Minding your "R's" II

I don't need to march through all the remaining 18 words from the previous "ra" list in order to show their importance for word lovers. In this and the next essay, I will focus on about ten of those terms, massaging them as I go. I hope as a result that several of them will make it into your active vocabulary. Let's begin near the end of the list, with ravelin.

Ravelin

This is a term coming from the 16th-18th century language of fortification. It denotes a triangular structure, separate from the main or curtain wall of a fortification, which is placed in front of the entrance of the fortification so that opponents cannot fire directly on the fort. It is open to the rear, thus allowing those within the fort to fire upon those in the ravelin if it is captured by the enemy. I didn't know much about the history of fortifications until I read this web site. Here is how the history went, according to that site.

"During the 16th century, the rapid improvements in artillery development caused a similar rapid and total transformation in the design, technology and philosophy of fortification. By the 17th century, the art of fortification had reached a state of maturity that was to remain substantially the same until the end of the 19th century. The development of the arrow-head bastion called into play a whole new range of factors for both defence and offence. Simply establishing a curtain wall with bastions at the angles [as at Carisbrooke] no longer sufficed and cities, towns and fortresses developed ever more complicated defensive lines around themselves. It was for the protection of the approaches to the main defensive bastioned line that engineers developed various types of small fortification, often dependent on the main line for covering fire but sufficiently forward to hinder an enemy's approach. Sometimes certain of these features were used independently on their own to provide defence for the mouth of a river or haven, a river crossing, a road or the entrance to a town. And so engineers developed ravelins, redans, redoubts, horn-works, crown-works, half-moons, lunettes etc. to cope with each demand."

So, a ravelin was a "modern" technological development over the simple curtain wall and bastion to counteract the increased power of an enemy's approach. I will never look at an early modern fort the same from now on.

But this isn't the real reason I wanted to introduce ravelin. To unravel that mystery all you need to know is Gilbert & Sullivan's famous song, "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General." Some people have memorized it--I think it would be salutary to do it. What does the modern major general know, in addition to being able to "write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform and tell you every detail of Caractacus's uniform?" Well, the next stanza runs,

"In fact when I know what is meant by 'mamelon' and 'ravelin,'/ When I can tell at sight a Mauser rifle from a javelin...."

In short, when he can do all these things, he will be/or is the very model of a modern Major-General. Now that you know what ravelin means, you are about 1% there. Learn Gilbert & Sullivan and all the references there, and you will not be a modern military hero, but you may be the life of the party...

Ramfeezled

Well, after all this legwork on ravelins, I am a bit ramfeezled. The word is of Scottish origin, attested in Bobby Burns, and means to be worn out or exhausted. He speaks about "the tapetless ramfeezl'd hizzie." A synonymn for ramfeezled that I have found in no dictionary but appears in Jeffrey Kacirk's Word Museum, is forswunk. To be forswunk is also to be utterly worn out with swink. Swink is also a word that has disappeared from our vocabularies but for some reason it appears, with two separate entries, in the Collegiate. Swink can mean "trouble" or "affliction," or, more usually, "labor, toil." I noticed it most prominently in the phrase "sweat and swink." "Who recks of summer sweat and swink,/ Or winter's icy pang?" Or, from a sermon in 1624: "So into these spiritual Sacrifices of Thanksgiving...we infuse a quantity of our own swinke and sweat." To be swinkless is to be free from trouble, but if you are swinked you are overworked or wearied with toil. "The care-worn mothers, the swinked toilers." When I practiced law in Portland, the popular word used by attorneys if they were overwhelmed by work was "slammed." They would say: "I can't help you today; I am slammed." Why not try to bring swink back into use? We could either say we are forswunk or, preferably, swinked. Then, maybe we would even bring ramfeezled back into use, too. Many people spend a lot of their time exhausted with the pressures of family and work and other things. Let's develop a rich vocabulary of exhaustion. Ramfeezled, forswunk, and swinked will help.

Finishing with Ramentaceous

A ramentum is either a scraped-off fragment of something or, in its botanical usage, a "thin membraneous scale formed on the surface of leaves and stalks." These scales can often have the appearance of tiny hairs. Thus, something that is ramentaceous is covered with these small scales. Sometimes I wish I were a botanist; I would have absorbed a whole dictionary of terms to describe the universe. Well, I suppose I did that in the fields of history, philosophy and religion. Just have to clean up other fields now...

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