The Scrivener: Slenching On The Gleby Ground
Come along now! Quick, quick! What is the meaning of “aryl’’ and “awhape’’?
Brian Barratt goes delving into the corners of our cavernous language which rarely see the light of day.
When you have a bash at crosswords and other word puzzles in the newspaper, there are often words you’ve never heard of. Or you might have heard of them but never used them. You find them the next day when the answers are printed. Just for fun, here are a few examples plus some words you probably won't find in a newspaper puzzle or an ordinary dictionary because they are obsolete or restricted to local dialects.
Aryl
Oh, silly me, it isn’t a fleshy and usually brightly colored cover of some seeds that develops from the ovule stalk and partially or entirely envelopes the seed. That’s an aril. No, aryl is something to do with aromatic hydrocarbons in Chemistry. Thinks: Must drop that into my next chat with the next-door neighbour.
Awhape
I don't think you'll find this verb in a crossword puzzle or in a standard modern dictionary. It was used just a few times in the 1300s and 1500s. In 1775 Dr Johnson defined it as to strike, to confound. The Oxford English Dictionary has to amaze, to stupefy with fear.
Cleg
This comes from a 600-year-old Norse word kleggi and is another name for a horsefly. The female of the species is known for her fondness of blood-sucking. They could ease the workload of nurses in pathology labs, couldn’t they?
Dyne
Doesn’t everyone know it’s a unit of force that imparts an acceleration of 1 cm/sec/sec (centimetre per second per second) to a mass of one gram? Heavens above! How can we manage without dropping a few into conversation at least once a week?
I’d like to tell you that it’s also the Old English spelling of dine, but I can’t. Dine didn’t come into English until the 13th century when the French brought some culture to those rough folk in England. Before that, they used to eat, and that word did come from Old English. That’s why we ordinary people still eat while posh people dine.
Gleby
Used between the 1500s and the 1800s but now obsolete. When used of soil, it means rich, fertile. It is from a word still in use, glebe, which denotes land or soil in different ways, one of which is the land traditionally allocated to a clergyman in the Church of England. Lucky chap.
Harl
Is this what a dyne does when it stops rushing around? Well, not quite, but you’re getting warm. It’s an old Scottish verb meaning to drag something along.
Henry
No, this isn’t one of the kings. It’s a derived unit of SI inductance. Isn’t this marvellous stuff for bookworms who hated Science at school? It involves an induced electromotive force of one volt that is produced when the current is varied at the rate of one ampere per second. I don't understand that, either.
The really interesting thing about it is that it’s an eponym. It’s named after Joseph Henry (1707–1878), a U.S. physicist.
Murleymews
In the 16th and 17th century, foolish gestures or antics. It was also used in a derogatory fashion of 'Blessings and crossings which the Papisticall priests doe use'.
Poosk
On the Shetland Islands, in the 19th century, it meant to search for vermin on someone.
Slench
A verb meaning to slink, to sneak about, particularly when seeking to steal food. Do be careful not to do it in your local supermarket: they have a slenching detector, you know.
Twychild
A person in extreme old age, their 'second childhood'. One's Grandpa or Nana but never oneself.
If you would like to explore more wonderful old words such as these, I recommend 'The Word Museum' by Jeffrey Kacirk. It might no longer be available on paper but it can be downloaded as an e-book.
© Copyright 2005, 2007, 2011 Brian Barratt
For more of Brian’s richly-worded columns please click on
http://www.openwriting.com/archives/the_scrivener/
and do visit his Web site
www.alphalink.com.au/~umbidas/
