Dead Words That Need Resurrection

Because modern vocabulary is boring

The thought occurred to me yesterday that some of the best innovations of the human mind lie in the strange corners of dead languages. Great epics that enrich a country’s literature, culture, and society sometimes start with the word “callipygian”.

ELFLOCK

You know when you wake up with a mass of hair that looks more like a crow’s nest than, well, your hair? No worries, because in late 1500s, the English decided that the reason your hair is so mangled is because faeries or elves came in the dead of night to knot and play in your luscious mane. The first attestation of elflocks (or in folklore, fairy-locks) in English folk tradition can be found in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet when the character Mercutio is fancifully explaining to his friend, Romeo, the mischievous actions of the mythical figure, Queen Mab. Shakespeare poses the elflock as something that brings about bad luck, possibly even something to be feared:

“[Queen Mab] plaits the manes of horses in the night

And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,

Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes.”

Other European traditions take part in the belief of the malevolence of tangled hair. In Germany and Poland, it is associated with witches and unclean spirits, even showing up in the Grimm’s fairy tales.

GIGGLE WATER

This one’s a bit more straightforward and recent compared to the other words. “Giggle water” dates back to the archaic age of 1929, first found in American Speech, where it was used in slang to refer to liquor under the Prohibition. Some modern slang words from this era related to alcohol or alcohol-induced states still exist, such as bent, blotto, canned, or plastered. During this period, one had to use coded language to get the drinks they wanted. Words like “the Mob” emerged, meaning those who supplied illegal beverages and a “juice joint” was a common term to refer to an illegal bar. Other such words which enriched the lexicon included “bubbly” (champagne) or “foot juice” (cheap wine), but the one that stuck as a souvenir of the past was “giggle water”, so much so that author Charles S. Warnock published a book in 1928 detailing cocktail recipes named: Giggle Water: Including Eleven Famous Cocktails of the Most Exclusive Club of New York as Served Before the War when Mixing Drinks was an Art. Couldn’t have named it anything longer, huh?

CALLIPYGIAN

Have you ever just seen a backside that needed complementing? Well, you’re in luck, because instead of an awkward sentence-long praise, the 19th century has you covered with just one word: callipygian. This lovely word comes from the Greek: kalos meaning “beautiful” and pyge meaning “buttocks”. Interestingly enough, the word kalos shares the same etymological origin as the mythological nymph, Callisto, who had the unfortunate experience of being impregnated by Zeus. Both come from the Proto-Indo-European word kal, meaning “good” or “beautiful”. Pyge can also be traced back to the same language, but with the same definition as it’s current. The first recorded use of a “callipygian”-like word can be found for a statue of the goddess Aphrodite in the city of Syracuse. The Kallipygos, is unfortunately lost to time, but a similar Roman depiction called the Venus Callipyge can still be found today in Naples. The statue makes use of a anasyrma, which can be the exposing of the buttocks or genitals in a religious setting or mocking way or in some cases— both! An example of ritual mocking and anasyrma can be found in the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries (which would need an entire series of Substack posts to cover), an ancient festival dedicated to goddesses Demeter and Persephone. One character that figures in the celebration of the cult is Baubo, a crone who intentionally exposes herself to cheer up the goddess Demeter after her daughter, Persephone, was kidnapped. This was allegedly depicted at the Mysteries in both a religious and joking manner.

SNOUT-FAIR

It’s not as bad as you think it is— it’s actually the opposite! Next time you and your friends pass by an attractive person, why say he’s hot or cute when you could say— Do you see how snout-fair he is? Snout-fair, when you think about it, makes sense. “Snout” refers to anything related to the jaw or mouth and “fair” is anything that is good or beautiful, so when you call someone “snout-fair”, you’re really just saying that they have a jawline that’s serving them well. The oldest known use of this word can be dated back to 1530 in the writings of William Tyndale, an English Biblical translator and scholar who went down in history as a leading figure in the Protestant Reformation. However, “snout-fair” was short-lived, as it has not graced the English language since the mid-1600s. Either we don’t have anymore pretty people to grant such titles or the 1600s brought no talent with words… [Yes, that’s a hint to my next post!]

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a new word to add to your daily life!

Keep telling and collecting stories,

Ava