Wordcatcher (3 page)

“I suddenly realized that I am a
pure
philologist. I like history, and am moved by it,” he later wrote to his son, “but its finest moments for me are those in which it throws light on words and names.”

My own fascinations often feel boundless, from history to literature,
travel
to sports, architecture to music, but my deepest passion runs like whitewater rapids when the words and names in those worlds rise to meet me. For the last thirty-five years—I know the exact date and place I began to write them down: April 10, 1975, when I moved into a matchbox-sized room in Kilburn, London—I have filled virtually hundreds of journals and notebooks with my favorite word lists. And now all these years later I have condensed and compressed those entries into this one volume,
Wordcatcher
, in the hope of passing them on to other avid word hounds.

To create my own “word-hoard,” in Tolkien’s utterly gorgeous description, I have used a simple standard. Each and every “headword” that is explored here evoked in me an “Aha!” when I first encountered it.

Often while compiling this collection I have thought of the twice-told tale of the time the English poet W. H. Auden was asked to teach a class in poetry. Two hundred students applied to study with him, but there was room for only twenty in the classroom. When asked how he chose them, he said he picked
the ones who actually
loved
words, which means he was seeking other
logophiles
, other word lovers.

That, too, has been my standard. But I have also tried to set
Wordcatcher
apart from the scores of other wonderful word books. Not to be orchidaceous, but perspicacious; not ostentatious about the use of words, but keenly discerning, shrewdly knowledgeable.

To do so, I have included a few innovations. First, all of these words have surprising derivations, like
baffle
, an old Scottish word to describe a disgraced knight. Second, each word here is either fun to say, such as
bamboozle
, or mellifluous to hear, such as
swaff
. Third, I’ve included “
companion
words” at the end of each word story, in the spirit of those close friends who enjoy dining out together, a practice which honors a lifelong practice of mine of meandering from one word to another in my myriad dictionaries. Seeing how
desultory
, consultant
,
and
result
are all related to the old Roman word for the trick rider who leapt from horse to horse makes our language, well,
jump
off the page. Fourth, I’ve introduced a few common words in uncommon ways, coming at them from a different angle to help us see them in fresh, even startling ways. For example, the everyday word
story
is so recognizable it is almost impossible to appreciate its lapidary meanings. So I introduce it within the
story poles
, an ancient term for marking the ground for a building about to go up, which also serves as a vivid
metaphor
for laying the foundation of our lives with narratives. Likewise with
myth
,
a word so common and so abused I have revived
mythosphere
,
a brilliant coinage by essayist and mythologist Alexander Eliot, to describe
the “atmosphere” of sacred stories that surrounds us at all times. Fifth, I have tried to offer a great range of citations, from Mae West to the Marx Brothers, to illustrate how the words are actually used.

In a word, this book of weird, wonderful and wild word stories is a game of catch. When I throw a baseball around with my son Jack it’s a game of give and take, each of us throwing the ball so the other can catch it. It’s an ordinary activity, but also a profound metaphor for life and for my relationship to words. If I see an amazing word thrown to me in a book, magazine, or movie—
chicanery
,
bedswerver
, lucubrate
—I am
thrilled
, and I want to keep the game of language going by looking it up, writing it down, using it in a story, poem, script, or conversation. Call it the sport of a wordcatcher, playing catch with the ball of language that’s been thrown to me by all the writers and storytellers who came before me.

Finally, it is my fervent hope that by exploring the delightful backstories of the 250 or so words that compose this book you will be inspired to develop the delightful habit of running to your own dictionary, whether on your bookshelf or on your laptop, every time you’re frustrated, intrigued, or
tantalized
by a curious word. Not necessarily for the purposes of self-improvement, or to
loftify
your social status, but to feel that throb in the heart that inspires us to follow a word home and learn about it, then maybe even use it in your own conversations and stories. I believe that if we trust that natural instinct, there is a strong chance we will be surprised by the joy often lurking inside the words that lured us forward.

No one captured this joyous jolt better than Shakespeare when he wrote in
King John:
“
Zounds!
I’ve never been so bethumped by words before!”

Zounds!—
what an expression!
Bethump
—what a verb! What a marvelous use of exclamation points!

The first time I read that line my face broke out in a wild wall-to-wall grin, a
flizzen
, as they said in the Bard’s day. Then I raced to my family’s old
Random House Dictionary
, which now graces my writing studio, and flipped to the back of the tattered old dictionary to find out where such words came from—
zounds
, God’s wounds! and
bethumped
, knocked over backward.

And feeling once more the
thrill
of the chase I carried the old dictionary upstairs and carefully placed it in the corner of the living room of my own house, so my own son can discover for himself in the years to come the utter joy of wordcatching.

 

An incantation, a charm, a magician’s mantra, a healing formula to rid a person of disease or illness
. A word so old hair is growing on it.
Abracadabra
is said to consist of the first letters of the Hebrew words
Ab
(Father),
Ben
(Son), and
Ruach ACadsch
(Holy Spirit), and when combined was believed to cure afflictions ranging from ague to toothaches. Traditionally,
The American Heritage Dictionary
says, the word
abracadabra
was worn as an amulet, furtively “arranged in an inverted pyramid” on a piece of paper that was suspended by a linen thread around the neck. As one letter disappeared in each line, so too was the malady of the patient supposed to disappear. Beyond its cult symbolism the word gained popularity when it was adopted in magic shows, circuses, and theater acts of the mystical persuasion. In the indispensable
Devil’s Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce defined it: “By
Abracadabra
we signify an infinite number of things. ‘Tis
the answer to What? And How? And Why? And Whence? And Whither?—a word whereby The Truth (with the comfort it brings) is open to all who grope in night, Crying for Wisdom’s holy light.” Speaking of which, Ezra Pound, who wrote that a book should be like a ball of light in your hand, also said, “Mass ought to be in Latin, unless you could do it in Greek or Chinese. In fact, any
abracadabra
that no bloody member of the public or half-educated ape of a clargimint could think he understood.” Companion words include the hypnotic
abracadabrant
, marvelous or stunning.

Ridiculous, incongruous, contrary to reason. Unbelievable because inaudible
. Yet its roots in the Latin
ab-surdus
, deaf, stupid, reveal that
absurd
really does mean “not-hearing,” or as Merriam-Webster suggests, “unsound,” which sounds just right. By the 16th century, its meaning had worn down to “silly or folly,” then took on its secondary meaning of “having no rational or orderly relationship to human life.” Figuratively, it suggests life is strange because you haven’t been listening very closely. Everything sounds discordant, seems inharmonious, out of tune; life has lost its melody. You’re deaf to the truth. “The Theater of the Absurd,” based on the writings of Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, and Eugène Ionesco, plays up this sinking feeling that there is no ultimate meaning or purpose in the universe, as if to say even God isn’t listening—or there is no God at all to listen to our woes. It’s
absurd
we don’t better appreciate the depths of this word, although it has been stretched by the
Absurdists
to also suggest that human beings are ultimately free because nothing is fated. In that light, consider Lily Tomlin’s sly observation: “You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the
absurd
.” The great poet Louis Simpson writes in “An Impasse,” “To say, ‘The news is good’ / in French would be bad
grammar
, and
absurd
, which is worse.”

A school to teach specialized skills or thought; a body of established opinion widely accepted as authoritative; a society for the advancement of art or science.
The term comes from the Grove of Akademos, where Plato taught, in honor of Akademos, a mythic
hero
in the Trojan War, said to live on a farm “six
stadia
outside Athens,” and who gave refuge to Castor and Pollux after their search for their kidnapped sister, Helen of Sparta. The word has held on to this sense of respite from the real world. By the 16th century, it had taken on figurative significance as any center of training, and by the mid-19th century “the academy” had come to mean the extended world of education and scholarship. However,
academic
has devolved into an embattled term far afield from Plato’s school. On one hand, it suggests rigorous intellectualism; on the other, scholars hopelessly lost in clouds of thought. Camille Paglia said, in an interview with Shane Berry of Three Monkeys Online, “[A]s the decades passed and poststructuralism, postmodernism, and New Historicism took root in the
academy
, I began to realize how many of my skills as a commentator on art and culture came from my early training in the New Criticism.” Synchronistically, I recently found this note I took from a conversation with my friend mythologist Joseph Campbell, in which he said, rather impishly: “I’m with those philosophers in the academy—until their feet leave the ground.” Companion terms include
the groves of Academe,
a reference to Horace’s
silvas Academi
; the venerable
Académie Française
;
and the
Academy Award
, alluding to the romantic notion of an idyllic life dedicated to thinking, research, or creativity, whether on a bucolic campus, amid the privileged halls of Paris, or behind the walled gardens of Hollywood.