cyborg and cuticular and cuticle and cutis and dermis and cutin and cutch and catechu and curvet and curtilage

Ok. Let's just return to the endless list of words we must learn. I will only try to take limited detours today. Well, I see from the first word that I might not do too well today. Curtal means "having a docked tail" or, obsolete, "brief, curtailed," or, archaic, "wearing a short frock." I am sure there is a difference between obsolete and archaic, but it doesn't spring to mind. Yet, I decided to take a peek at the OED and learned that the original significance of the term was a horse whose tail had been cut short. "Docked" is a synonym. From the mid-16th century, "You can make a stoned horse a geldyng, and a longe taile a courtall." It could be applied to humans, as in the following quotation: "I am made a curtall, for the pillory..hath eaten off both my eares." Hopefully, this is an experience that you can avoid in the next year or two.

But also by the mid-16th century curtal referred to a rogue who wears a short cloak. Those wearing short cloaks in general were probably religous men, so a person of evil intention who wanted to hide those intentions might dress similarly. Thus, from 1561, "A Curtall is much like to the Upright man. He useth commonly to go with a short cloke, like to grey Friers." It can also be used as a general term of opprobrium or it can refer to a "drab" or "nasty slut," as a 1706 quotation has it. Our word "curtail," which means to "cut off" is a useful term, though it becomes much more rich if we understand the history of curtal. I don't quite know how curtal relates to kirtle, derived from the same root, which refers to a longer garment worn by men and women in medieval times, but I am sure they are consanguineous (or is it consanguinous? Look it up).

But be sure you don't confuse all of this with curtilage, which is derived from the Latin curtilegium and means a small court or garth. I never knew until today that a garth was a small enclosure or yard. The only time I had previously heard it was as a man's first name. But I suppose it is better to call the guy "Garth Jones" rather than "Yard Jones" and so I support the continued use of it for a first name in English. But curtilage is a "small court, yard, garth, or piece of ground atached to a dwelling house, and forming one enclosure with it." I recall the exact moment when I first learned the word curtilage. I was in my criminal law class in law school, and we were learning the definition of common law crimes. One of the biggies, of course, was burglary. Law students, at least in the first year of law school, always like to memorize definitions, and we learned it as a breaking or entering into the dwelling places of another (or something like that!). But, what is the "dwelling" of another? Must it be the home in which they live? Can it refer to an "outbuilding?" The common law had an answer to that. Any adjacent building to the main house within the curtilage of a main structure was considered part of the dwelling, such as a garage, barn, stable or shed. Thus, curtilage became a very important term in the common law to describe a protected area or, obversely, the area which a person could not enter without committing the common law crime of burglary.

More Words

So, a curvet (cur VET) is a prancing leap of a horse in which the hind legs are raised just before the forelegs touch the ground. I am sure that our equestrian teams work on this one. Then a cushat is Scottish for a wood pigeon. A cutch is a catechu, which is a a dry or resinous astringent obtained from tropical plants of Asia. I haven't had use for this in my life so far, but you never know. A cutin is an insoluble mixture containing waxes, fatty acids, etc. We enter into a more interesting line of words when we meet cutis, which means the dermis or skin. Though the Collegiate only has this one word only under "cutis," there are loads of words such as cutaneous, cuticle and cutinized to get at the concept of the outermost layer of skin. The Century gives us some other words, such as cuticula, which it defines as the "cuticle proper," but then it gives us loads of other helpful words, such as epidermus, exoskeleton, the superficial investment of the body or the ectoderm. Something that pertains to the cutis is cuticular, and there is even a verb cuticularize, which means to "render cuticular." I think I could get tied up here real quickly, so let's move on.

Cuvee is bulk wine, which I am sure that several of my friends know about, and a cuvette is a laboratory vessel. There follows all kinds of words beginning with "cyan" or "cycad" which will not be tested on at the Bee, I am sure, because they refer to various medicines or chemical compounds. I do want to end, however, with a reference to cyborg, defined only as a "bionic human." Of course, Lindsay Wagner immediately came to mind, the original "Bionic Woman" of the 1970s, but I decided to spend a moment looking up the concept. Apparently people are worried about the gradual lessening of the difference between the human, which can be digitally "enhanced," and information that can be digitally processed and presented. Science fiction writers posit the time where the person can become removed from the body and be transformed into a cyborg creation. Well, as you can tell, this isn't my strong suit, so I will just leave the word here and stop for the day.

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