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words
Once in a while a word gets stuck in my teeth and I have to find a way to dislodge it. Today I had two such words.
The first is stoop. Such as, I remember sitting on the stoop with my grandmother when she came to visit. Or: The front stoop was where we spent all our time on summer evenings.
What an odd, odd word, no? But the OED tells me that it has been in use in this way since at least 1789:
a. ‘An uncovered platform before the entrance of a house, raised, and approached by means of steps. ... 1789 Massachusetts Spy 20 Aug. 3/2 Several persons were in a stoop and at windows within fifteen or twenty feet from the tree. 1833 C. P. TRAILL Backwoods of Canada ix. (1836) 142 The Canadians call these verandahs ‘stoups’. 1837 HAWTHORNE Amer. Note-bks. 13 July (1883) 58 Councillors seated about, sitting on benches near the bar, or on the stoop along the front of the house. 1856 MISS WARNER Hills Shatemuc ii, He was cleaning the harness of the wagon, and he took it out into the broad stoop outside of the kitchen door. 1883 STEVENSON Across the Plains (1896) 16 The clear, bright, gardened townships spoke of country fare and pleasant summer evenings on the stoop.The other word is from the poem I quoted in a post a few days ago, to wit:
I say that words are men and when we spellAren't you wondering what a great Bridal could be? Here, the OED explains it:
In alphabets we deal with living things;
With feet and thighs and breasts, fierce heads, strong wings;
Material Powers, great Bridals, Heaven and Hell.
1. A wedding feast or festival; a wedding. (The sense ‘wedding feast’ is distinct in early usage; by the time of Wyclif the word was often extended to include the whole proceedings of the wedding or marriage, in which use it was often made plural (cf. L. nuptiæ, sponsalia, F. noces, ME. sposailes, mod. nuptials); it is now chiefly poetic, except when used attributively (see 2).And while I was sloshing around in the OED I decided to look up one of my least favorite words. To my surprise, I found that people have been using this word in the same way for a long time:
Hubby. A familiar colloquialism for HUSBAND.I provide these quotes in the hope that they will curl your toes, and convince you never to use the H word, if indeed you have been committing that particular infelicitude. And before you ask: no. Infelicitude is not in the OED, but I'll remind you that human language is a flexible construct, ever renewing itself. It is within my power (and yours too) to coin new words by taking liberties with bound prefixes and unbound suffixes and even (gasp) infixes, jumbling all or some of these up with whatever roots strike my fancy.1688 E. RAVENSCROFT London Cuckolds 28 Oh my hubby, dear, dear, dear hubby. 1798 MORTON Secr. worth knowing Epil. (Farmer), The wife, poor thing..Scarce knows again her lover in her hubby. 1803 True Briton in Spirit Pub. Jrnls. (1804) VII. 274 My dear Hubbey, this can't make me sick. 1887 Pall Mall G. 23 July 11 In disputes between a hubby and his better half.
June 14, 2005 09:52 PM
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Comments
I don't like 'hubby' either. And one word I loathe even though I have to use it is 'blog'. Ugliest word EVER, I think, except maybe for 'blogosphere'. However, trying to constantly use synonyms for those two concepts gets repetitive and starts to sound an awful lot like a person avoiding a certain word, so I just cringe and give in. And every time I do, my stickler-ish soul dies a little bit.
Posted by: Rachel at June 15, 2005 12:08 AM
Well, you certainly rankled my hackles! I loathe hubby, but that 1887 better half reference also sets me off just as badly (Gee, we haven't learned much in 100 years). Not quite understanding where this stuff came from, whatever is/are London Cuckolds? (As opposed, say, to New York Cuckolds) - a particularly interesting location for hubby!
Posted by: asdfg at June 15, 2005 04:45 PM
*London Cuckholds* is the name of the piece (written by E. Ravenscroft in 1688) where the quotation comes from. I'm not rushing out to find a copy, myself.
Posted by: sara at June 15, 2005 04:50 PM
Your comments bring to mind a "discussion" with my children a couple of years back about a word they were using (Munted).
At the time my point of view was that there was no such word.
As often happens with a newly discovered word or idea (for me your Jones would qualify Sara), I found that all sorts of people were using it , and it was coming up in all sorts of situations.
The final straw - I guess I have to totally concede the point to my children, was when I heard a local NZ current affairs frontperson use it on his TV news show.
In case you are wondering it has the same meaning as ruined, messed up or even f****d, and now I think it is a wonderful word - useful in all sorts of situations -Do you think the writers of Deadwood would be interested....?
Started watching that when it came on here in NZ at your suggestion Sara, my husband enjoys it , but I struggle with all the expletives I think it detracts from rather than adds to the story.
Each to their own as they say.
Posted by: Sally at June 16, 2005 06:55 PM
Hubby is an objectional word. Phonologically as well as semantically. I also hate "chunk" which shares the same unattractive vowel sound but not the semantic negatives.
I enjoy reading your blog!
Posted by: Kelly at June 17, 2005 08:22 AM