words | M.E. Kinkade

As I said, I’m loving America In So Many Words. It’s great for getting acquainted with American history and some awesome random trivia. But it also has led me to discover a bunch of words that really ought to make a comeback.

kinnikinnick– a mixture of leaves for smoking (1729)
netop– a friend (1643)
punk– overcooked corn; slow-burning sticks; and, of course, a small-time hoodlum (originally 1618)
squaw winter– an early cold spell (contrasting with an indian summer) (1777)
- Note: Though the settlers imbued the term “squaw” with a derogatory connotation, it originally meant a leader who was a woman. Maybe we should get squaw back to its roots!
pumpkin head– a New England colonist hairstyle, created by placing a pumpkin shell on someone’s head and cutting around it! (1654)
- I imagine this is much like the ’90s fad of the “bowl cut”
backlog– the large log placed in the back of a fire, along with “top-stick,” “fore-stick,” and “and-irons”(1684)
- nowadays, it’s an accumulation
prairie schooner- a covered wagon (1841)
loggerhead– a slow-witted person (ok, this one is Shakespeare)
johnny cake or jonakin– cornbread (1739)
breechclout– a clout of piece of cloth to cover one’s breech (buttocks) (1757)
bust my buttons– to strain or laugh (1921)
busticated- broken (1916)
bustified – pot-bellied (1939)
bee– a social, busy gathering (1768); also frolic
- we’ve kept “spelling bee,” but they also had wood chopping bees, painting bees, and even kissing bees!
drugstore cowboy- someone who puts on airs of being tough or sophisticated (1779)
bug- an enthusiast, now a fan (1785); ex. baseball bug
keno-essentially, the modern lottery; a game where players mark of numbers printed on a ticket- the keno caller draws numbers on keno balls from a keno goose to determine the winner (1814)
bunkum- nonsense OR (a competing definition from the same time) excellent and outstanding (1819)
blizzard- a knock-down blow or punch (1825)
sockdolager- a decisive blow; something or someone big (1827)
- interestingly, one of the last words President Abraham Lincoln ever heard!
callithumpian- a noisy parade (early 19th century)
slumgullion- something disgusting (early 19th century)
slangwhanger- a partisan speechmaker (early 19th century)
rawheel/tenderfoot- a beginner or newcomer (1849)
high muckamuck- plenty of food or someone who assumes an air of importance (1856); we’re left now with “muckety mucks”
hulloo- a predecessor to “hello” (1885)
jellybean– a derogatory term for someone weak or timid (1905)

I don’t know about you, but these are basically the cool kinds of words that I’ve always wanted out of a word-a-day calendar.

Whattya say? Can we give these all-American words a new life? Do you have any favorite obscure words?

The holiday season is rife with a particular vocabulary we don’t hear very often. Some of the words are “classic” (read: archaic) and evoke a reminiscence of a time that…well, maybe didn’t exist. The words we choose paint a particular picture of what Christmas means:

most wonderful
merry and bright
glistening
winter wonderland
babe in a manger
holy night
yon virgin
boughs of holly, gay apparel, Yuletide
newborn King
droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow

“Jingle Bells” even features the delightful term “upsot.”

We use these terms mostly because it’s traditional and because we’re singing some of the same carols, reading the same stories, we’ve enjoyed for hundreds of years–or at least since Charles Dickens made Christmas fashionable again.

But the way we talk about something has a profound effect on how we feel, too. Winter is often a rather bleak time; to recast it as “glistening” and “wonderful” can help us actually make it wonderful…or at least make you feel less crappy that it’s been four days since you’ve seen the son.

—

I got to thinking about the words we use at Christmastime for two wildly different reasons.

The first: The Turtle Creek Chorale’s performance of their song “PC Christmas.”

The Turtle Creek Chorale is a really great men’s choir here in Dallas; my husband surprised me with tickets. They’re a group of about 150 men who put on a performance of great humor and good cheer–no, really. (Interesting: all the men in the choir are gay. They made some jokes in that direction in the show, too.)

But the song that most struck me was “PC Christmas”: a song/show about Mabel (a man in fantastic drag), the harried and well-meaning HR director of the imaginary “Pegasus Corporation.” Mabel just wants to put on a Christmas party, but at every turn she is met with complainers who want their celebration to be represented at the official party. Hapless Mabel assures, via monologued emails, employees that the party will feature “traditional”…and secular Christmas songs….and Hanukkah songs….and a song for Kwanzaa… and at least one song celebrating the Moon Goddess…. until the whole shebang collapses in on itself and Mabel gives up.

It’s funny because it’s true: while Christmas is far and away the main event in Dallas (Fun fact: the sad and revealing book “Tinsel” was written from Frisco, Texas, just outside of Dallas), the intense and loud celebration thereof can be exclusionary, annoying, snobby, and basically rude to those who don’t celebrate.

That’s how we get all this nastiness over the well-intended phrase “Happy Holidays.”

—-

Number two reason I’ve been thinking about words:

My church decided to “mix things up” this Christmas: in lieu of a weekly sermon, has decided to do monologues from different Biblical “characters.”

Now, before this rant goes any further, let me be clear: I think this is a great way to breathe new life into an old and familiar story, to get some more people involved.

Except it’s been awful. I missed Joseph and the shepherd while traveling, but I managed to catch Elizabeth (Mary’s cousin, mother of John the Baptist) and “Martha” (the utterly fictional, not-in-the-Bible wife of the innkeeper).

Both of these women’s “stories” had an intense focus on pregnancy. Elizabeth on the great difficulty of being infertile and how happy she was to finally be pregnant; Martha on meeting Mary while she was super-pregnant and assisting all night with the birth.

In general, we use a lot of euphemistic and positive terms for pregnancy: “bun in the oven”; “bundle of joy”; “special delivery”, etc. We take this even farther for the miraculous pregnancies in this part of the Bible–maybe because the details are practically nonexistent, maybe because being the mother of God probably oughta come with some perks like an easy delivery.

For whatever reason, the scriptwriter for this series, however, decided to through out all those comfortable euphemisms, opting instead of explicit medical terms.

I’ll spare you, but let it be known that I never again want to hear about how the midwife “felt between her legs to feel the baby’s head” or Mary’s “screams so loud she woke up all the inn’s guests” or have the sweet baby Jesus described as being “green and gray from mucus as he left the birth canal.” (Seriously, I’ve started watching “Call the Midwife”–a show about being a midwife–and it wasn’t so gruesome.)

—-

Anyway, whatever you are doing today, I hope you are enjoying yourself, whether you’re under celebrating the Christ child, singing to O Tenenbaum, dancing with Frosty the Snowman, or seeing Mommy kissing Santa Claus.

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Feliz Cumpleanos, Seasons Greetings, Yuletide Joy, and to all a good night!

Tag Archives: words

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