Wordcatcher (37 page)

Peculiar, shifty, tricky, a hint of kinky.
By any measure,
quirky
is eccentric, which originally meant “off-center,” or “out of orbit.” Old reliable Mackay defines a
quirk
as “An unfair turn in an argument; an evasion or twisting of the truth.” The word originates from the Middle Dutch
kuerken
, a cunning trick, and the earlier
kure,
a whim, or a cure, and from the German
quer
, twisted, possibly from unusual techniques in weaving. By the 1960s,
quirky
was no longer something to be avoided, but embraced, in the modern sense of
idiosyncratic
. Thus, to be quirky is to act differently, eccentrically, cunningly, as a way to cure yourself. So you could say Alfred Hitchcock was a
quirky
character in the pejorative sense of
weird
, or you could be more compassionate and say that Hitchcock’s
quirky
obsessions with guilt and innocence, police and pretty blondes, was his way of staying sane. One of the
quirkiest
actors in movies, William H. Macy, says, “Stephen King writes a lot of things that are really charming and
quirky
, and that are more ironic than horror.”

A
test
, a question, a mystery word. Quiz
is of obscure origin—but stories abound. So we can approach the word in its own spirit,
quizzically:
When is the first mention of the word? 1847. What are the roots? The first Latin question,
Qui es?
“Who are you?” asked in traditional grammar schools.

What about that old chestnut, the Dublin bar bet? There is a popular though undocumented story that dates back to around 1836 about a man named Jim Daly, the manager of a Dublin theater, who laid down a wager in a local pub that he could coin a new word and render it famous within twenty-four hours. According to the legend, he won the bet by stenciling, as Brewer writes, “four mystic letters,”
Q-U-I-Z
, all over town, which prompted the indignant question, “What is this?” To which Daly was happy to answer something to the effect of, “
What is this?
Why, it’s Latin for ‘What is this?!’” Speaking of questions, the story goes that the question mark itself [?] is a kind of collapsed version of the letter “Q,” short for “question.”
Quiz
is also slang for an “odd character.” Irony of ironies, Charles Van Doren, the Columbia University English professor implicated in the scandal to “fix” the 1950s television
quiz
show “Twenty-One,” told a grand jury through his lawyer, “It is silly and distressing to think that people don’t have more faith in
quiz
shows.”

To bother, to fester, to burn with hurt.
That long, hard
a
takes a great “bite” out of anyone who uses the word, for a good reason. Look it up and track it all the way back to the beginning and you’ll find a “dragon’s bite” lurking inside the dark cave of its distant origins.
Rankle
is rooted in
drakos
, Greek for “eye,” close cousin to
drakon
, serpent, because of their burning red eyes. The Romans borrowed the word, changing it slightly to become the Latin
draco
, with its diminutive
dracunculus
, little dragon, which shape-shifted like a Druid priest into the Old French
draoncles
, a festering sore that resembled a coiled serpent, then
rancler
, an abscess or burning ulcer, and finally into the English
rankle
. Thus,
rankle
carries an echo of the folklore about the venomous and fiery bite of dragons, remembered with an insult or a slight from someone whose “bite” feels poisonous. Trusty old Ben Franklin wrote, “If you argue and
rankle
and contradict, you may achieve a temporary victory—sometimes; but it will be an empty victory because you will never get your opponent’s good will.” And here is a piercing reference from Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein
: “Farewell! I leave you, and in you the last of human kind whom these eyes will ever behold. Farewell, Frankenstein … Blasted as thou wert, my agony was still superior to thine; for the bitter sting of
remorse
will not cease to
rankle
in my wounds until death shall close them forever.”

Rankle

The aesthetic, spiritual, or emotional
essence of a work of art
.
Rasa
is the core of a work that is to be relished and tasted, its flavor, perfume, mood experienced through immediate perception rather than rational apprehension. This is art appreciation through synesthesia, the belief that art is so complex it needs more than our five senses to fully comprehend it. For centuries Hindu artists and philosophers have studied this phenomenon and arrived at nine levels of spiritual ecstasy, from the Sanskrit
rasa,
relish, taste, flavor, sentiments. According to the French essayist René Daumal, the nine essential
rasas
, or savors, are “simple, like the taste of a complex dish,” and “direct apprehensions of a state of being.” Daumal goes on to say that
rasa
or savor is “a moment of consciousness provoked by the mediums of art and colored with a particular pathos.” Traditionally, the nine rasas are:
Shringara
, the erotic;
Hasya
, the comic;
Karuna
, the pathetic;
Raudra
, the furious;
Vira
, the heroic;
Bhayanaka
, the fearsome;
Bribhatsa
, the odious;
Adbhuta
, the supernatural; and
Shanta
, the serene or tranquil.
Rasa
also refers to the limitless pleasure one can experience in painting, sculpture, poetry if appreciated through these nine tastes or moods. Ananda Coomaraswamy wrote, in
The Divine of Shiva
, “The ‘nine
rasas’
are no more than the various colorings of one experience, and are arbitrary terms of rhetoric used only for convenience in classification: just as we speak of poetry categorically as lyric, epic, dramatic, etc., without implying that poetry is anything
but poetry.
Rasa
is tasted—beauty is felt—only by empathy … that is to say by entering into, feeling, the permanent motif; but it is not the same as the permanent motif itself, for, from this point of view, it matters not with which of the permanent motifs we have to do.”

To reclaim; to call or beat back.
From two senses of the Old French verb
rebatre
, “to blunt a sword’s edge,” and “bringing back a bating hawk,” both emerging from
re
, back, and
batre
, to beat, bring. Thus, the
rebate
for the falconers of old referred to bringing back a hawk that left its perch on the gauntlet before being commanded to do so. The falconer who called the hawk back was “reclaiming” it, from the Latin
re
, back, and
clamo
, call. Similarly, the craft of the smith over the forge was usually to hammer the rough edges of a sword, but in certain cases, as when creating a practice sword, the goal was to “beat back or down” the sharp edges so no one got hurt. Taken together, the English sense of
rebate
emerged as claiming a discount so as to blunt the edges of the expenditure, to ease the pain caused by high prices. Filed under the category Unnecessary Quotes is this ad from the
Kansas City Star
: “When our Kansas City Chiefs shutout [sic] the hated Raiders on Sunday, September 9th, you will receive a
rebate
of all purchases $599 and up, thru Saturday only or until qualifying purchases reach $1,000,000. No purchase necessary.” As the
New Yorker
says, “Block that metaphor!”

Guilty.
Originally, a 15th-century Scottish legal term based on the vivid image of a criminal caught with blood on his hands. Thomas Blount, in his
Law Dictionary and Glossary
of 1717, claims it derives from the term “bloody-hand,” which was one of the “four kinds of offences in the king’s forest, by which the offender is supposed to have killed a deer.” He adds, “In Scotland, in suchlike crimes they say, ‘Taken in the fact, or with the red hand.’ “ Sir Walter Scott uses the term in
Ivanhoe
, in 1819. In modern times, the phrase refers to the travelers’ custom of dusting the locks of suitcases with ninhydrin (nin) protein dye that turns bright red on contact with the skin of any thief trying to break the locks. Thus, one who is “caught
red-handed
” has been busted, caught, guilty. Today, the phrase is virtually synonymous with
in flagrante delicto
, Old Latin for a “blazing misdeed”—in other words, caught with your pants down. The Urban Dictionary website updates the phrase as “to quote
red-handed
,” as “when someone comes out with a witty comment or funny line which they have taken from a film or television show. The embarrassment comes when they are caught out, and someone reveals to the rest of the group that what was just said was not their own wittiness or quick thinking.” Thus, to be caught
red-handed
today is to be caught with blood on your quotes if you quote
The Sopranos
without crediting the show. Ah,
fuhgeddaboudit!