Wordcatcher (13 page)

Camera (Ansel Adams at Point Lobos)

A country in North America; the land of my ancestors.
According to Alberto Manguel, the name of his adopted homeland was granted when the first Spanish explorers landed in British Columbia and exclaimed: “
!Acá nada!
” (Here’s nothing!”). In “A Case of You,” Saskatoon, Saskatchewan’s’ own Joni Mitchell described one of the most unusual tributes to a lover on record, so to speak, when she wrote about how she took a cardboard coaster and in the light of a blue television screen, “I drew a map of Canada / Oh Canada / With your face sketched on it twice.” From down under, in Australia, comes a story that’s almost too good to be true; it goes like this. In 1770, the intrepid Captain Cook was exploring the northeast coast, near a river he named the Endeavour,
when a peculiar animal carrying her young in a pouch on her stomach came bounding by. Cook asked an Aborigine from the Guugu Yimidhirr tribe what it was. “
Gangurru
,” he was told, which the English sailors heard as
kangaroo
, and later entered folklore as “I don’t know.” Cook duly recorded it in the ship’s journal as “kangaroo.” And it’s said that when Spanish explorers arrived in southeastern Mexico they asked a leader from the Yucatec Maya people where in blazes they were, and were told: “Yucatán!” which actually meant “What do you want?” or “I don’t understand your words!” Whether or not these folk etymologies are literally true, they reveal the rare cracks of light and humor from the official reports of these colonial powers, as if to say, yes, there were misunderstandings.

To caress, pet, fondle; lovemaking
. A titillating verb, an amorous euphemism. Cuddling, with the promise of a little action; a humorous way to describe fooling around without sounding like one—a fool, that is. A word that snuggles up to you and asks to be embraced.
The American Heritage Dictionary
suggests that it could be related to the English dialectal
canoodle
, donkey, fool, and it’s not hard to imagine Eddie Murphy’s donkey in
Shrek
asking a girly donkey to
canoodle
in the back of the barn. But it is the suggestion of being a
Fool for
Love
, as Sam Shepard wrote about in his tumultuous stage play, that gives the word the
mule-kick of meaning. The AHD also hints at a connection with the colloquial German
knudeln
, to press or mold with your fingers, as with dough, which conjures up the possible origin of how a little
canoodling
could lead to sighing to your lover, “my little dumpling.” Here is a case of being so delighted with a new word that I went racing home—in Berkeley, circa 1981, on my 850 Yamaha—to check my dictionary. I had just seen
The Lady Eve
at the now sadly defunct University Theater and heard Ann Sheridan purr these lines about what she planned to do with her beau: “[I’m going to] finish what I started. I’m going to dine with him, dance with him, swim with him, laugh at his jokes,
canoodle
with him, and then one day about six weeks from now…” She didn’t have to say more. Companion words to use with your
inamorata
, your lover, include
croodle
, which Robert Hunter tenderly defines in his collection of words from Chester as “to snuggle, as a young animal snuggles against its mother.” And who can forget the amorous alliteration of Ian Dury and the Blockheads, in the mellifluously named “Honeysuckle Highway,” when they sing, “Cruising down carnality canal in my canoe can I
canoodle
?”

Any jargon used for secret purposes.
The language or “slanted talk” of street gangs, criminals, mendicants, villains, beggars, prisoners, artistes, or rogues (also called “rogers”)—all those who feel the need for angled,
skewed
,
coded language. According to Dr. Johnson,
cant
is probably from Latin
cantus
, implying the odd tone of voice used by vagrants; but some imagine it to be a corruption of
quaint
. “Clear your mind of
cant
,” he scolded Boswell, for he thought it “barbarous jargon,” and one of his ideals with the language was to purify it.
The Oxford Dictionary of Word History
defines
cant
as an allusion to “singing,” from
cantare
, the singing of choirs in the streets or beggars “singing” for alms. Skeats writes that it was “at first a beggar’s whine; hence, hypocrisy.” Cassidy makes a persuasive case that Irish was the “first literate vernacular in Europe,” providing English with thousands of words, among them
cant
, which he suggests hails from the Irish
caint
, “speech, talk, and conversation.” Thus,
cant
is evidence that there are always at least two levels of any given language, the official and the unofficial, the surface and the subterranean. Some
cant
survives, like the talk of gypsies; some is lost forever, such as the secret language of women in classical Greece. Companion words include
cantankerous
, a blend word of
cant
and
rancorous
, bitter talk.
Recant
then means something like “to take back your whining words.”
Gibberish
is another form of the secret language of rogues, imitative of chattering sounds, possibly a corruption of
jabber
, which in turn derives from French
gaber
, to cheat. Coming full circle, we find that
cant
is considered
gibberish
by the threshold guardians of language who often feel cheated—or left out—by the secret language of the street that is often far more alive and vibrant than their own.

Espresso coffee mixed or topped with steamed milk or cream.
For me, the perfect cup of
cappuccino
resembles one of Morandi’s still-life paintings, trembling with earthen browns and whites. However, the word arose from the beverage’s inspired resemblance to the
cappuccio,
or long, pointed brown hoods worn by the Capuchin order of Italian friars. From the monk’s habit to the coffee habit didn’t take long; the word appeared in English in 1785. The first use of
cappuccino
in American English is recorded in 1948, after the rapid rise of cappuccino machines in America’s postwar fascination with European culture. Thus, a true
cappuccino
is a divine breakfast drink in Italy that begins with a strong shot of espresso followed by a dollop of velvety steamed milk, which insulates the drink, and often, like a monk’s hood, which helps him focus by keeping away the outside world, it leads to
contemplative
thought. Either way,
cappuccino
is a habit that’s hard to break. In the comedy
So I Married an Axe Murderer
the mock beat poet Mike Myers holds up a manhole-cover-sized
cappuccino
at a North Beach, San Francisco café and snarls to the waitress, “Excuse me, but I think I ordered a LARGE
cappuccino!
” Companion words include the
capuchin
monkey
,
so called for the tuft of black cowl-like hair, and
feather
, the slight verb favored by certain
baristas
to describe “the rising of cream on the surface of a cup of tea or coffee.”

Awry, askew, askance
. A bumptious-sounding Appalachian word, first recorded in 1840, for “mixed up; out of balance.” As the lexicographers say, it’s O.O.O., of obscure origin, but we can rest assured in this case that it is probably of “humorous formation.” If you’re on the mountain overlooking Knoxville and an old hunter says, “You’re all
catawampus
,” he means you’re lost, or you’ve lurched off track, or maybe you need a chiropractor, or maybe he thinks you’re as crooked as the road you just meandered down in your ’32 Ford truck. For some recondite reason that should keep the word mavens busy for a thousand years, there is a wide raft of companion words for this
helter-skelter
condition. They include
farrago
, another country word, meaning a mix of available grains to feed animals;
mishmash,
and
mumblejumble
.
Hodgepodge
is a French-Dutch corruption of
hotchpot
, a confused medley, according to Skeat. In “The Place of Humbug” Lewis Carroll wrote, “I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls, / And each damp thing that creeps and crawls / Went
wobble-wobble
on the walls.” Companion words include
catawamptious
, crooked, like a politician on the take, and Old Western slang for “chawed up, demolished, utterly defeated.”