Snazzy people email me words sometimes. I really like getting emails (though Philosaur will tell you I only check my email when the planets are in syzygy, but I plan to get him drunk soon, so who’re gonna believe?) and words are fantastic, too. Today, let’s dig on some Poptart words.
Typing “Poptart words” kinda makes me want to do cheerleading moves, which: incongruous. She moves me to spirit fingers. Anyway!
Hey! Look over there! It’s spavined, which means marked by decrepitude. Or suffering from spavin, a disease that horses get, which sounds pretty awful. The word is Old English, from Old French esparvain, which is probably related to espervier, which means sparrow or sparrow hawk. Back before that, it was Frankish, and/or Old High German sparo or sparw or maybe even *sparwan, all of which relate to birds. The horse holds the diseased limb up, bird-like. It’s not super clear how this veterinary illness came to stand in for generally being broken down and busted, but I guess you could use it to describe something that had broken down through no fault of its own and was limping along toward its ultimate end.
After that, two words from Rhapsody by Elizabeth Haydon. It’s the first in a series of books and just the few sentences she sent make me want to read it. So long as it doesn’t get into a Robin Hobb situation.
First, bellwether:
‘But the possibility exists that the F’dor didn’t die, as well. Something is definitely behind these strange incursions, and where there is unexplainable chaos, it is often a bellwether of F’dor.’
A bellwether is a leader, pacesetter, or trend setter. It can refer to a place as well as a person. The first definition is actually about sheep. The lead sheep (wether = castrated sheep) wears a bell, apparently to lead all the rest of the sheep. It’s an old word, from the 15th century, which I think helps explain how a word about sheep leading anything remains in the lexicon.
The history of wether is exceptionally interesting, too. It’s traceable back from English, into Old English weðer, and from there, problably back to Proto-Germanic *wethruz. It’s analogous to many similar Germanic family language words, including wiᚦ;rus in Gothic. They all trace back to the PIE root *wet, which means “year.” A yearling sheep, ready for castration.
And from all of that, trendsetter or forerunner. Crazy!
And then, enfilade:
‘Enfilade!’ roared Grunthor. Rhapsody reined her mare to a halt in horror as Achmed’s forces split down the center and turned, firing their crossbows at the charging Fists.
I really love saying this word. Try it. Enfilade! Doesn’t that feel good?
An enfilade is a position of works or troops making them subject to a sweeping fire from along the length of a line of troops or gunfire directed along the length of a target, such as a column of troops. A position is “enfilade” if fire can be directed along its longest axis, according to Wikipedia.
This is hard for me to understand. But I don’t understand much about troop movement and tactics to begin with, so I’ll just have to chew on it. The word “defilade” means using natural or artificial obstacles to conceal and avoid fire. This makes much more sense. When I try to imagine enfilade, I see lines of Red Coats all marching and stopping to fire in unison, and being cut down that much quicker for it.
The word is French, but you knew that. It’s from the root fil, meaning thread, as in filament. The Latin is filum and the PIE root is gwhi, also meaning thread, or tendon. It also gives us words like fillet, filigree, and profile.
Anybody else feeling the Poptartitude? Or the spirit fingers?
