or series of markings on the side of a merchant ship which indicated the daught level to which the ship may be loaded. This was the "Plimsoll line" or "Plimsoll mark." How, then, did the meaning become associated with shoes? Well, as the OED informs us, Philip Lace, a sales rep. in the Liverpool Rubber Company, suggested the name "Plimsolls" in 1876 for a new canvas rubber shoe that was becoming fashionable for beachwear. It had a colored rubber strip (like Keds) along the base of the shoe--reminiscent of the new line on ships called the Plimsoll line. So, there you have it--plimsolls can be shoes.

Finishing with Other Words

Then, as I was going to bed last night and couldn't get to sleep right away, the word cotehardie came to mind and wouldn't leave. I have no idea where it came from or why it lodged there, but I often have words "attack" me like this, and they will not give up until I get up, look them up and fully understand what they mean. The word isn't in the Collegiate, but it does appear in the Unabridged. It is derived from the French and literally means "bold tunic." It was at first a medieval garment for men and women, and several pictures of it are linked at this web site. Wouldn't you know it? The linked page brings you immediately to the "cotehardie and houppelande" garments. And, I hadn't heard of the latter term, though it is "fair game" in non-senior spelling bees. A "cotehardie" was the first tailored garment in history--fitting the body like a glove. I just don't have more time to go into the history of garments here--that will have to be your task. Oops, to make matters worse, the word houppelande is spelled houpland in the OED. But the only spelling of the word that matters in a contest is the Unabridged (French, in this case) spelling. Go figure.

Well, I had tons of other words I wanted to explore with you that I ran across yesterday. But, like the flowers that so entranced me in Deepwood Estate, I only have time to write about a few of them. Thus, I have to pass up some of the following delicious words: couvade, relating to the interesting custom of "man childbirth" in some countries (for some reason I couple this word in my mind with "berdache") and couac (which interested me solely because of the sound of it) and brisance, a wonderfully rich word to describe both the violence of an explosion and the shattering effect of such an explosion. I think it can easily and fruitfully be applied to the "impact" that certain people have on their fields or on other people. Then, time would fail me to tell about the troika of echard, chresard, holard or the way that futhark and qwerty are linked in my mind. Let's just call it quits for today and enjoy a mid-summer's afternoon.

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