Wordcatcher (28 page)

An ignorant person; someone with limited intelligence
. Dr. Johnson succinctly defines one as “a fool; a natural; a changeling; one without powers of reason.” If this seems overly harsh, consider its true origins. To the early Greeks,
idios
literally meant “one’s own,” but figuratively meant “a private person,” one who was either unqualified for public affairs or far too much “his own man,” a loner, an inexperienced man. Eventually,
idios
came to mean a person incapable of holding public office; later it took on the meaning of a person with the (believed to be enormous) privilege of voting who didn’t participate in civic affairs or shirked his civic responsibility. One of the worst of epithets then and now, an
idiot
was someone who didn’t vote or attend the Senate. By the early 1300s,
idiot
referred to a mentally incapable person, from the Old French
idiote
, for “uneducated person,” Thus, an
idiot
has long been someone whose individuality far outweighs his or her commitment or connection to the community, as evidenced by its flowing into fellow words like
idiosyncrasy
, an individual’s peculiar behavior traits, and
idiom
, an individualistic expression;
idiot box
, a description of a television set, from 1959;
idiot light
, the red flasher on the dashboard, from 1968. The
sarcasm and disapproval that imbues the word is captured by Mark Twain’s aside, “Reader, suppose you were an
idiot
. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” Novelist Rebecca West, in an unguarded moment, suggested a subtle distinction: “The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are
idiots
.”

A layer of the sky sandwiched between the atmosphere and outer space
. It is situated exactly where the word suggests, a place not-known, from
ignore
, not to know. This playful term refers to the most poorly investigated and misunderstood region of space, which is beyond the reach of ordinary aircraft and below orbiting spacecraft. A so-called derivative word, invented by meteorologists who wished to draw attention to a “sphere of air” surrounding the earth that other scientists had “ignored”: hence, the jocular
ignorasphere
. But not only ignored—unrecognized. Not until recently has it been understood as the source of natural phenomena such as lightning storms, and as the region millions of meteors enter at their peril—and then disintegrate. Actually, it is a playful synonym for the mesosphere, from Greek
mesos
, middle, and
sphaira
, ball, the layer of the earth’s atmosphere above the stratosphere and below the thermosphere, located between fifty and ninety kilometers above the surface of the earth. Thus, we ignore
the
ignorasphere
at our peril, as it generates “atmospheric tides” and “gravity tides,” and even the eerily beautiful
noctilucent
, night-shining clouds. Companion words include
atmosphere
, steam sphere;
troposphere
, revolving sphere;
stratosphere
, spreading sphere;
ionosphere
, violet sphere.

Rebellious, arrogant, with a tincture of realizing a higher justice
. Richard Chenevix Trench’s definition, trenchant as it is, deserves to be quoted: “The
insolent
is, properly, no more than the unusual. This, as the violation of the fixed law and order of a society, is commonly offensive, even as it indicates a mind willing to offend, and thus
insolent
has acquired its present meaning. But for the poet, the fact that he is forsaking the beaten track … in this way to be
insolent
, or original, as we should now say, may be his highest praise.” First recorded in 1386, “proud, disdainful, haughty, arrogant,” from Latin
insolentem
, which may be related to
sodalis
, close companion. The modern sense of being contemptuous of authority dates from 1678. Aristotle is credited with the pithy saying “
Wit
is educated
insolence
.” Sharing a piquant observation about her friends Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis said, “She matched his
insolence
.”

In a word, Louis; in two, Ella Fitzgerald; in three, Charlie “Bird” Parker; in four, Irish heat or passion. Its origins are as
hip
as its syncopated rhythm.
Jazz
jumped out of Black America’s
juke
joints, those cheap bars in the South that flailed with bump-and-grind dancing and bad-ass music, as intertwined as two lovers on the dance floor swaying to an Eartha Kitt song. So
jazzin’
was slang for getting it on,
jazzy
became an adjective to describe the slick moves of a Pete Maravich on the basketball court. Cassidy’s Irish- American
dictionary
offers the Irish
teas
, pronounced
j’as ch’as
, and meaning “passion, ardor, excitement, sexual heat and excitement.” His persuasive research tracks the word to as early as 1917, in the Bay Area, where it was a “hot new word” heard in music halls and whorehouses and on baseball fields. He writes,
“Jazz
was so full of
jasm
and
gism
(
iteas ioma
, an abundance of heat) … It was a word
you learned by ear—like
jazz
music.” Often used together by the immigrant Irish,
jasm
and
gism
had a kind of bluesy “call and response” relationship, which resulted in
tch’as
pronounced, drum roll, please—
jazz
. Originally a kind of “spark.” it appears in Northern California sports pages, in the 1890s, to describe ballplayers who performed with
gis
, sass, zest, pizzazz. In hipster slang,
jazz
means having sex, as in “I Want a Jazzy Kiss,” by Mamie Smith, 1921. Companion words include
jazzbo
, boyfriend;
jazz water
, bootleg alcohol;
jazzed
, excited.
Jive
, as indispensable in
jazz
as syncopation, is defined in
Hip Slang
as “to kid, to talk insincerely, to use elaborate or trick language”—immortalized in Cab Calloway’s crepuscular dictionary of
Jive Talk
in the 1920s.

To curse; an evil spell; a person or article that brings bad luck.
Traditionally cited as O.O.O. “of obscure origin.” But that doesn’t mean we can’t
speculate
, hold up a mirror, to the popular word, no matter how
baffling
it is to scholars. Long associated with witchcraft and witches, who used a certain
wryneck
bird for divination. Pindar and Aeschylus cite
iunx
as a peculiar contraption called a witch’s wheel that turned with a “hapless bird,” the
Jynx torquilla
, that is able to rotate its neck 360 degrees. Reportedly, onlookers were charmed. Biologist Lyall Watson traces it back to
jynges
, for “unspeakable counsels” in ancient Chaldaic philosophy.
Lexicographer and poet John Ciardi roots it in “
Iunx
, the wryneck, squawking European bird that can twist its neck in an extra way.” Not until the 1910 does the word resurface—in the sports pages again—in a reference to a couple of hapless ballplayers who hadn’t escaped “the
jinx
that has been following the champions.” The New York Giants’ Christy Mathewson, in his 1912 book
Pitching at a Pinch,
described a
jinx
as “something which brings bad luck to a ball player.” Actress Gina Gershon says, “I’ve seen it too many times in Hollywood. Talking about a relationship in public can
jinx
it. And if you have your picture taken together, you might as well start packing your bags.”

A huge wagon; an unstoppable force; an act of sacrificial devotion
. A word with the strength of its image. What is now considered anything with runaway force, a team of horses, a locomotive, a political campaign, comes from an ancient Hindu ritual where a few thousand ardent worshippers pull a colossal statue or icon of a god in a religious procession, predominantly the Puri Festival in Orissa, India. The Sanskrit
Jacganatha
, from
jagat
, world, and
nathas
, lord, lends the immediacy of the image of an idol of the “Lord of the World,” Krishna or Vishnu, parading through the streets and causing a rapturous havoc. Unsubstantiated to this day are those dispatches from early Western reporters who claimed to see worshippers throwing themselves under the
wheels of the
juggernaut
, inspired by their religious fervor. Nonetheless, the stories inspired the
metaphor
of an inexorable, wild, crushing force, such as an invading army. At Caffè Trieste, in San Francisco, in the early 1970s, a young screenwriter named Francis Ford Coppola wrote in his script for
Patton
: “Meanwhile, the main body of Patton’s army … resupplied now and rolling like a
juggernaut
, slashes toward the Saar.”