BOOKISHGAL

I have been so busy the last two days with various projects that I missed the Tuesday Teaser yesterday, and have almost missed Wondrous Words Wednesday, the lovely meme instituted and hosted by Kathy at the BermudaOnion blog.

Almost — but not quite. Because I do have a word or two, from one of the books I’m currently reading. But you’ll see right away why I say I’m cheating.

The book is one I mentioned a few days ago: The Know-It-All, by A.J. Jacobs, in which he recounts his year-long reading of the entire Enclopaedia Brittanica. So of course you know I’m going to find unusual words in there somewhere. Ah well, at least I’m getting them in. And you have to admit that they’re interesting. So here goes:

1) gagaku - A Japanese term for a type of East Asian music that was prominent during the 5th to 8th centuries.

2) couvade - A custom in which the father goes to bed during the birth of his child, and simulates the symptoms of childbirth. He pretends to undergo painful labour. Indeed, sometimes just a few hours after the birth, the mother has to get up and wait on the father. It was most recently practised, even in the 20th century, in Basque country. (As Jacobs says, “No offense to the Basques, but couvade seems — how do I put this? — insane.”)

3) claque - The word comes from claquer, the French word meaning “to clap;” it was from 19th century France, where theatres would hire a band of people  to laugh, cry, or otherwise encourage the general audience during a performance. There were rieurs, paid to laugh loudly at comedies; bisseurs, who shouted for encoures; pleureuses, who were women hired to weep during tragedies; and my favourite, the commissaires, who would elbow their neighbours at strategic moments and say things like, “This is the good part.” In his commentary on this word, Jacobs calls this “canned laughter.” Who knew it wasn’t invented for modern TV sitcoms??

4) augury - Predicting the future. I like the sub-specialties of this too. You predict the future based on dice (cleromancy), dots on paper (geomancy), fire and smoke (pyromancy - duh), entrails of sacrificed animals (haruspicy), animal livers (hepatoscopy), or shoulder blades of animals (scapulimancy).

So there ya go! Lots of fun words in this particular book. Kind of low-hanging fruit, eh?

******************************

Trackback URI | Comments RSS