Wordcatcher (7 page)

One who competes in sporting contests.
An
athlete
is to a competition as an actor is to a play. Few words exercise the imagination as much as this one. Since the very beginning of competitive sports, in the Ancient Olympics (776 BCE), the athlete has been on stage. The Greeks believed that every
athlete
was an actor, every actor an
athlete
; every sporting event a drama, every drama a kind of
athletic
competition. This was acted out, in every sense of the word, since the Greeks used the same word for both,
athlein
, in the
stadium
, from
stadia
, the length of the ancient footrace; and in the
theater
, from
theatron
, a place for viewing, and the earlier
theasthai
, to behold. What is so compelling to me is what the root
thea
, to view, and its derivative
theates
, spectator, can tell us about why we love sports, theater, and the movies. They are all stages for
transport
. We compete or play, we dramatize our lives for others to see; we view the way that others play and compete. At the heart of these two dramas was the notion of the
athlos
, the competition, and
athlein
, contesting for the
athlon
, the prize. An
athlete
was someone who performed in a contest, in a
gymnasium
, from
gymnos
, naked, reflecting the rule that Greek
athletes
performed in the nude, to ensure no cheating. So a true
athlete
hides nothing, plays fair. The word first appears
in English in 1528, in one of the first health books,
The Salerno Guide to Regimen: This Booke Teachyng All People to Governe Them in Health
, by Thomas Paynell.
Athletics
followed in 1727,
athlete’s
foot, in 1928. Thus,
athletes
play and compete for themselves and for the spectators as a way to stage the pursuit of excellence in mind, body, and spirit. When all three come together, everybody wins.

A volume of maps or a catalog of illustrations, named after the demigod who was said to support the world on his shoulders.
The mythic association reaches back to 1585, when the first collection of modern maps was published by Gerhardus Mercator, the inventor of the Mercator projection. His son Rumold used an engraving of Atlas on the title page of his father’s book. His inspired choice has inspired mapmakers ever since. Atlas had been one of the Titans, who were defeated by the new reign of gods, and he was condemned for all eternity to carry the world on his shoulders—an echo of
atlas
, being old Greek for “support, sustain, bear.”
Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable
relates how Atlas came to call home the mountain range in Morocco that was later named after him. Figuratively,
Atlas
was resurrected as the poster boy for muscle men everywhere, such as circus strongmen and weight lifters. A young bodybuilder named Angelo Siciliano adopted the moniker Charles Atlas, after a buddy flattered him by comparing him to the statue of
Atlas that straddled a hotel on Coney Island. His fitness ads focused on “97-pound weaklings” having sand kicked in their faces by bullies at the beach, a threat that persuaded untold thousands of adolescent boys to send in a dollar for his popular workout program. “Step by step and the thing is done,” he advised. “I’ll prove in only seven days I can make you a new man.” Which proves that men have long had a hankering to develop shoulders wide enough to support their world—and to avenge insults to their manhood.

One who reads the signature of all things
. A Roman priest who interpreted the
auspices
, the signs observed in sheep’s intestines, bird flight, the waves on the sea, and the stars in the sky. Since the
augurs
were believed to have the power to read the will of the gods, they were expected to declare whether the signs were favorable or unfavorable. Virtually every decision of public importance during the reign of the empire was taken “under the auspices.” Consider the Roman historian Livy: “Who does not know that this city was founded only after taking the divinations, that everything in war and peace, at home and abroad, was done only after taking the divinations?” Plutarch distinguished between details that the augurs discovered on the left, or
sinister
side of the sacrificial animal, which foreboded evil because left was associated with the setting sun,
(as were death and departure); and the details on the right, or
dexterous
side, which
augured
well because it symbolized the sacred East, the rising sun, the return of life. To “
augur
well” came to mean a favorable prediction, as did the later phrase to “bode well,” a
bode
being a herald or messenger. Companion words include
inaugurate
, to begin;
auspicious
, favorable signs; and
euphemism
, to use words of good omen, as the great Skeat wrote; plus
portent
and
portentous
, to point out, stretch toward. While scrying crystal balls may be rare these days, there is no lack of sources for trying to predict the future, such as reading tea leaves, interpreting horoscopes, playing the stock market, and betting the odds on sporting matches. After reading the troubling
augurs
of history, novelist Rebecca West predicted that the modern world would be marked by “a desperate search for a pattern.” Speaking of which, the desperate quest can also lead us astray, seeing patterns or connections where they ain’t, which is the very definition of
apophenia
.

The great sigh of things.
To be aware of
aware
(pronounced ah-WAH-ray) is to be able to name the previously ineffable sigh of impermanence, the whisper of life flitting by, of time itself, the realization of evanescence.
Aware
is the shortened version of the crucial Japanese phrase
mono-no-aware
, which suggested sensitivity or sadness during the Heian period, but with a hint of actually relishing the
melancholy
of it all. Originally, it was an interjection of surprise, as in the English “Oh!” The reference calls up bittersweet poetic feelings around sunset, long train journeys, looking out at the driving rain, birdsong, the falling of autumn leaves. A held-breath word, it points like a finger to the moon to suggest an unutterable moment, too deep for words to reach. If it can be captured at all, it is by haiku poetry, the brushstroke of calligraphy, the burbling water of the tea ceremony, the slow pull of the bow from the
oe
. The great 16th-century wandering poet Matsuo Basho caught the sense of
aware
in his haiku: “By the roadside grew / A rose of Sharon. / My horse / Has just eaten it.” A recent Western equivalent would be the soughing lyric of English poet Henry Shukman, who writes, “This is a day that decides by itself to be beautiful.”

Aware (The Great Sigh of Things)

To confuse, discombobulate, or foil
. A word that could be cited to describe its own curious origins, which was the
baffling
punishment of a knight errant, or should we say, an erring knight? The word dates back to 1548, and paints a
bewildering
picture of public disgrace worthy of Brueghel. Richardson writes, “
baffull
is a great reproach among the Scottes, and is used when a man is openly perjured, and then they make of him an image paynted reuersed, with hys heles vpwarde, with his name, wondering, cryenge, and blowing out of [i.e. at] hym with hornes, in the moost despitefull manner they can.” So a disgraced knight, or an effigy of him, was hung upside down by his heels for perjury or other dishonorable conduct. Richardson adds that the word may be a Scottish corruption of
bauchle
, to treat somebody contemptuously, or to act tastelessly, which possibly traveled across the North Sea from Icelandic
bágr
,
uneasy, poor, also a struggle. Others speculate that
baffle
is linked to the French
bafouer
, to abuse, hoodwink, and
baf
, a natural sound of disgust, like
bah
, still heard in Parisian cafés, as
bof
. The legendary Associated Press reporter Mort Rosenblum describes the word as unspellable and the delivery as being “in the aspiration, like getting unwanted air out through fluttering lips, impelled by colossal ennui, with a rolling of the eyes, and a slight tossing of the head.” Thus, to
baffle
is more than
confuse
but less than
vilify
; it is to turn somebody upside down with contempt, disgrace them ten ways from Sunday, with your reproach. Biologist Edward O. Wilson writes, “Sometimes a concept is
baffling
not because it is profound but because it’s wrong.” Companion words or senses include the
baffle
in a sound studio or mechanical device, whose first published use was in 1881.