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12-20-2007 Jim Atwell At the Rotary Christmas party, I spotted Dr. Dennis Savoie across a crowded room. He was grinning, and I knew for sure that I was going to get ribbed for misspelling his name here two weeks ago. What to do? Well, I decided to follow our bewildered President's lead; evidence or no, I would strike preemptively. Smiling and nodding, I worked my way through the crowd to him. In fact, Dr. Dennis was brim-full of holiday good will; he let me off easy about the misspelling. But within his first three sentences, he spoke an adjective that I knew was a challenge. I forget the noun, but he modified it with "high falutin." Then he said innocently, "I wonder where that word comes from?" "I think, Dennis," I said, "that the term first referred to fancy work on a fife." I echoed my statement by holding up my curled fingers, tootling on an imaginary piccolo. Dennis raised his eyebrows, shook his head ever so slightly. "Perhaps," he said dubiously. "Perhaps." Dennis and I have been volleying words for years. Mostly he serves and I try to return. In the past he's laid out some arcane doozies to see if I'd know the meaning or just bluff and bluster. And now Dennis had done it again. He'd issued a challenge, just as surely as if I'd been slapped with a leather glove. And he'd beaten me at the pre-emptive game, too. For in that column two weeks ago, I'd served Dennis a word to puzzle over. But in the face of "hgh falutin," I'd forgotten to press him on it. My word was "sess"; Anne had turned it up while pouring over genealogical materials. I'd done my own research on it and found that it's a variant of "cess," and means "a tax, assessment, or lien." In Anne's reading, it had referred to the last wills of a bunch of dusty ancestors; or, more precisely, ancestors now dust. Dr. Dennis, I'm sure, will turn up that meaning, if he hasn't already. He'll blandly lay it on me at still another holiday party. And I'd better be ready with a disquisition on "high falutin." And I am. I've already turned to the gold-standard source for English word origins, "The Oxford English Dictionary," known to its friends and admirers as the OED. Begun in the 1880's, the OED project aims to include every English word that ever entered standard usage, including words that have slipped out of use, too. For each word, the dictionary cites quotes that reflect its usage history; some quotes date back to Old English in the eighth century. As you might imagine, the OED is by now a real heavyweight. Its hardbound edition runs to 20 fat volumes that include almost 700,000 words and 2,412,300 supporting quotes. Back in the 1970's the OED came out with a microprint version: all those pages photographed and reproduced in only two volumes. The print is so tiny that a powerful magnifying glass was included with each set. I own that edition and refer to it often, but its two volumes won't fit on the shelves by my desk. So I keep them on shelves in our bedroom and fetch A-O or P-Z as I need it. Carrying one of those eight-pound tomes from bedroom to study always has a solemn, processional feel, as if I should be led by candle-bearers. In A-O, I quickly found "high-falutin," after "high church" and not far from "highhanded." Sure enough, "falutin" is possibly "a whimsical pronunciation of ‘fluting' or a grandiose equivalent of ‘flying' or ‘flown.'" The definition was just what you'd expect: pompous or affected writing or speech. So, Dennis, in imitating a fife-player, I didn't hit the bulls-eye, but I was pretty close. I will now close the OED; here endeth the lesson. But the big book raised a great memory, a story I hope you'll enjoy. Years ago, when I was just getting ready to raise pigs, I'd stop almost anywhere I saw a sign reading, "PIGLETS FOR SALE." Once on a summer afternoon, driving down Butternuts Valley, I saw a sign at the roadside and drove up to the big, shabby farmhouse. The door I knocked on was swung open by a man who filled the doorway, side to side and almost to the top. He was a daunting sight in frayed bib overalls and a full black beard. But the beard was split by a warm smile. "Yep, I got piglets," he said. "Come on and see." We went into his barn where one corner was fenced to hold a monumentally large rust-colored sow; she probably weighed a half ton. Sprawled on her side, the sow was being swarmed by about a dozen little piglets, all trying to cadge a meal of milk. The sow's owner smiled proudly at her. "Oxford's a great breeder, all right, but she's willful." He gestured toward a four-by-eight-foot plywood patch on the barn wall. "Wanted to go outside last week, so she made herself a brand-new door." I had to ask. "The sow's name is Oxford?" The big man laughed and nodded. "Sure. You notice she only has one ear? Lost the other one in a fight. And of course by breed she's a Duroc. That makes her a "one-eared-Duroc," or OED, for short. So I call her "Oxford." I peered at that big, easygoing man. "Hey," I said. "What did you used to be?" He laughed again, warmly, hands on hips. "Down in the City, I used to do fact-checking for NBC News." He leaned over the pen fence and patted OED's mammoth haunch. "On the whole, it's more fun, raising pigs." You don't have to drive far around here to find interesting folk. Read about Jim Atwell's new book, "From Fly Creek - Celebrating Life in Leatherstocking Country" at JimAtwell. com. |
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