swaraj and swarf and swimmy and swivet and sympathectomy

Let me begin by listing the 20 or so words I found in these pages which require some study. They are: swaraj, swarf, swidden, swimmy, swivet, syce, sycee, syllepsis, symbiont, sympathectomy, symphysis, syncategorematic, syncope, systaltic, systematize, tabes, tagliatelle, tahr, talipes, talesman, tandoor, tapenade, and tarlatan. Some of them are familiar to me but I want to pause on them because they have nice stories to tell.

1. Swaraj is an important term from the history of India. Derived from Sanskrit words meaning "one's own rule," swaraj was the rallying cry for Self-government of India from the mid-19th century until Independence in 1947. From 1845: "The Swa-raj, or 'Own Sovereignty,' secured to him all the territory possessed by the Siva-ji." By 1908 the Times of London could write that "There is a good deal of talk going on these days about 'swaraj,' or the making of India a self-governing country." One person who inspired Mahatma Gandhi was Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Gandhi wrote in 1921: "Mr. Tilak lived for his country. The inspiration of his life was freedom for his country which he called Swaraj." Never can get that word incorrect now, can you?

2. I like words such as swarf, swath, kerf and sludge, each of which has something to do with a deposit or something left behind after a mechanical or natural operation has been completed. Swarf is the grit mixed with particles of iron or steel abraded from a grindstone or axle. Thus, it can refer to any find waste produced by a machining operation. As early as 1640 we have: "Fileings of iron, called swarf." The Times of London could say in 1953: "There's swarf--chips of wood, metal, etc.--grinding around in your expensive machinery and shortening its life." A swath, as we all know, is the "width of the grass" covered by a sweep of the mower's scythe; thus it is the space "left behind." Though a kerf is not precisely something left behind, it is the cut of a tree or piece of wood which will lead to the leaving behind of all kinds of sawdust. Maybe we could invent a figurative use of swarf, to refer to the small dirty things left behind in our wake as we plow through life--our offscourings, if you will.

3. I had never seen the word swidden previously, and even though you can easily sound it out, I want to pause to define it for us. The OED has it as a dialectical term (from Northern England) going back to 1868 to refer to "an area of land that has been cleared for cultivation by slashing and burning the vegetation cover." It can be used as an adjective ("swidden agriculture") or as a noun ("swiddens may or may not be fenced"). Instead of using the word "swiddened," however, for "burned fields," swidden alone is used. "The environmentalists were up in arms regarding the swidden system of agriculture practiced in the highlands."

4. Swivet and swimmy can be handled much more quickly. Someone is said to be "in a swivet" when they are highly agitated. This is primarily said in the South, as Kephart, in Our Southern Highlanders said: "When a man is..in a hurry, he is in a swivet." A swivet differs from a snit in that the latter implies anger or sulking. While the former has attestations going back to the 1890s, the first attestation of in a snit was only in 1939. Interestingly enough, the OED says the origin of both is uncertain, suggesting that they may have emerged from middle-brow sources. Such is the evolution of language.

Swimmy, by the way, has two significations. The older is to be "inclined to dizziness or giddiness," while it can also refer to the moisture of tears in the eyes. "To look down (from a great height) was quite enough to cause one's head to be unpleasantly swimmy." Or, "she had a round moise fact, with swimmy eyes." John Irving, in the World According to Garp, could say: "The woman's...face, dissolving before him in his own swimmy tears." See through this the flexibilty of the language. No one thought that swimmy would have meant anything other than "dizzy" until someone in the 20th century decided to use it to as synonymous with "watery." For the last word of the day, I think I will try to invent a new, 21st century usage. Let's see if I am successful.

5. This topic could be a huge one, but let's see how small I can make it here. It relates to the Sympathetic Nervous System of the body. The major function of the SNS is to activate what is called the "fight or flight response." First so characterized by Walter Cannon in 1929, the theory of this response is that animals, including humans, react to threats with a general discharge of the SNS. Released are ephinephrine and norephinephrine, leading to increase in heart rate and breathing and constricting of blood vessels in many parts of the body. A sympathectomy (our word) is the "excision of a sympathetic ganglion or other part of the sympathetic nerve." Why do it? Well, here is an explanation from the University of Maryland Medical Center web site:

"Surgeons have known for a long time that a procedure called sympathectomy can cure excessive sweating in the hands, face, and underarms and sometimes the feet as well. It also cures problems with persistent facial blushing."

Now, drum roll, for my invention. Let's keep the root meaning of the word sympathectomy, but define it to mean "cutting out of sympathy." A possible sentence: "His abrasive manner and unfeeling disposition was proof positive of having undergone a sympathectomy." Or, "Cut off from friends, from family, from himself, from all expressions of human warmth, he became a sympathectomic individual" (a variation from a "catatonic" individual). Well, I tried...

Note the extent of life we have covered in this essay, from Indian history to "droppings" of machines and other detritus left behind in our lives, to a few expressions of anger or agitation, to two uses of a word, to this word having to do with human anatomy. Doesn't it make you want to make all this knowledge your own, so that you know the language and the realities to which it points? Keep studying with me.

1908