Is there anything worse than being flattened by sickness in summer? An eighteen-wheeler virus Jake-braked through our house and left both me and my husband in the ditch. During conscious moments, feet snugged under a hubcap of a cat, I read the latest issue of Orion. The magazine subtitled Nature, Culture, Place invites the finest writers and I was delighted to see a piece by Robert MacFarlane.
MacFarlane, British nature writer and national treasure (like our Wendell Berry), mentioned he has been collecting words from old places used by crofters, farmers, colliers, shepherds, poets, walkers, and “unrecorded others for whom particularized ways of describing place have been vital to everyday practice and perception.” Wonder-words, MacFarlane calls them, like pirr, from the Shetland Islands, which means “a light breath of wind, such as will make a cat’s paw on water.”
He began collecting these near-forgotten words back in 2007, about the time he glimpsed the new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary. Words were conspicuously missing—acorn, beech, bluebell, buttercup, cygnet, dandelion, fern, hazel, heather, heron, ivy, kingfisher, mistletoe, otter, pasture and willow, among others.
Nature words had been yanked like rotten teeth and replaced with shiny modern terms like attachment, block-graph, blog, broadband, celebrity, chatroom, committee, cut-and-paste, MP3 player, and voice-mail. You’ll find Blackberry instead of blackberry. The Oxford University Press admitted it had been under pressure to purge entries no longer relevant to techno-savvy children.
What will kids call those yellow flowers that sprinkle spring lawns like gold coins? And those large blue-gray birds that stalk frogs in shallow creeks? And what will they rake in the fall along with oak leaves . . . No, wait, they don’t rake any more, they’re indoors tweeting celebrities. They don’t even need a dictionary any more, there’s spell-check.
In fourth grade, I received my very own Thorndike-Barnhart Junior Dictionary. It cost $2.50 and I remember the exact moment Mrs. Stann placed my copy on my desk. The cover was red cloth with gold lettering. Black labeled indents made navigating the thick book easier. I opened it immediately, eager to meet all the words in the world, and carried my Thorndike-Barnhart with me every day. I read it like a novel.
Four years before, when we moved to our new house in the country, I was afraid of everything. I was afraid of our long gravel driveway to the highway. I was afraid of the trees, the woods that drew close like giants.
My stepfather let me tag after him as he did his chores. He answered my hesitant questions and taught me the names of things. Not just an oak tree but specifically black, red, white, pin, or chestnut. After a while I could identify pin oaks and chestnut oaks by their bark, leaves, and acorns. By learning their names, I realized that trees weren’t scary but had their place in the world. I became less afraid and began to take root in my new place, entwined with its spirit through language.
The new words in dictionaries are mostly retreads, truncated terms, or composites: “twitter,” “app,” and “Instagram.” We aren’t richer for them, especially if we’ve lost “acorn.” As MacFarlane’s article states, “If acorn goes from the lexicon, the game is up for nature in England.” I suspect the game is up for nature—and language—everywhere. Now we have smarter-sounding terms for nature, like environment and ecology.
In their sterile Common Core writing samples, students will likely define environment as “the surroundings in which a plant or animal operates.” Can we picture such a thing? We can picture an acorn. Emerson, one of America’s greatest nature writers, was a stickler about “fastening words to visible things,” just as my stepfather was a stickler about the exact species of oak.
As Robert MacFarlane traveled the far corners of the British Isles, he collected linguistic gems as ammil, a Devon word for the “thin film of ice that lacquers leaves, twigs and grass when a freeze follows a partial thaw, and that in sunlight can cause a whole landscape to glitter.” One exquisite word to describe a fleeting spectacle.
MacFarlane’s new book, Landmarks, about the reclamation of place-based language, will be published in the U.S. in September. I can’t wait to get a copy. I want to know more about Aunt Julia who was so rooted in her native Harris Island that she “came to think with and speak in its birds and climate.”
And I can’t wait to learn more wonder-words such as smeuse, “the gap in the base of the hedge made by the regular passage of a small animal.” As a kid I used to follow those little woods trails, trying to blend in with the brambles and bushes so the animals would think I belonged.
Now that I’m better (finally!), I’m taking a sharp look around, my feet planted firmly on the ground, careful to pin the right words on the wonders I see.
14 thoughts on “Wonder-Words: Catch Them Before They’re Gone”
Great post! And I’m so glad you’re feeling better! Hugs, e
Very slow recovery. I haven’t walked, much less run, in weeks. I’ll be better by Hollins term, but will have to take the hills slow!
Another beautifully written post. I’m appalled that words still in common usage are disappearing from the dictionary. When you list acorn, dandelion, ferns and otters, I can’t believe these terms have become obsolete or fall into the archaic category. Is there a word limit when you publish dictionaries? Why can’t they just add new words without taking out some of the good ones we really need?
I also remember loving my Thorndike-Barnhart dictionary with the red cover, excited every time we had an assignment that gave us a chance to use it.
Sorry to hear you and Frank have been ill — the virus sounds yucky and debilitating. Here I thought you had already started your Hollins term and was busy with your students. I hope Atticus waited on you while you were in bed.
Jama: I don’t understand it either. Make the dictionary longer! I suspect there is a page limit for the junior version–poor little kids, can’t carry around a big ol’ dictionary.
So we all had our Thorndike-Barnharts, as we called them! I wish I still had mine.
If you escaped this virus, you and Len were very lucky. Almost everyone I know had some version of it. I got it from Frank and thought it wouldn’t be as bad but I was in bed for *days*. Atticus stayed with me the whole time. Cats, as you know, love sick people, if they aren’t too sick.
One would think there wouldn’t be a page limit for dictionaries these days because of electronic formats. Kids could access “complete” dictionaries on their computers or iPads. No heavy lifting required!
Yes! You should write the OED, Jama, and tell them!
I hope you and Frank feel better soon. I don’t know which is worse a virus in winter or a virus in hot weather.
I’m thinking the same as Jama. I cannot understand how those words can be without relevance. A tech-savie kid probably already knows how to spell Twitter, so it shouldn’t replace a word like dandelion in the dictionary.
How the world changes…
Being sick in the summer is worse. In the winter you can be all cozy and indoors. In the summer you lay there and listen to people outside having a good time and think about the weeds taking over the roses.
I’m wondering if MacFarlane’s article (not just in Orion, but a lengthier piece in the U.K.’s Guardian) might shame the OED people into putting those words back.
Is there a word for the soft gentle breeze of summer that brushes across your skin, almost like a massage, gently lifting the hairs on your arms? Or how about the row of holes the woodpecker leaves around the oak trees in our yard? I am fascinated by words and expressions – especially those unique to a given culture or environment. I love the glimpses of such words you share here. And, I am truly amazed and grateful for people like you and Robert MacFarlane who bring this notion of words of place to my attention – all the more to appreciate.
Yes! You can make up those words–it’s called neologisms! MacFarlane mentioned at the end of his article that people, particularly children, make up words to describe things just as you’ve described.
I’m all for keeping language alive, through wonder-words and colloquial expressions. I remember using the word “stribble” in one of my picture books to describe a messy-haired doll. That was my mother’s word and it was perfect for the story’s time and place. My editor made me take it out.
Great post as usual. I love old words and older verb forms. Will definitely get that book. I live in the woods here in Florida and in Maine in the summer.
Patti, you live in two great places. Florida “crackers” have wonderful idioms and syntax. And Maine–well, all those fishermen and that colorful lifestyle comes with its own language.
Like Jama, I was picturing you inspiring students at Hollins (I guess it is early, though it seems summer) not flattened out. I’m glad you’re feeling better.
I also love this post, and thankful for Emerson’s acorns and your stepfather’s oaks and you for carrying it all on. I think I have that issue of Orion under a pile somewhere — I need to get it out. Also the Artful Blogger — you packed so much into that article, which was thoroughly you, I need to read it again.
Hi Jeannine, I leave for Hollins on the 20th. Always a hectic week before, packing and cooking and cleaning.
You can find me standing in the magazine section of B&N waiting for them to shelve Orion–it’s my favorite magazine. Also The Oxford American, which is a gritty Southern literary magazine. I remember reading Redbook and Good Housekeeping all those years–I guess I’m as good a housekeeper as I’ll ever be so I might as well read nourishing publications.
You are so sweet to buy Artful Blogging–they are also including me in the fall issue. I’m not sure what, something about a blog post I did. Now I’m aiming for Orion, if only I could write like Anthony Doerr.