Wordcatcher (30 page)

An illusory motion, a kinesthetic word.
This is one I’ve been looking for all my life, at least since noticing the weird phenomenon of the wheels of my boyhood friend Steve’s bike appearing to spin backward as we were riding to Dynamite Park, in our little hamlet of Wayne, Michigan. Its origins are
kine
, to see, and
phantom
, illusion. The perception of the wheels of a vehicle moving backward when they are actually spinning forward is a familiar
kinephantom
. Speaking of spinning,
kinetosis
is an Old World word for motion sickness, from
kinesis
, motion, and
osose
, sick. If I’d only been able to pronounce it when I had to ask my dad to pull off to the side of the road in our 1960 Falcon, as we were driving to Lake Nipissing, Ontario, on family vacation. As a Grecophile, maybe he wouldn’t have gotten so sick of hearing me moan, “I’m carsick.”

An airborne toy made of the evergreen spirit in human beings to watch things fly.
First recorded in 1664, a
kite
usually consists of a body of paper or cloth attached to a ribcagelike frame, and a tail of various materials.
Kite
is a doubly echoic word of a phenomenon commonly observed and admired by the folk for millennia—the soaring of a hawk called a
kite
since the Middle Ages. Deriving from Middle English
kyte
, from the Old English
cyta
, a hawk,
kite
is a word that soars. John Ciardi suggests that it echoes the call of the
kite
, as heard in the German
ciegan
, a piercing
ki-ki-ki
. In dramatic contrast, the rudely dismissive phrase “Go fly a
kite
!” reveals the diminishment of the modern imagination, as well as being dismissive of the body’s natural desire to play, as if flying a
kite
were immature, something to grow out of. Consider the marvel of Benjamin Franklin flying his
kite
in a storm, or the exultant Iraqi boy in
The Kite Runner
. To fly a
kite
is an act of joy, an emblem of freedom, an echo of the hawk in all of us. The prolific diarist Anaïs Nin captured the figurative meaning when she wrote, “Throw your dreams into space like a
kite
, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new country.” Likewise, Lauren Bacall said in an interview, “Imagination is the highest
kite
one can fly.” For a soaring companion word, the Scots say
skite
, to fly, in flight.

A description, prescription, or depiction.
Originally, from the world of heraldry and medicine, from Latin diminutive
labellum
, the little lip, depicted in old caricatures and graffiti. The Romans drew them as proto-word balloons hanging from the mouths of the figures in their wall frescoes and in chalk drawings to suggest what the character was saying. This appended
lip
received the name
labellum
, or
label
. The practice of writing “lip balloons” was carried over to the world of medicine by doctors who wrote on a piece of paper and tied or taped it to the
lip
of a phial; the term was even applied to the little ribbon attached to the sealing wax on old documents. By the early 14th century the Latin word and practice had been borrowed by the French as
label, lambel,
ribbon, fringe, and
lambeau
, defined by the
Collins French- English Dictionary
as “a strip, rag, shred, tatter,” which should make us think twice about the tattered jerseys at the Green
Bay Packers’ Lambeau Field. In case you were wondering,
record label
dates all the way back to 1907, described then as a “circular piece of paper in the center of a gramophone record.” This in turn inspired the use of
label
to stand in generally for the record company, in 1952.
To label
, as a verb, dates back to 1601, and its meaning, “to categorize,” to 1853. Thus, a
label
is a time-honored way to put words in someone’s mouth, a way to describe, to give vital information.

A place of twisting passageways
. Usually used interchangeably with a maze, which is designed to confuse with dead ends, a true labyrinth has but one path to the center. Famously mythologized in the popular story of Theseus and the Minotaur, which dwelled in the Knossos Palace on Crete. The twisty word derives from the Greek
labyrinthos
, a mazelike building with intricate passages, based on an earlier Lydian word,
labrys
, a two-edged axe, which symbolized royal power. The story goes that King Minos seduced an apparently irresistible cow, resulting in the birth of his monstrous son, half man, half
bull
, which he hid in a
labyrinth
devised by Daedalus. The word entered English in 1548 in a figurative sense, to represent anything meandering or confusing, as expressed by
labyrinthine
, an adjective depicting a place of intricate and confusing passageways. Companion words include
labyrinthodonts
, a type of amphibian, and
labyrinthitis
, an inflammation of the inner ear, which is a maze
of canals filled with fluid. Half of the ear’s
labyrinth
is the snail-shaped cochlea, which conveys sound to the brain; the other resembles a gyroscope, which transmits information about the position of your head relative to the ground. If your gyroscope is thrown out of whack, vertigo can result. With incantatory cadences the mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote, “Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone. The
labyrinth
is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the path of the
hero
.” Thus, the
labyrinth
is the mythic map of the path of the soul as it meanders back and forth through the world.

Labyrinth

In a word
. Brevity. Concision. Abruptness. To say more would mean less. During the Peloponnesian War, Philip of Macedonia (Alexander’s father) sent a messenger from Athens to Sparta, the center of Laconia, warning, “If we attack Sparta, we will raze it to the ground; we will not leave a single stone unturned.” The Laconian general looked him square in the eye and carefully measured his word. Then he replied, “If.”

The woman of the house; a well-mannered, proper, and virtuous woman
. According to linguist Owen Barfield, our English word
lady
derives from the “homely old Teutonic word
loaf-kneader
.” The connection provides remarkable insight into the central importance of bread in medieval households and the lives of those who provide it for others. In medieval England a lord was
hlaford
, earlier
hlafweard
, guardian of the loaf or loaf-ward. Similarly, as Coleridge cites,
lady
was
hlaefdige
, a woman who kneads, which consists of
hlaef
, bread, and
dige
, knead. Together, they provide a medieval word portrait; as Barfield writes, “So the
lady
kneaded the bread and the lord protected it.” These leavening words gave rise to two everyday words in modern English:
hlaef
is the ancestor of “loaf,” and
dige
gave us “dough.” Companion words include
ladybird, lady’s slipper, ladylike
, and
bread-winner
(
bread
being a euphemism for money), and “loaf of
bread,” which is Cockney rhyming slang for “head.” In the parlance of East Londoners, “bread” rhymes with “head,” so someone might say, “Use your loaf” when they mean “Use your head!” Circuitously, we come back to a
lady
being the real “head” of the household because she bakes the bread. The temptress Mae West said, “
Ladies
who play with fire must remember that smoke gets in their eyes.”