Wordcatcher (31 page)

An expensive word for a cheap gift given to a customer
. This coinage comes from New Orleans, deriving from
la napa
, Spanish for “the gift,” from the American Indian or Cajun word
yapa
, a present from a trader to a steady customer. The impulse behind this form of gift giving is alive and well in the form of tchotchkes and gewgaws such as T-shirts, pens, pads of paper presented as little gifts, reminders, gratitudes. Funk cites our greatest wordsmith, Mark Twain’s, clever usage in
Life on the Mississippi
: “The English were trading beads and blankets to them [the Indians] for a consideration and throwing in civilization and whiskey ‘for
lagniappe
.’”

A 19th-century American custom in which neighbors roll logs together into a pile for burning; a contest among loggers in which they balance on floating logs while trying to knock each other off.
This terrific term passes the first
test
for the revival or
spread of a word—it’s terrifically
catchy
—and it’s catchy because it’s visual and fun to say. Furthermore, it is an American original. The contest is sometimes referred to as
birling
or
burling
, a game of skill among lumberjacks, which has its roots in the old Scottish word
birl
, to whirl round and round. Figuratively,
logrolling
refers to the tricky ability to keep your balance when everything is moving and slippery under your feet, but also, in politics, to the trading of votes or the scheming of legislators to slip a desired bill through without actually persuading fellow lawmakers about its merits—in other words, to knock them off the log. In an article published in 2003 in
Aquatics International
, Judy Hoeschler, who first learned how to
logroll
on water when she was 12 and won her first
logrolling
championship at 16, exulted, “Being a
logrolling
family is so much fun! It kinda blows people’s minds when they see we’re
logrollers
and none of us fit the Paul Bunyan image.” The word also applies to making concessions to the other party (like your opponent on a whirling log) in conflict resolution.

Of questionable reputation, in a raffish sort of way
. An outlaw with a touch of class, a rake with a hint of glamour, a hipster in some neighborhoods, riff-raff in another, all might be described as
louche
. The word conjures the decadence of bohemians who want to live on the outskirts of society. Its origins provide a word picture. The Latin
luscus
, one-eyed,
shady, disreputable, evolved into the French
louche
, for “cross-eyed” or “squint-eyed.” Its evolution from rabble to raffish resembles the evolution of some outlaws’ reputations; think of Bonnie and Clyde. The verb form,
to louche
, became popular in 19th-century Paris to describe the phenomenon of “clouding over,” as when some
louche
characters poured water into their glass of anise-flavored drinks such as Pernod or ouzo, hence “the ouzo effect.” In case you’d like to use it conversation, a poem, or song lyric, it helps to know that
louche
rhymes with baba ghanoush.

The deep force that moves the sun, the moon, the stars, and the heart.
An abiding affection. A word that transcends ordinary definition, and yet demands it, since it is often either misunderstood or trivialized. Etymologically it comes from loamy turf, the Proto-Indo-European
leubh
, which sired many progeny, such as German
liebe
, Dutch
liefde
, English
lief
and
liege
, dear or pledge, and even
libido
, strong desire. Many Western European words for “praise” come from the same source. The commingled meaning of “pleasing” and “praising,” plus “satisfied” and “trust,” all converge, as ancient poetry and modern psychology will attest, in our heart-swelling English word
love
. Where to begin with its innumerable uses? Why not at the very beginning, or near the beginning, in the single surviving line from Sophocles’ play
The Loves of Achilles
: “
Love
feels like the ice held in
the hand of children.” Twenty-five hundred years later, in
Ulysses
, James Joyce wrote the following lines, which were inexplicably stricken in the original 1922 edition but restored in the 1980s. About to leave Ireland in “silence, exile, and cunning,” Stephen Dedalus reflects, “Do you know what you are talking about?
Love
, yes. Word known to all men….” And later: “Tell me the word, mother, if you know now. The word known to all men.
Love.”
Companion words include the
murmurous
lovely
and the lamentable
loathed-loving
, another lost child from the first edition of the OED, referring to “hating oneself for being attached to somebody who is bad for you.” When Pompeii was excavated in the 18th century, this touching piece of graffiti was discovered: “
Lovers
, like bees, enjoy a life of honey.”

A nighttime song to lull children to sleep
. One of the perennials on Most Beautiful Words lists, dating back to c.1560, a natural protraction of
lull
, from the Swedish
lulla
and Dutch
lullen
, prattle. Ultimately, a reassuring echo of the syllable
lu
or
la
, joined with a second element, perhaps from
by-by
, good-by. In the late 1960s, Lennon and McCartney of the Beatles gave us one of the loveliest of modern
lullabies
when they adapted “Golden Slumbers Kiss Your Eyes,” a 17th-century poem by the poet and early
dictionary
maker Thomas Dekker. But rather than sing it themselves, they handed it over to Ringo to sing. His warmly avuncular
version, which rounded out the
Abbey Road
album, has helped lull children and lovers to sleep ever since: “Sleep, pretty darlings, do not cry, / and I will sing a
lullaby
. / Golden slumbers fill your eyes.” Companion
lullabies
include the incantatory Irish
“Tura lura lura,
” which “lures” our children to embark on a long, safe
tura
, or pilgrimage, across the Land of Nod, the world of sleep between dusk and dawn.

A mineral used for crafting tobacco pipes. Meerschaum
has long been found on certain seashores in “rounded white lumps,” and is believed by the folk to be petrified sea froth, as evidenced by the German
Meer
, sea, and
Schaum
, foam or scum (an early synonym for “foam”). This derives from the earlier Latin
spuma maris
, the spume of the sea, and before that, the Persian
kef-i-darya
. Easily shaped and sculpted,
meerschaum
is now synonymous with the frothy-appearing tobacco-pipe bowls carved by sailors with time on their hands. Brewer notes that when
meerschaum
is dug out of the shore, “it lathers like soap,” which is exactly what it’s used for by the Tartars to this day. Herman Melville’s biographer, Laurie Robertson-Lorant, describes the famed author of
Moby Dick
in later life: “Most evenings he just sat in his rocker puffing his
meerschaum
pipe and watching the great fireplace swallow down cords of wood as a whale does boats.”

Overwhelming sadness, merciless moodiness, grief’s house
. Hovering on the edge of chapfallen, sullen, gloomy, and petulant. The word first appears in English in 1303, from the Greek
melancholia
, from
melas
, black, and
khole
, bile or gall, an excess of which was said to cause plunging fits of depression, or irascibility. Traditionally,
melancholy
was regarded as the result of an overabundance of this “black gall,” a belief that’s survived in the expression “You’ve got a lot of gall,” suggesting someone who is rude, impertinent, or bitter. Medieval physicians believed the accretion from the spleen, one of the four “humors,” led to depression, even insanity. Eventually, four types of melancholy were distinguished:
melancholia attonita,
gloomy
; melancholia errabunda,
restless
; melancholia malevolens,
mischievous
; and melancholia complacens,
complacent
.
And we might add a fifth,
melancholia romantica
, as in “Melancholy Baby,” as sung by Judy Garland. Surprisingly,
down in the dumps
comes from
dumpin
, Swedish for melancholy;
dimba
, to steam, reek; and Danish
dump
, dull, damp, as in “to
damp
one’s spirits.” This was John Milton’s sense when he wrote in
Paradise Lost
: “A
melancholy
damp of cold and dry, / to weigh thy spirits down,” by which he is saying that
melancholy
damps, as in suffocates, the human spirit. Virginia Woolf wrote, in
Jacob’s Room
, “
Melancholy
were the sounds on a winter’s night.” Van Gogh wrote to his brother, Theo, about his life of “active
melancholy
.” On the walls of the Lion’s Den pub in Greenwich Village we find: “Neurosis is red /
Melancholia
is blue / I’m
schizophrenic / What are you?” Companion words include
moanworthy
, sad;
doleful
, full of grief;
lugubrious
, mournful; and
crepehanger
, a gloomy Gus, a pessimist.