Wordcatcher (21 page)

An andiron, often featuring a sculpted dog
. The name may seem arbitrary, but therein lies a tale or two. Technically, it is the name for the thin metal supports for firewood mounted on short “legs,” which are anchored in the stone floor of the hearth. Of unknown origin, but first appearing in 1309, possibly inspired by the Old French
andier
, from the Gaulish prefix
andero
, a young
bull
, an echo of the practice of throwing bull’s heads into the fireplace. The animal associations live on. During the Middle Ages meat was prepared over an open fire, often by rotating a spit
by hand, which was hard, sweaty work. Eventually, a contraption was invented that allowed a dog to run on a leash, which turned a flywheel, which turned the spit. That is, until animal rights groups abolished the device as cruel. Thus, centuries of animal presence around the hearth, from the meat grilled there, to the resemblance to legs, and dogs that turned the spit, are compressed into the image that lives on in the iron shapes of dogs on the andirons. A curious footnote: The town of Abergavenny, Wales, has a museum that displays an old engraving of a
turnspit
, which happens to be the name for a small dog that was bred to run inside a wheel cage placed inside a fireplace. Eventually, the caption says, the canine mechanism was replaced by a clockwork mechanism that’ rotated the spit (I’m paraphrasing here), but the memory of the live dogs was honored in the name for the old andirons.

A soulful urban wanderer.
Not someone who makes
flans
, as I once overheard from a misguided American tourist in a Paris café, but also not one who is merely “a loafer or idler,” as dismissed by the prim Mrs. Byrne in her otherwise delectable dictionary. Her suspicion has deep roots in the ancient enmity between townsfolk and those who are constantly on the move, such as Gypsies and bohemians, as in
The Grand Panjandrum’s
pointy-headed definition: one who is “usually not a vagrant, but an unsettled
idler with little concern for others.” Hardly so. The
flâneur
comes from a noble tradition, strolling to savor the city, in contrast to the flashier
boulevardier
, who strolls in hopes of being savored
by
the city. The roots of
flâneur
would appear to be French or Flemish, but the word actually comes from Old Norse
flana
, a wanderer. Their patron saint, poet Charles Baudelaire, writes: “For the perfect
flâneur
, for the passionate observer, it’s an immense pleasure … in whatever is seething, moving, evanescent and infinite; you’re not at home, but you feel at home everywhere.” Or as the great humorist James Thurber wrote, “It is better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all.” Companion words include
flânerie
, the actual practice and activity of the
flâneur
;
boulevardier
, one who walks city streets in hopes of being recognized as an artiste or philosopher; and
promenadier,
saunterer
,
and
ambulist
. Those great hikers the Scots also gave us
stravaig
, to wander from place to place, from the Scots
extravage
, to wander about, to stray in
conversation
, from Latin
extravagare
, related to
extravagant
. Thus, a
flâneur
is an extravagant wanderer.

Flâneur

To signal romantic or sexual interest, but more theatrically than seriously.
So much romance compacted into such a short word. Curiously, in its 16th-century adolescence the Early Modern English word
flurt
was loaded with meaning, “to turn up one’s nose, to sneer,” “to flick something away with the fingers,” and even “a stroke of
wit
.” This evolved into the fluttering French
fleuterer
, to use flowery language or talk sweet nonsense, which creates a word picture of bees flitting from flower to flower. Similarly,
flit
is an old Scottish word for “moving house,” as the Anglo-Saxon
flurt
means “to move constantly from object to object, in short, quick flights.”
Flirt
is the love child of all this illicit commingling, a tricky word that signals many conflicting messages, from the witty to the cheeky attentions of a
“flighty girl.” Dr. Johnson considered a
flirt
to be a “pert young hussey.” Shakespeare’s
flirt-gill
(Jill) was “a woman of light or loose behavior.” Altogether, the common meaning for
flirt
has changed little since its 1777 definition, “to play at courtship.” Ronda Rich writes in
What Southern Women Know about Flirting
that it is like making a mint julep: “making the drink even stronger is a recipe for a good time to be had by all.” Gregg Mortenson writes in
Three Cups of Tea
that the Pakistani word for
flirt
is
Eve-tease
. Companion words include the whirligigging
flirtigig
from Yorkshire, a giddy,
flirtatious
girl. Thus, to
flirt
is to
flit
from one sweet thing to the next, while
flicking
back the attentions of anybody who picks up on your signals. Ultimately,
flirting
is alternately frustrating, frenetic, and fun.

To laugh with every muscle in the face.
To say it is to see it.
Flizzen
is another
sonicky
word, as well as an “eloquent tighten-up word,” like
flinch, clinch, winch,
and shrink—words that make you pucker up and contort your face. There’s just something about those double
z
’s. If you happen to look it up and keep riffling pages, you’ll find
flodder
, to disfigure [the face] in consequence of weeping. It contains an allusion to the marks left on the banks of a river by an inundation, from Swedish
flod-a,
to overflow. Wherever the cup of emotions runneth over, at roisteringly funny parties or dirge-sad funerals, we can feel a
kind of sympathetic magic with the natural world. The antonym here is also illuminating: to
ridicule
is the polar opposite of hearty, full-faced laughter, for it really means “to laugh
at
,” and it wouldn’t be too much to add “with every muscle in the face.” To dig deeper into
ridicule
is to discover how words can turn in on themselves. Eventually,
ridicule
referred to words or actions that evoked sarcastic laughter, contemptuous language, derisive humor. Its roots are 17th-century Latin
ridiculum
, to make a joke out of, and
ridere
, to laugh at. And why do we need to laugh? One of the most heartbreakingly funny writers of our time, the late Frank McCourt, wrote in ’
Tis
:
A Memoir
, “We tell jokes because every joke is a short story with a fuse and an explosion.” And when we do, we
flizzen
with laughter, even if we’ve never heard of the word.

Flizzen

The act of regarding something as absolutely worthless or useless, such as this very word
. If you didn’t have a soft spot in your heart for long words that are fun to say and thrilling to hear, this one, from the halls of Eton, might convert you. A rhythmic example of a
sesquipedalian
word, one that’s six and a half feet long,
floccinaucinihilipilification
is often regarded as the longest word in
The Oxford English Dictionary
, notwithstanding James Joyce’s jawbreaker word for “thunder,”
bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoor denenthurnuk
, which he created from untold numbers of obscure languages. (To deride his neologism as a literary parlor trick would be a florid example of
floccinaucinihilipilification
.) The origins of our word are obscure, but possibly date back to a college parody of one of Eton’s lexicons, in which four Latin words were linked together:
flocci-naucinihili-pilification
. Sir Walter Scott gave the word its
bona fides
when he used it to describe money. If pushed to use it today, one might describe someone, let’s say an antique dealer, who is notorious for his habit of
floccinaucinihilipilification
, the belittling of his clients when they asked him to evaluate their artifacts. Companion words include
floccify
, to consider something worthless, which is a fancy way to say
trivialize
.