Category Archives: word tasting notes

cœlecanth

Posted on February 8, 2009 | 2 comments

A word that may seem to have surfaced from some eon-old depths, with its odd form and atavistic œ digraph. Faced with it, do you even know what to do with it? Does it come from Greek or Latin? (Greek, in fact, but by way of Latin, hence the c‘s rather than k‘s and the œ rather than oi.) Should the c be [k] or [s]? Choose the latter – it begins with the sound of sea, as does the story of its object. The two c‘s, œ and e may seem like four fins, if the front is the h. One of the c‘s retains the ancient sound, while the other has shifted to the modern (the vowels are all Anglicized). Its object is a large carnivorous fish that had been thought to have been extinct for 100 million years or so. Then, in 1938, an amateur ichthyologist happened to notice one in some by-catch on the South African coast. In fact, Comoros islanders had known about it for years and given it the name gombessa, but they didn’t care much about it because it wasn’t good eating. More recently (1997), a honeymooning marine biologist happened to notice one in an Indonesian market, thousands of kilometres from what had been thought to be the only modern habitat of the cœlecanth. So this deep-blue reclusive troglodytic human-sized fish with very sensitive eyes and a hollow spine (Greek koilos “hollow” and akantha “spine”) not only has made its name a byword for some living fossil but may yet also serve as metaphor for something that shows up when and where you had no reason to expect it (the canth resembling an abruptly aborted can’t happen) – or perhaps for something that the locals shrug off while scientists, if and when they “discover” it, are gobsmacked.

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nunchuck

Posted on February 6, 2009 | Leave a comment

This word seems to have two of each bit: two n‘s, two u‘s, two c‘s – all like a hinged pair of sticks being whirled around – and then there’s the near-pair of h and k (each following a c), the latter looking like a version of the former that has been whacked with something. It brings interesting echoes, too: is it a woodchuck that has taken holy orders, perhaps? But in common speech, the nun often comes out as numb (and you will see this word written numchuck too), perhaps just because of the added heaviness of the [m], perhaps because if you chuck – or strike or whack or some similar sharp act – somebody with the object they may be knocked numb or dumb, i.e., unconscious or possibly dead. Anyway, the vowels are both written u and said as unrounded mid-central vowels, the sound of grunts and thuds and blunt clubs, and while the word starts with the pair of nasals it crunches into the ch and cracks the final [k]. Those who use this instrument – or rather these instruments, as one typically speaks of a pair of nunchucks, even though the original word refers to the whole thing, not one of the joined halves – are at least as likely to use the source Japanese word (itself ultimately derived from Chinese), nunchaku. The final u in Japanese is voiceless and sometimes just plain dropped, and the other two vowels got harmonized into the bluntest of English vowels to make the Anglicized version a pair of syllables, one gripped in the hand and one cracking something – your skull, perhaps.

yex

Posted on February 5, 2009 | 1 comment

Will the object of this word vex you? Yes. But will the word itself? Perhaps not. It has been a boon to many a Scrabble player, but it is also a fun and useful word in its own right. It may look like the code for Saskatoon’s airport, but that’s YXE, and if you have to fly there, you will certainly hope that your seatmate does not yex. This word rhymes with an assortment of words not made for polite company: hex, sex, vex, and Tex-Mex. So we know what one expects. Its form is interesting: curt, to be sure, and made of angles with one curve. The y reaches down, like one starting to clear the throat, while the x is a point of constriction and in form and sound may remind one of the effect at the culmination of the throat-clearing. And the e? Perhaps the unclear throat itself, or an open mouth… Interestingly, this word – a gift from Old English, also spelled yesk to match the two forms it has had through the ages – first referred to sobbing, and then to hiccuping. Now it’s gone decidedly downmarket. But, if anything, it has become ever more onomatopoeic. Big yucks to that.

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catercornered

Posted on February 4, 2009 | 1 comment

Well, to start with, this is a real freight train of a word, visually, with those desultory repetitions of letters like branded boxcars: a c and a c, three e‘s spread about, three r‘s ditto, and an admixture of others. Your eye will spot cater and cornered quickly enough; has this to do with cooking under seige? or serving a niche market? Do cat and corn play into it? Well, cat has its tongue, anyway: it’s pronounced such that you might expect the t to be double. And the cat runs away with it, too; from this form it became catty-corner and, with that ease of colloquiality that leads some to speak fondly where felines are found, it curled up into kittycorner, drawing diminution from the higher harmonics on [I] and [i]. At all times it has retained the zig-zag of the tongue in the mouth: back-front-back-front. So how did this cat horn into a word about criss-crossing? Cater comes from French quatre, “four”; in a way, this is an almost atavistic progression, as we see forms like cater for “four” in other Indo-European languages: catur in Sanskrit, with the c said as we say “ch”; cztery in Polish, with the “ch” sound again; ceathair in Irish Gaelic, with the c hard but the th as we say “h”; and so many others. The Germanic languages are odd ones out in preferring forms like four. And as to corner? A corner is a meeting of lines at an angle, which to Latins looked like a horn, cornu. Fitting enough, especially given the sounds that would greet a cat – or you – cutting catercorner across a congested carfax.

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warfarin

Posted on February 3, 2009 | 1 comment

There’s warfare in this word. The sound of it, of course, brings it to mind right away – along, perhaps, with wafer, waif, wharf, wayfaring, and just maybe Aspirin. The w at the beginning might bring to mind WWI or WWII, and perhaps the f is a fence (or a flare) and the ar and ar the beginnings of artillery – or soldiers hunkered down pointing guns (the r‘s). But there’s also warfare in the use of its object – and between those uses. Warfarin is a chemical substance that wages war against blood coagulation. For this, it is used to help prevent heart attacks, strokes, and rodents. Wait, what was that last one again? Yes, it’s a very common drug (Coumadin is a well-known brand name for it), but it’s also a very common rat poison. The rats bleed to death (internally) from an overdose of it: too much of an otherwise possibly good thing, as it were. So its name came from war? No, it came from WARF, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation; the arin was modelled on another drug name, coumarin. Drug common names come from all sorts of places and are a whole area of tasting all their own, with varied patterns and caprices; most are opaque, such as sildenafil (the common name of Viagra – not mycoxafloppin, as is often joked), but some give a hint of the namer’s thought process or tastes; for instance, there is a drug to help people whose stomachs don’t move food on quickly enough called domperidone. A little wine for thy stomach’s sake, Dom Pérignon?

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kestrel

Posted on February 2, 2009 | 1 comment

Ah, there it is again, that rakish k. It seems to bespeak roughness, or some bucolic gameness, or anyway a jaunty and undainty approach. And at the other end of the word there’s the rel that you see in mongrel and doggerel. Surely an unrefined word – how much difference it can make whether you choose orchestral or kestrel! And yet there it is: the same sounds… What else do you hear? Any hints of kiss, of strudel, of quest or question, of kettle? And an echo of pest? Kestrels have not always been looked on very well, but they won’t pick your garbage or eat your crops. They might dine on your hamster, lizard, or cat, however. And you’ll have enough time to be nervous about their doing so: a few storeys up in the air, there will be this brown raptor, hovering. Not circling, no; they point into the breeze and stay in place, watching and waiting, hence their colloquial name windhover. And they use nests built by other birds rather than using their own. Do they begin to sound like some annoying people you know? A few English authors over the centuries have thought so and have used kestrel as a term of abuse for such types. But are they not also stormy? No, that’s the petrel, a seabird that no more resembles a kestrel than a hamster does a cat. And it won’t try to eat either of them, but watch your fish. But it does have one thing in common with the kestrel: it likes to hover, so close to the waves that its feet almost touch them.

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thixotropic

Posted on January 31, 2009 | 1 comment

Will this thick word become liquid as its trips on your tongue? It has a sliding mechanical sound, like a bolt-action gun being cocked, or perhaps like wet shale on a cliff disturbed by a trekker. There are two strong overtones: thick and tropic. Ironically, thick is etymologically unrelated but has some kinship with the sense, while tropic comes from the same Greek as Tropic of Capricorn but thixotropic has nothing much to do with tropical climates – unless you consider that guar gum is thixotropic, and guar grows in the tropics. Crosses and dots crop up on the page – two t’s, an x, and two i’s – but also round letters, two o’s and a c, plus a full ascender (h) and a descender (p). It’s like a thicket of ink with a dual nature. And if you shake the thicket? Ah, that’s the ticket. A thixotropic gel will become fluid when agitated and revert to gel when left to stand. More things have this property than you might think. Some flow in your body; some may stick to your boots. If you touch one, will you turn? It would be fitting – the word does come from Greek thixis “touching” and trope “turning.”

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claret

Posted on January 30, 2009 | 6 comments

A word that may be less clear than it seems. Those who have not seen this word before may wonder if it is a woodwind or brass instrument. Those who know it to be a term for red Bordeaux wine may be tempted to pronounce it as a French word, with accent on the latter syllable and an unpronounced t. But you will find it is of that peculiar class of shibboleth where, if you don’t know and try to sound like you do know, you will more likely reveal yourself as not knowing than if you hadn’t tried. A parallel may be drawn with certain terminological distinctions between “upper-class” and “non-upper-class” English: if you say wealthy instead of rich, classy instead of smart, recollect instead of remember, perspire instead of sweat, pardon instead of what? and preserve instead of jam, you will sound like a mere Hyacinth Bucket, sounding “out” by the effort you make to sound “in.” Likewise, claret may be based on a French word – clairet – but it’s English now, I feel forced to declare it. A clairet (the French word), anyway, is a pale, pale version of a red wine, as they used to make them in France until the latter 1600s, the name coming from clair “clear,” whereas a claret (the English word) is a full-bodied, dry red Bordeaux of the style that was introduced by such châteaux as Haut-Brion, Lafite, Latour, and Margaux in the 1700s, and is often contrasted with the lighter (but not clairet) reds of Burgundy. But we don’t really drink “claret” in North America; we just call it Bordeaux. And from that name we expect a wine of some quality, whereas claret can as easily refer to a wine meant to be drunk in quantity, as it in turn likewise betimes makes the barristers and solicitors in John Mortimer’s Rumpole stories. But how does this word taste on your tongue? It starts with the same vocal gesture as glass – and glug, and a bunch of shiny words – but voiceless, making it thirstier and closer to clear and class. If you say it the British way, the tongue then taps its tip twice, like a simple signal on the counter to the barman, but in North America the r is a liquid – ironically, the tap then comes from the liquid, whereas in a bar it’s the other way round. But, again, lest this word’s bouquet make you a Bucket, remember that your claret will be poured not from a pitcher or a ewer but from a claret jug.

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mulct

Posted on January 29, 2009 | Leave a comment

Will a mulct make you feel milked? It might. This word’s pronunciation might make one think of a choking – perhaps you start to say money or much or mulberry and a hand suddenly grabs you under the chin, squeezing as though your head were an udder. But, really, what is this collection of letters and sounds we’re looking at? The overtones include mulch, mull, milk, munch, perhaps words such as cult and clot… It has a pair of voiceless stops at the end, and those after a liquid rather than a vowel, too, so it does rather clot up, as though one had just licked a spoon clean of its almond butter. But where would you hear it? Well, lately, not much of anywhere, it seems; wordcount.org, a ranking in order of frequency of 86,800 words of British English usage, doesn’t have it at all. But older litarature will use it more often, which is fine enough. As is a mulct – often fine more than enough, actually. It comes from a Latin word meaning “fine, penalty,” but has evolved over time, as both noun and verb, to refer most often to an arbitrary, extortionate, deceitful, or at least rather painful fine – or, betimes, the sort of forfeit one has to pay for some infraction of arbitrary college or club rules, the sum of which will be used for the purchase of, say, claret for the general.

haggis

Posted on January 28, 2009 | 1 comment

Now, here’s a word that has a definite flavour to it! Even people who have never tasted its object are likely to know of it: the great Scottish dish, Scotland’s contribution to world cuisine. Robert Burns wrote a humorous ode to it in language even chewier than its subject. But many people are loath to actually try haggis; they see this bulging sheep gut filled with a mixture that they have long been assured is the culinary equivalent of bagpipe music (certainly both require a good set of lungs). Actually, it is quite savoury, more so than many a sausage, and has a very nice texture, thanks in part to the cut oats that bind it. The word, too, may seem off-putting, but give it a taste and you might like it. Admittedly, it brings notes of hag, haggard, and haggle – words also consistent with stereotypes of Scots – but any word with a gg in the middle is likely to have at least a slight silly or happy overtone (you giggle? bugger off). Huggies is not so far off. It also makes a vocal gesture similar to a kiss and I guess – starting back in the throat, stopping at the velum and bouncing to an alveolar fricative. And it starts with a sigh and ends with a hiss. And then there’s Paul Haggis (no relation), who has certainly written and directed many TV shows and movies that are rather to many people’s tastes. Of course, he’s not Scottish. But, then, neither is the word haggis originally – nor its referent. The word is commonly thought by etymologists to have come from a word meaning “hack” or “chop,” though there is disagreement whether the word it comes from is Scandinavian or Norman French, and haggis was actually a popular dish in England up to around 1800 (as it happens, Burns wrote his “Ode to a Haggis” not all that long before then). In fact, a more native Scottish invention would be the deep-fried Mars bar (a.k.a. Mars bar in batter), which was invented in Stonehaven (where Burns holidayed two centuries earlier) and is well in keeping with the modern Scots tradition of battering and deep-frying almost anything, including pizza… and, of course, haggis.

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