Tag Archives: word tasting notes

mêlée

Posted on November 14, 2008 | 1 comment

A mellifluous word, like a stream-smoothed pebble, that exists to prove that anything, shouted with enough guttural force, spit and testosterone, can be violent. The twisting arc of a body swinging a broadsword – is this not, too, the feeling of mêlée? If you may lay your enemy about and asunder with lashings of mace in malice, why not do so with a word you can sing while you swing? Or would that be too male, eh? But there are hints when you look at the word: those diacritics, arched like angry eyebrows or perhaps perched like helmets or carried like rucksaks and rifles. But why is that circumflex there? In French – the immediate source, of course – it always attests to an absence of s: so meslee, which in turn comes from Latin misculatus, “mixed.” And with that word we hear the military cutlery clashing and slicing. How those edges have blunted and polished over the centuries! Other words have come down, too, as the s has alternated with l and d: meddle is a killing cousin, but a sibling is medley, which first meant the mixing of forces in combat. Now it brings to mind music. So death is bookended with melody: the trumpets sound at the start of the battle, mêlée, mêlée; at the end, by the bleeding field, the birds reply, medley, medley.

1 Comment

Posted in word tasting notes

Tagged ,

dandelion

Posted on November 13, 2008 | Leave a comment

It sounds like a character in a kids’ book, but it stands for an overly successful flower. Many lovers of flat, grassy lawns have exclaimed that there’s nothing dandy about these plants, and whoever says they are is lyin’. Certainly the first word association many would come up with for this one is weed. The plant is hardy, rough-and-tumble like its rounded, bouncing word (all at the front of the tongue, and all voiced), but pretty, too. Its floating seeds, signs of later summer, make guest appearances in feminine hygiene ads, but a cue from the name would make them seem more like dander or dandruff. This word has always seemed yellow to me – of course I knew the flower before the name. Its two d‘s give me an image of the cheeks of a cartoon lion, but what is leonine about this flower? You may think it’s the bush of yellow florets, somehow like a mane, but in fact it’s the leaves, like lion’s teeth – dent de lion is the French source. Next time you sink your teeth into a fresh dandelion green, see if it bites back.

Leave a comment

Posted in word tasting notes

Tagged ,

sockeye

Posted on November 12, 2008 | Leave a comment

A word like a fish slap in the face. The first part carries echoes of hosiery but also of fisticuffs, which may prevail given the swing of [s] and the impact of [k] – and the connection with eye, which, for its part, aside from being a potential impact site, bounces back like a recoil from the sock. Those looking at the eponymous fish (also called red salmon, blueback salmon, nerka, or – when found in landlocked water – Kokanee, the sound of which may make western Canadians thirsty) will wonder what is sockish about its eye. The answer is: nothing at all. This word took its current form by folk etymology from Salish suk-kegh or sukkai. Most Canadians, on hearing this word, will probably think of something pink in a can. They may or may not think of the two-and-a-half-foot-long colour-changing striver of rivers. But their enjoyment of its buttery flesh will be sharpened by the cracking echo of its name.

Leave a comment

Posted in word tasting notes

Tagged ,

trilby

Posted on November 11, 2008 | Leave a comment

A word that may seem old hat but perhaps also counfounds the hearer. Those who don’t know what a trilby is may think it a trifling, silly, or flimsy frill, or perhaps a flower – or a furry little purring space rabbit. Those who know it is a hat may be misled by the tri to think it a three-cornered one. In truth, the hat could have been called a Du Maurier hat (for the man who wrote the novel Trilby and did the illustrations, including ones of a character wearing a floppy Homburg-type hat with a pinched front, which was subsequently worn in the hit play as well), or a Billee hat (for the character who wore the hat)… or perhaps even a Svengali hat (for the most famous character of the novel, who, however, would more likely have lent his name to an axe-like beard had his appearance been more remarked than his character). But this is a word tasting note, not a hat tasting note. And, in truth, the word could have more readily been given to the feet, as the heroine Trilby had beautiful ones – and in fact it for a time was a cute word for a foot – or to a style of shoes – which it also was for a time. It never referred to a singing voice, oddly, in spite of its thrilling treble trill. The word on the page is mostly ascenders, going up like the heroine’s voice or the hairs on the back of your neck on hearing it (or on thinking of Svengali’s Mesmeric control), or pointing to the hat, but with a little y setting down a dainty foot at the end – or curving and pointing down like Svengali’s beard, depending on how you see it.

Leave a comment

Posted in word tasting notes

Tagged ,

conch

Posted on November 10, 2008 | 2 comments

A word with a hollow resonance, perhaps like the sound of the blowing of the eponymous shell, but cut off abruptly at the end, like the horns of the cars you hear on the road on your way, say, to Arawak Cay in Nassau to eat some of the eponymous mollusk (which, for its part, is chewy almost like octopus). Many who have passed their lives far from the West Indies may think that this word rhymes with craunch and haunch (or, for some Canadians, gonch, i.e., an undergarment which craunches the haunches), but to residents of the Cays and Keys (who often take this name on themselves) such a sound may be found distinctly off-key. This word is a cousin of wad and chance in that it is often a consort to blow – but it is much less lexically promiscuous than the others; its other companions are more limited and include shell, mainly, and fritters if you’re in the Bahamas. Another kind of blow – to the head – may be suggested by the pronunciation with [k] final. The visual form of the word does not spiral, but it does have two curls and a ring. And for the Romans, such concavity would have been sufficient, since in Latin it simply meant a mussel or cockle or a shell-like cavity.

2 Comments

Posted in word tasting notes

Tagged ,

eternal & everlasting

Posted on November 9, 2008 | Leave a comment

eternal

Three syllables, seven letters, infinite time. This word hangs in the back of your head the axes of the endless: forever within (internal), forever without (external), forever revolving and returning (turn). It is found with a boundless set of words, preceding struggle, sunset, sunshine (of a spotless mind), city, night, prairie, hellfire, damnation, life, incompetence – you name it; on the one side of the coin is enduring and on the other is unendurable. If you listen to classical music you may hear æternum often, giving this word a flavour of singing and strings. This is a word that spans the universe, the great mu in the mind of the unknowable. It starts with an e as in eon and ends in the great null; on the way, you have a scent of the ether. And then you pass out of time.

everlasting

A trinity of morphemes for an eternity of time. This may be the greater infinity, having in it all the letters of eternal plus v, s, i, g (gives less an e). This is a fully Anglo-Saxon word, ever (a formation not found in other Teutonic languages; ay, which means “ever,” sounds like “eh” and was probably the basis of the first syllable of ever, is cognate with similar words in other related tongues) plus lasting, with the latter being last (meaning “endure,” in earlier times “follow” or “accomplish”) plus ing (the one that makes nouns, cognate with German ung). It has a nice rhythm, two trochees, making it well suited to being sung, which is why you may hear it in a bopping tune with the word love. It can also be heard with such words as damnation and hellfire, however, thanks to its ecclesiastical use. It may also bring to mind a brand of boxing attire. That connection may strengthen its occasional notes of elastic. The opening ever also carries with it a thought of its opposite, never, as in neverending. But, oddly, world without end brings to mind last things, and so lasting takes us forward to the end of time. It also takes us to the back of the mouth – from the v up front we move through the l and st on the alveolar ridge and end at the velum with ng. Extrapolation will take you through the glottis down to the source of breath, the perpetual cycle of breathing, an analogue of the cycle of all existence, life after life, big bang to big crunch to big bang and on.

Leave a comment

Posted in word tasting notes

Tagged , ,

crass

Posted on November 7, 2008 | Leave a comment

A coarse, gross, brassy word. It carries its sense on its loud lapels: you hear, on the one side, the whole host of angry, crusty, growling, gritting cr and especially cra words – crap, crash, crack, crab, all made for spitting and growling; on the other side, the blatt of ass, a rude end, like a dismissive wave of the hand and a hiss. A few millimetres of vowel height separate this word from a leafy green (botanically a crucifer, and indeed on the way to cross), but between [æ] and [E] what a difference there can be. This word does not keep the most pleasant of company – indifference is a common playmate – and even where found in the company of such unexceptionable words as tastes and manners it lowers the tone to the bottom of the trash can. Anglo-saxon though it may sound, however, it’s Latin in street clothes: crassus meant fat, dense, thick, that kind of sh*t.

Leave a comment

Posted in word tasting notes

Tagged ,

conciliation

Posted on November 6, 2008 | Leave a comment

A soothing wave-wash of a word, suited for whispering in the ear over steam rising from the collar. Not a stop in it after the crisp opener – the second c is softened and the t shuns the tap. The word begins with the prefix we see in conjoin and congratulate but also in contend and constern: things come together for better or worse. In this case, it’s calming, with fricatives, liquids and nasals. The middle of the word may sound silly, but it also has the slipping smoothness of silk and the silent shine of silver. In the end is the functional ation, a suffix as ubiquitous as doughnut shops (where contending parties may come to terms over coffee); it takes an action and makes it a noun, a thing, a counsel to keep – or in this case perhaps a council, which comes from the same Latin origins: it’s a meeting of the bodies, and this is a meeting of the minds. Or at least a hoped-for one; we note that it’s so often preceded by “attempt(s) at.”

Leave a comment

Posted in word tasting notes

Tagged ,

antagonistic

Posted on November 5, 2008 | 1 comment

A word that might be made of barbed wire. It snags your tag, nags and sticks you. Is it agony or just agon? Don’t egg it on. It’s negative from the get-go, with the ant that is ever against – a little insect in the black ink of text, carrying much more than its weight in animus. When you see that, you might well say “Ag, what’s to do?” Best be gone? But the c at the end might catch you – if you haven’t been tarred by the nasty double [æ], pushed back by the insistent [I]s, and poked by the twin tapping [t]s, even while cushioned by the pads of the [n]s. Yes, this word is one of duals – and duels. Front and back are two syllables each, and each is all in the front until it ends with a kick in the back; in the middle is the moat of that perpetual neutral schwa sound represented here by the emptiest character. Two sides, differing in little more than vowel height and the voicing of one stop, glaring at each other across the slightest of gaps. And of course neither will prevail, as both are needed. Why? It’s all Greek to me… of course, from roots meaning “against” and “struggle.” We’ve had it in English since the 17th century – the word, that is; the idea’s timeless.

1 Comment

Posted in word tasting notes

Tagged ,

snide

Posted on November 4, 2008 | Leave a comment

This word likes to hang about with comment and remark. But if someone were to target you with a snide remark, would you take it in stride? Would you cock a snook? The nasal sneering associated with this word comes straight out of the sn opening, so common in snuffling nose words; after that, it arcs with a rhyme of stride and glide and perhaps a scintilla of sly. There are many and varied ide words, however, all the way from bride and pride to chide and hide, so the end of the word is not what governs it; rather, the vowel takes its cue from the onset, not just the sn but other s+consonant words too: sty, sky, spry, snipe. The sound of the word may have moved it to where it is now, semantically; it emerged in the 19th century to mean sham, worthless, bogus, etc. Within a few decades, a person could be called snide, meaning cunning, sharp, mendacious, contemptible; from there, it was used for hypocrisy and malicious gossip; and by the 1930s we see it used to refer to slyly derogatory remarks. And where did it come from? Well, now, why would you think lexicographers would be able to tell you that?

Leave a comment

Posted in word tasting notes

Tagged ,