Wordcatcher (26 page)

A site for exercise, a school for
athletes
.
Literally from the Greek
gymnos
, and
gymnazein
, to exercise naked, a practice banned in 393 AD by blue-nosed Roman rulers who were offended at the sight of naked bodies cavorting in the gyms. Around fifteen centuries later the Germans, following their digs at Olympia, revived the word and applied it to their own upper school, whence it ran across to England and ultimately to the US. Fellow words include the 19th-century back-formations
gym, gymnast, gymnastic,
and
gymnosophist,
the last a peculiarly ambiguous description of a certain sect of Hindu gurus who taught buck naked. Curious citations include Vladimir Lenin’s “Chess is the
gymnasium
of the mind.” Companion words include the popular
gym rat
, originally used to describe basketball players who seem to spend every waking hour shooting hoops, but now taken to mean anyone who spends a lot of time working out.

One who loves to nibble on a woman’s earlobes.
A voluptuous name for a tremulous habit. And you thought there wasn’t a word to describe this kind of torrid lover. This mouthful comes from the Greek
gyne
, woman, plus
otikos
, of the ear,
lobos
, lobe,
masso
, chew, and
philos
, loving. Strung together, it makes for a rictus of risible pleasure, if whispered at just the right moment. Companion words include
gynopiper
, one who looks lewdly upon unsuspecting women;
melcryptovestimentphilia
, the love of black underwear, and
nympholepsy
, the throbbing trance produced by erotic fantasies of earlobes, black underwear, and other seductive triggers.

Content, without a care, and since the 14th century, fortunate
. “Oh, Happy Day,” sing the Edwin Hawkins Singers. Etymologically, it emerges from
hap
, a concise 14th-century word meaning “a chance occurrence, fate,
fortune
, befall.” Nothing
haphazard
there, nothing risky. A
happy
soul is a “lucky” one, a connection in many languages, with the poetically curious exception of Welsh where it meant “wise,” one who is “very glad.” Companion words include
hapless
, without luck;
perhaps
, by chance; and
happenstance
, what lies in store for us, originally meaning “very glad,” but the kind of
happiness
that comes to us by chance, by accident. There is also
haply
, by good luck. Curiously,
perhaps
is connected, through Old Norse, “by chance,” by the nod of the gods.
Flakhappy
means “frazzled from stress,”
happy hour
, “twilight drink discounts,”
happy-go-lucky
, “plucky,” and “
happy as a clam
,” which is a
contraction of
happy
as a clam at high tide—
happy
to be left alone when the tides of time run over us, or, can’t be dug up this time! The lilting Italian
cuor contento
means a “
happy
heart,” suggestive of the way a
happy
, even-tempered person feels. Consider the felicitous words of young Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, a few hours before eloping with her lover poet, “I hope, indeed, oh my loved [Percy] Shelley, we shall indeed be
happy
.” Consider, too, the heart-stopping words of poet Jack Gilbert, in “Between Aging and Old”: “Lying in the dark, / singing about the intractable / kinds of
happiness
.” And we can’t forget the traditional Greek farewell
Khaire!
“Be
happy
!” There, fair reader, are you
happy
now? And, sadly, there is
anhedonia
, incapable of feeling
happiness
.

To harass, make fun of, criticize, disconcert, challenge, gibe, badger, or ‘question severely in a bid to find weaknesses.’
A harsher version of the Scots
heckle
, an 18th-century word from
haeckle
, a way to comb flax or hem, from the Middle Dutch
hekelen
, to prickle, irritate. The Scots borrowed the word to describe those who got in trouble with the clergy for doing this simple manual labor on the Sabbath, and the word steadily evolved to include any kind of public ridicule, including that of government figures. Ironically,
heckle
came to mean the opposite of what it originally meant; from the trouble you caused by doing innocent
work to the trouble you
made
for others whose work or ideas you don’t appreciate. Years ago, at the Holy City Zoo in San Francisco, I caught an up-and-coming comic who dealt with a rash of
heckling
from the audience. “Did you hear the one about the blind heckler who shouted: “Get off!” at a really lousy comedian? Well, he waited for a long, lonely moment, then he said, “Are you still here?” In 1996, the whiplash-quick comedian Phyllis Diller told Janeane Garofalo, “You’d have to make an appointment to
heckle
me. My timing is so precise that either the audience is laughing or I am talking.
Hecklers
wait for a pause. They wait for dead air, and there’s no dead air in my act.” Curiously, many strong verbs for criticism come from humble labor, such as
excoriate
, to severely criticize, denounce, from the Latin
excoriare
, to flay or strip off the hide, from
ex
, off, and
corium
, hide, skin. Thus, to “tear the hide off.” Companion words include
excruciate
, to torture, especially on a cross.

A demigod, a warrior, one to be emulated
. A universal character, embodying the idea in ancient and modern cultures of someone who seemingly possesses superhuman abilities, but also lives for others as a defender of home and hearth, a protector. The earliest English usage dates to 1387, and defines a hero as “a man of superhuman strength or courage,” from the ancient Greek
heros
. The Middle
English use focused on the mythological stories of persons with superhuman ability who were watched over by the gods. Later, the word came to mean more generally a model person, someone worth emulating, or as Emerson memorably defined a
hero
, one “who is immovably centered.” The late 17th century saw the word taken to signify the main character in a novel, play, or story. The first use of
heroine
was recorded in 1659, and
hero worship
in 1774. Companion words include the New York
hero sandwich
, an American version of the Mediterranean
gyro
(from
gyrate
, “to spin”); and
heroin
, which made early users feel
heroic
. Since the two World Wars the idea of what an individual
hero
can do in the face of real evil has taken a beating, giving rise to the
antihero
in literature and film, someone not ideal, perfect, or divine, but imperfect, often selfish, and usually irredeemably alone. The gallery is crowded: Humphrey Bogart in
Casablanca
, James Dean in
Rebel without a Cause
, Sigourney Weaver in
Gorillas in the Mist
, Keanu Reeves in
The Matrix
movies.

In the know, streetwise, keenly aware, socially clever, enlightened, sophisticated, inside the outside, in the pocket, someone who gets it.
To be
hip
embodies the dance between the insider and the outsider, it is to see the truth that others don’t; the hipster is able to put it to words, music, paint, stone, or film. Imagine a combination of Mark Twain, Miles
Davis, Billie Holliday, and Warner Brothers’ Chuck Jones. The author of
Hip
, John Leland, writes, “
Hip
is a term for enlightenment,” presumably in endarkened times. It was brought over on slave ships from Africa as the Wolof verb
hepi
, to open one’s eyes and see, to be aware. Cassidy offers an alternate derivation, tracing
hip
back to the old Irish
aibi
, pronounced “hipi,” for “mature, clever, quick, wise.” With common use in the
jazz
and blues clubs and the brothels of Storyville, New Orleans, the word was burnished and shortened into
hip
, street patois for those who see through the lies of society.
Hipsters
were the “holy fools” in the Beat circles of the Fifties. Perennially hard to define, like jazz itself, you know
hipness
when you see it. Jazz drummer Tony Williams recognized it when he saw Miles Davis play, saying later, “That’s the life I want to live.” Companion words include
hep
,
hip
,
cool
, righteous, in the know;
hepcat
, one who is
hep
, totally uncubistic (not square); and of course
hippie
, from the Sixties, as in the description of Jack Kerouac on the back cover of
On the Road
as the “
Hippie
Homer of the turned-on generation…” The
hipoisie
performers in the
funky
(from “heavy”) blues music world learned how
to funkify
, or frighten the straight world with darkly menacing bass lines and sensuous lyrics. No coincidence, then, that the name of the legendary backup band in Motown was The Funk Brothers.