Blame it on caducity…

Friends and family, knowing my passion for words, added several books to my lexicon library last year. And just in the knick of time, I’d say. Two new words – at least new to me, that is – popped up in the press over the holidays and sent me to browse the online reference section.

As with potato chips, I’m never satisfied with just one reference but have to see the word used in context and listen to its pronunciation. ’Tis a curse, I tell you. A quick read I am not, but a happy one. Blame it on caducity.

One of the “new” words was “monadnock,” the other “luthier.” And in the search, somehow I also unearthed “ha-ha.”

(Note to my dear son-in-law, a computer math teacher renowned for his wide-ranging knowledge in a variety of disciplines: Brian, you may know one of these words, but I’m betting even you do not know them all. You’re an honorable man, and I know you will not look them up and pretend you already knew them. And I can count on you to be overbearing if you do happen to get them right.)

The reason I include “ha-ha” is that we had a pleasant experience with a ha-ha several years ago in Bath, England. Bath is famous for its stone architecture and for a housing design known as a circus. An elegant curved row of townhouses and sometimes offices, 40 or 50 altogether, I’m guessing, form about a third of a circle, and the common area within the concave bow so formed may host public entertainment or simply green space.

We happened to come upon one of these circuses at lunchtime and noticed that the sweeping lawn spread out before it was studded with little clusters of school children. They were French children on a tour of Bath, and their chaperones had just opened picnic lunches which the children accepted eagerly. No one took a bite, however, until the school mistress had walked among them saying, “Bon appetit!”

“Bon appetit!” les enfants chorused in response, then eagerly tucked into their baguettes.

I’ve never forgotten that gentle scene, and as my mind’s eye takes it in today, I notice the low stone wall that anchors the skirt of that grassy slope well below where the children are seated, and I realize that this is a ha-ha.

A haha or ha-ha, of course, can mean a joke or a laugh, but it also means a ditch with a wall inside serving as a boundary without impairing the view. All you can see from the top of the slope is this low stone wall, but when you approach it, you almost fall into a dry moat or “sunk fence” before you realize it’s there. Presumably this amused the French because “ha-ha” is considered a French word, attributed to the French sense of humor. Ha, indeed.

“Monadnock” is actually the name of a mountain in New Hampshire but has been lent to any mountain or rocky mass that has resisted erosion and stands isolated in an essentially level area. Stone Mountain would be a first class monadnock, I presume.

And “luthier”? No, I’m not misspelling Luther. You may have seen this one in the Arts & Books section of Sunday’s AJC about a luthier named Pablo Alfaro. The Houghton Mifflin online dictionary says it means one that makes or repairs stringed instruments such as violins. Pronounce it “loo-tee-er.”

Enough for now. For your information, Ha-ha appears in “Rare Words,” by Jan and Hallie Leighton, a collection of “500 arcane but useful words for language lovers.” All three words are in at least one of the Yahoo! Education Reference sources.

Wait ’til we get into “Still Lost in Translation” by Charlie Croker, “More Misadventures in English Abroad.”

Here’s a sample: At a hotel in Shanghai, this warning appears: “Please not to dive in hotel swim pond. Bottom of pond very hard, and not far from top of water. Please not to crack skull on bottom of pond. If do so, alarm hotel manager at once.”

Sounds like a plan to me.

Now I Know The True Identity Of:

Submitted by Git Real on Wed, 01/09/2008 - 10:50pm.

$NitpickerSmithgoneBonkers$

________
In regards to Democrats, Republicans, gangs, and other scads of coterie Kool-Aide drinkers; Remember this..... Eagles Don't Flock

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You mentioned me.

Submitted by sageadvice on Thu, 01/10/2008 - 7:23am.

Sally? Could be.
They have been weird lately!!

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