5 Impressive Words From the Past
by: Adam Krause
The English language has been around for long enough by now that words which once fell out of vogue have sometimes returned again in different forms. For instance, the word “defalk” once meant to lop something off with a sickle or pruning hook. It then linguistically morphed into the word “defalcate,” which sounds even worse, and is: it means to misuse or embezzle funds. In this era of shifting financial fortunes, the word “defalk” has a chance to make a comeback, as people line up outside their stockbrokers’ offices armed with sickles and pruning hooks.
Impress your friends and family with these five fine Words from the Past.
Phrenology: A branch of junk science popular in the nineteenth century. Its practitioners believed that personality traits took up physical space in a person’s brain, so by examining and patting the skull, phrenologists could determine which traits were dominant. As you can see by examining the helpful phrenological diagram, our heads have a lot of room for various personality traits: “Suavity” near the top of the head, “Mirthfulness” around the right temple and “Philoprogenitiveness,” or love of one’s children (a great antiquated word in itself) at the base of the skull.
Now we have a much more scientific method of determining personality: Facebook quizzes. You can find out what type of Twilight vampire you are, which Sex and the City character you are, or what kind of cheese you are. These quizzes don’t lie. It’s almost like the Internet is reaching out and massaging the top of your head.
Muliebrity: the state of womanhood, or the qualities of femininity. No, this term does not intend to compare women to mules, but rather to finely ground flour. (Some words are antiquated for a reason.) It comes from the Latin word mulier, or woman, which in turn comes from the word “muliesi” (fine, soft) as does the Russian word molot, to grind, and the English word meal, or flour.
The modern version of femininity can be anything that an individual woman defines it as, but a casual glance at Glamour magazine, one of femininity’s modern standard-bearers, insinuates that it has something to do with bronzing your jawline and cooking pasta rapidly.
Roborant: A tonic that restores vigor or strength. It can be a noun or an adjective (“I drank some particularly roborant Robitussin for my cold.”) It derives from the same Indo-European root, reudh, as the words “red, “ruddy” and “robust.” The modern equivalents, then, are energy drinks such as Red Bull. There is almost no ailment that an invigorating can of glucuronolactone, caffeine and carbonation won’t cure. (Disclaimer: You might want to run that by your doctor.)
Spraint: This refers to the droppings of an otter. These droppings, according to Wikipedia (I haven’t spent much time in otter country) can smell like anything from freshly mown hay to putrefied fish. The term joins others in the illustrious category of specific words for animal droppings: the fewmets of a deer, the buttons of a sheep, and the wormcast of guess what animal.
The modern equivalent is: spraint. Much like the otters that frolicked in the days when Latin was commonly spoken and Old English was the newest version, today’s sophisticated modern otter is up to pretty much the same tricks: swimming, eating and making spraint.
Nuncheon: In order to properly understand nuncheon, you must understand lunch. “Lunch,” to medieval English peasants working in the fields, was always a lump of some sort – a wad of bread, a hunk of cheese, a shred of meat – that they could keep in their pockets or sacks to tide them over between breakfast and their evening meal. All these lumps tended to stick in their throats, so they needed a beverage to wash them down. A slang term for any drink at that time, whether wine or water, was “shench.” Thus, the drink you consumed with your lump at noon was your noon-shench, which over time became the hybrid word “nuncheon.”
As the midday meal became adopted by the English upper classes, and began to take place at a proper table with multiple dishes, the word “lunch” still carried the stigma of the lump in a peasant’s cheek, so that up until the beginning of the nineteenth century the nobility would take “nuncheon” instead, which referred to what they ate as well as what they drank around noon. The gradual easing of class divides contributed to the word “luncheon” becoming more in vogue, which was eventually, conveniently shortened to its modern form: lunch. The next time you notice all the lumps in a plate of cafeteria mac-and-cheese, consider its dubious origins.
