A Few Words from MY List

It is Friday evening, about 8:45, and I am doing my "final prep" for tomorrow's National Spelling Bee. Each person has his/her own way of doing final prep; some just take the night off, have a good meal, and talk with friends. I decided to take a look at a list of about 300 words I compiled specifically for this bee, but I find that I simply have no "heart" to breeze through the list. I simply want to take time to look at the words, one at a time: titi, tocher, tolbooth, tonette, tope, torchon, towmond, trangam, travois, troffer, twee, tuyere and several others. So, I will began with the little word twee.

Twee

The word is derived from "tweet," a childish pronunciation of sweet. A toddler says that something is "tweet:" we laugh and know that the child will "grow up" and learn to say "sweet." But Punch magazine, in 1905, used the word to mean "sweet, dainty, chic." As time went on the term was used derisively to express an affected daintiness or quaintness. If something was "twee," it was over-refined, or overly cute. From 1917: "Oh, here's another little gun; isn't it a darling! Isn't it just too twee for words!" From 1983: "Mike Nichols's thriller-fantasy about dolphins should be as nauseatingly twee as the worst Disney--but it isn't." Something can be just a little too twee to tolerate, a little to "cute." Actually I think we could resurrect this term rather quickly by saying, when someone seeks our approval for something's cuteness, which we don't necessarily believe is cute, and say, "My, how twee."

Tolbooth and Trangam

A tolbooth, pronounced either toolbooth or tahlbooth, is really a "tollbooth," a booth or stall at which tolls or duties are collected. John Wyclif's 1382 translation of the NT had this in Matt. 9:9: "He sees a man sittynge in a tolbothe, Matheu by name." It could also be a town hall/guildhall and a special room in that town hall--the town jail. From the 16th century: "He comandit him to be kepit in the tolbuth of Herode." The word could also be a verb: "to imprison in a tool-booth." Add this to your list of "prison" terms--jail, slammer, clink, hoosegow, pen, pokie, gaol, etc.

By the 19th century the word trangam was applied to something small, inconsequential or which the speaker viewed with contempt. The OED shows how the word incorrectly morphed into transgram (which is how the Century has it), but was used synonymously with a knick-knack, puzzle, or gimcrack. "What a devil's the meaning of all these trangrams and gimcracks, gentlemen?" But the OED gives us two early (16th-17th century) quotations derived from law. "When neither Arts nor Arms can serve to fight, And wrest a title from its Law and Right, Must Malice piece the Trangum?" And, "A Cause is a certain pack or aggregate of trangams, which being all packed up and chorded close together, they may then truly be said in Law to constitute a compleat and esssential pack."

What is A Tummler or a Towmond?

I didn't understand immediately why towmond should be a "period of twelve months; a year," until I learned that it is derived from the Old English twelf + monas--and there you have it. But towmond is only one of about 15 spellings of the concept; why the Collegiate decided to keep it is beyond me... Indeed, most appearances in our literature of the concept stress the word "twelvemonth." From Shakespeare's Love's Labor Lost: "A twelvemonth and a day..." Then, Blackstone tells us how the word was used in law: "A lease for a 'twelve months' is only for forty eight weeks; but if it be for 'a twelvemonth' in the singular number, it is good for the whole year." Why? Well, it seems that the use of the indefinite article "a" actually functions as a definite article...

The word tummler is Yiddish, derived from the German word tummeln, meaning "to shake." A tummler is one who is a jokster or clown; or a professional maker of amusement at a resort or hotel. I suppose you could call Ed McMahon a sort of tummler for Johnny Carson, even though his recent days have been less than humorous. From the New Yorker in 1977: "A summer job as a part-time social directer and tummler at a hotel in Lake Hopatcong, NJ." The job of the tummler is to make sure that there is never a dull moment. We have all known people like this--perhaps a person whose only entry ticket into the "party" or gathering is because s/he is an entertainer. Let's bring this word back into our usage--it is much better than the word "clown."

I think I will quit here--feeling that I am barely scratching the surface even of a few words and that someone, somewhere, is sloshing through lists of words (maybe even lists that I prepared), and thus will be better prepared tomorrow.... So be it; I have made my choices...

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