Wordcatcher (6 page)

The fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth.
Curious, right? Every time I read or hear the word I think of spiders, from the Greek
arachne
. But it’s really a very long and potent word for a very peculiar phobia, stemming from the Greek
arachi
, a glutinous oil present in peanut butter;
butryo
, to stick or adhere; and
phobia
, fear. As someone who has been afflicted with esophageal and swallowing problems all his life, I can swear to what appears to be a universal fear of getting something stuck in the throat. So it’s not difficult to imagine someone, especially with a peanut allergy, being terrified of its buttery version clogging up her mouth. The problem is mythic, a larger-than-life fear, or
phobia
—a word that can be traced back to
Phobos
, son of Ares, god of terror, but the symptoms are real, persistent, an unrealistic fear that seizes the whole person, resulting in symptoms of nausea, dizziness, and shame. That said, there is no shortage of curious phobias, such as:
erythrophobia
, the fear of blushing;
ablutophobia
, fear of washing or cleaning;
euphobia
, fear of good news;
chromophobia
, fear of color;
gnomophobia
, fear of
gnomes
;
catoptrophia
, fear of mirrors;
Venustraphobia
, the fear of beautiful and alluring women;
kakorrhapphiophobia
is the fear of failure and
hippomonstrosesquipedaliophobia
, fear of long words, and perhaps longer definitions. Speaking of frightful words, a curious fear I’ve suffered from on occasion, especially on long airplane flights, is
abibliophobia
, the fear of not having enough to read. To be fair, let’s conclude with an antidote of a word,
counterphobia
, which refers to “the desire or seeking out of experiences that are consciously or unconsciously feared.” It’s not unlike the advice your mom gave you after your first bad fall from a bicycle—climb back on.

A bold and daring sailor.
A smooth-sailing word that combines the ancient Greek
argos
, swift; the beauty of a fine ship,
naus
; and the sailor courage of a
nautes
. They merge in
Argo
, the galley on which the
Argonauts
set sail, which in turn was named after
Argus
, its ingenious builder. Webster’s succinctly defines an
Argonaut
as “any of a band of heroes who sailed with Jason in quest of the Golden Fleece.” I vividly recall my father’s Heritage Club edition of the book by Apollonius of Rhodes,
Argonautica
, which we read aloud as a family over one long Michigan winter. The legend recounts how Jason persuaded forty-nine sailors to accompany him on a perilous mission from Iolcos to remote Colchis, in what is now Georgia, at the far end of the Black Sea. Their mythic task was to capture the golden fleece, which hung on a sacred oak guarded by a fire-snorting dragon. Curiously, in 1849, many of those who left home and hearth for the California gold mines were called “
Argonauts
,” in honor of Jason’s adventure, as well as “’49ers,” an uncanny echo of the forty-nine sailors who traveled with him in search of the resplendent wool. The
Argonauts
adventure lives on in
Argos
, a constellation in the northern sky; Captain Nemo’s ship, the
Nautilus
, in
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
; the spiral-shelled
nautilus
, which the ancients believed sailed underwater; and
nausea
, seasickness, from
naus,
ship. Another haunting echo of the word is found in one of the most touching scenes in all of literature, from the final book of the
Odyssey
, when
the
hero
returns home to Ithaka after his twenty-year long adventure and is recognized by his faithful dog
Argos
—who wags his tail, then dies quietly.

A hired killer.
The word comes hissing to us like an arrow across the battlements. It hails from the 13th-centur y Persian
hashshashin
, the
hashing
ones, those who smoke hashish. These were specially trained executioners, from the Shia sect, hired by Hassan ben Sabbah, the “Old Man of the Mountain,” and trained at his fortress of Almamut to punish their Seljuk enemies, and later the Crusaders in northern Syria. For 200 years they stealthily murdered infidels, princes, soldiers, sultans, and other mercenaries. Their training was singular and stealthy. As a reward for their dangerous work, the Old Man created a kind of paradise on earth for these killers, plying them with stupendous amounts of hashish, the lubricious services of nubile young women, and the use of luxurious quarters in the palace. Eventually, the group became identified with the thing they smoked. Steadily, the reference to
hashshashin
wore down, like a plug of hash, to
assassin
, and now is commonly used to describe any trained executioner. The troubadour poet Bernard de Bondeilhs wrote, “Just as the Assassins serve their master unfailingly, so have I served Love with unswerving loyalty.” Companion words include
cannibidulia
, the addiction to hashish, and the menacing
murthering
,
as cited by John Bullokar in 1616: “A robbing, spoiling, or murthering in the highway.” Nearby lurks
thug
, the infamous East Indian brand of
assassin
whose specialty was strangling his or her victims.

To strike with thunderous surprise; in a word, to be thunderstruck
. When the Norse god Thor was provoked he hurled thunderbolts made of gold that stunned all who had invoked his wrath. Likewise, to be
astonished
in English is to be
a-stunned
, a vivid word picture we’ve inherited from the Vikings, as well as the Old French
estoner,
to stun, and the Latin
extonare
, to thunder. Thus, to
astonish
someone is to stun them with the thunder of your
wit
or ingenuity. Two stunning remarks I caught over the years help clarify our meaning. First, I recall how my father roared with laughter when he read in Mark Twain’s
Pudd’nhead Wilson
, “Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and
astonish
the rest,” a line that he quoted for the rest of his life. Years later, living in France, I read in
Rilke’s Letters on Cézanne
how the painter announced his entrée into the art world: “With an apple I will
astonish
Paris.” Recently, Mexican novelist Mario Bellatin confessed, “I want to read my own production and
astonish
myself, as if I were a reader coming to my own text for the first time.” It’s amazing to note that Van Gogh found Gauguin’s self-discipline “
astonishing
.” “Words, words, words,” as Hamlet said.
“Explanation separates us from
astonishment
,” said Eugène Ionesco, “which is the only gateway to the incomprehensible.” To hear the real thunder underneath the word, let’s remember Sergei Diaghilev’s challenging words to Jean Cocteau, as a way to demand better direction for a new ballet he was designing for him: “
Astonish
me!”

Astonish (Paul Cézanne)

Coming from, influenced by, or resembling, the stars. Star-like; starry; star-crossed.
There’s an Irish proverb that says, “The stars make no noise.” Maybe so, but they sure do inspire wonder-seeking words.
Astral
regards an intangible substance said to exist next to or above the tangible world, the
astral
plane, which has long been regarded as the source of the
astral
spirits or
astral
bodies. Our English word dates back to 1605, when it emerged from the Old French and Late Latin
astralis
, revealed by the stars;
astrum
, star; the Greek
aster;
and the even earlier Proto-Indo-European
aster
, simply, a star. This gives rise to a constellation of astronomy terms, including
asteroid
, a small star;
astrolabe
, star-catcher;
asterisk
, star-shaped;
disaster
, literally two stars, but in collision;
sidereal
, referring to stars.
Asterism
is the terrific term for the naming of
constellations
. Consider the marvel of
consider
, thinking under the stars.
Astrobleme
means “star-scarred,” craters from meteors;
astrolatry
, star worship;
estellation
was an ancient word for astrology, as uncovered by Herbert Coleridge. All these star-crossed words reflect the awe and wonder of our
starry
-eyed ancestors, who were undeterred by city lights and undistracted by the klieg lights of modern pop culture.
Astral Weeks
is the legendary album by Irish soul singer Van Morrison, which wanders celestially in the firmament of rock history. The medieval term
dignitie
s refers to the alleged
astral
advantages of a planet in a sign of the zodiac that strengthens “its influence, which is its Essential Dignity,” and if in a House
that strengthens its influence is its Accidental Dignity. And now you know why
astral
is a cosmic term.