Wordcatcher (44 page)

A word in one language that has no direct equivalent meaning in another, but strikes a chord and invites paraphrase.
Let’s start with a word from the Fuegian language of southern Argentina,
mamihlapinatapa,
which means “a meaningful look shared by two people, expressing mutual unstated feeling,” listed by the
Guinness Book of World Records
as the ‘Most Succinct Word in the World.’ Another award-winner, voted ‘Most Untranslatable Word in the World,’ is the Congolese
ilunga
, which describes a person who is ready to forgive any transgression a first time, willing to tolerate it a second time, but cannot abide it a third time. In German a euphemism for “coward” is
Handschuhschneeballwerfer
, defined as a person who “wears gloves to throw snowballs.” The Flemish language provides us with
iets door de vingesrs kijken
, a phrase to describe the embarrassing behavior of looking through your own splayed
fingers; figuratively, looking the other way. The Russian
pochemuchka
describes a person who asks too many questions. Running your fingers through your lover’s hair in Brazil is called
cafune
in Portuguese. To wipe your plate of pesto clean with bread, in Italy, is called
faccio la scarpetta,
literally “to wipe one’s shoes.”
Mokita
, from New Guinea, means a truth everyone knows but no one dares to speak. The Kiriana language of New Guinea provides us with
Biga Peula
which refers to potentially “unforgivable, unatonable, unredeemable words,” which we better think twice about uttering. Pidgin gives us
wantok
, “one talk,” meaning “we’re in this together because you belong to the village and the village has some responsibility to you and you to it.” An
untranslatable
Czech example is
litost
, a sudden insight into one’s own misery. A student at the 2009 Book Passage Travel Writers and Photographers conference shared one of her favorite words with me: “The word is ‘remolino,’” she wrote to tell me. “My brother recalls it translating as ‘windmill’—as in a little windmill on the back of the head, but we couldn’t find anything like that in the online Spanish-to-English dictionaries. You’ll find it translating as a whirlwind, whirlpool, spiral, swirl, and cowlick. I’m afraid ‘cowlick’ is the mundane word they’re giving for it. When he lived in Spain, he was close friends with a man from Chile, and in the Spanish Wikipedia I found that in Chile they call windmills ‘remolinos, ’ while in other Spanish-speaking countries they’re generally called ‘molinos.’ So I guess that’s where he got
the windmill idea.” Another personal favorite of mine is the Eskimo/Inuit word
eyechektakok.
One of the myriad words for snow in the Arctic, this one refers to the “crack in ice that is pulsating or opening and closing.” Finally,
ubuntu
is a venerable African word at the core of Desmond Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a concept word that recognizes the interconnection of all people, and which roughly translates as “I am human because you make me human, and you are human because I make you human.”

A mischievous child, a brat, a kid with a prickly temperament.
An eerily echoic word from the Middle English
yrichon
and
urchon
, hedgehog, and the Proto-Indo-European prefix
gers
-, “spiny, to prickle, to bristle.” All told, our English word
urchin
is a visceral memory of how hedgehogs are forever poking their noses where they shouldn’t be. The word has gone through two evolutions. First,
urchin
was used during the 16th century to describe people who were believed to resemble hedgehogs, including hunch-backs and goblins. Soon after, by 1556,
urchin
had lost its bristles but retained its sense of raggedness, as applied to the appearance of poor and bedraggled children living in the streets, nosing around in search of food or money or lodging. Companion words include
horripilation
, hair bristling and standing on end, as during a
horror movie
. Similarly,
that spiny echinoderm the
sea urchin
has bristles reminiscent of a hedgehog’s. Sea
urchins
were called “whore’s eggs” in Newfoundland. “In Memory of Dylan Thomas,” by poet Cecil Day-Lewis, features an inspired reference to the prickly creature: “The ribald, inspired
urchin
/ Leaning over the lip / Of his world, / as over a rock pool / Or a lucky dip, / Found everything brilliant and virgin.”

A neutrally flavored bean; a type of orchid; a euphemism for bland.
A 17th-century word, from the Spanish
vainalla
, little pod, the diminutive of the vividly named
vaina
, sheath. The scabbardlike leaf that reminded Hernando Cortes’s randy soldiers of a
vagina
, which happens to be Latin for anything sheath-shaped. That’s what they named it, and the name stuck. Since the 1970s,
vanilla
has come full circle to suggest a nonflavor, anything neutral, common, or unimaginative, and by metaphoric extension, “conventional, ordinary sexual tastes.” According to the International Ice Cream Association in 2008, 29 percent of those polled preferred
vanilla
to chocolate or strawberry. Nineteen-fifties heartthrob Pat Boone admits, in retrospect, “When you hear my records today, you hear a
vanilla
sounding artist with no black inflection, although I was trying to imitate what I heard.”

Originally, variety entertainment from the French countryside; later a theatrical term for any performance in Tin Pan Alley.
One of my proud French-Canadian father’s favorite word origins. I remember him pointing out the wonderful fact that the word was rooted in the soil of Vaude-Vire, a Norman town in western France where the 15th-century poet Olivier Basser lived and wrote scores of popular folk songs.
Vaudeville
became shorthand for the music of the people, and in the 1920s the rage of Broadway, where it came to suggest “a slight dramatic sketch interspersed with songs and dances.” My son’s favorite dancer, Donald O’Connor, said, “I grew up in
vaudeville.
All the hoofers used to get together in a drugstore down the street from the theater, or what-have-you, and if they knew a new step they would teach it to you. I learned hoofing steps that way. But going into ballet didn’t come until I made those pictures with [Gene] Kelly.”

To worship, honor, respect utterly.
For the old Romans, Venus (Greek Aphrodite) was such a beloved goddess they worshiped her in temples all across the Mediterranean and honored her in everyday life for myriad reasons, mainly her influence in matters of the heart. Given that she was the mother of Eros or Cupid, this was considered to be hedging your bets in the chancy game of
love
.
Her followers, and lovers of art, made pilgrimages to sites like Knidos and Milos to view statues of her that were considered so preternaturally real that, surely, the goddess inhabited the marble. This devotion to Venus came to be known by the 15th century as
veneration
, from the Middle French
venerari
, to worship, revere, from
veneris
, beauty, love, desire.
Venus
lives on in
venerable
, worthy of reverence, often used to describe what is old, like ruins, art, and the elderly. Longfellow expresses this respect when he writes, “I
venerate
old age….” But unguarded, unprotected, untoward behavior under the influence of Venus brings problems: consider the malady also named after her,
venereal
disease, long considered a punishment for sexual misconduct. Companion words contributing to the language:
cupidity
, from Latin
cupido
, desire, but generally a frowned-upon longing bordering on coveting your neighbor’s wife. Grosse’s
dictionary
describes a “bawdyhouse,” a brothel, as a “School of Venus,” and “clap” as “
venereal
taint.” To illustrate the venereal connection he cites a lubricious couplet: “He went out by Had’em, and came round by Clapham home”—that is, he went out a-wenching, and got the clap.