Funsel and Gnurr

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there. This is Lois calling from northern Wisconsin.

Hi, Lois. Welcome to the program. What’s up?

Well, my mother used two words that I had various dictionaries and tried to prove to her that these words were not actual words. And she said, your grandmother uses these words, and your great-grandmother uses these words.

The two words are gunner and funsel. And she never spelled them for me, but I would say funcil would be F-U-N-C-I-L, and gunner is either G-N-U-R or G-A-N-U-R.

Okay. And what do they mean?

Don’t know, because they were never found in any type of a publication.

Yeah. What do they mean?

Well, gunner is that fuzzy stuff in the pointy corner of your pocket that you clean out before you put your pants in the laundry machine.

Right.

And a funsel is the corner of your ceiling and walls. It’s not a cobweb. It’s not a spider web. It’s that single strand that hangs down that has all kind of collected fuzzy stuff on it. That’s a funsel.

Okay.

Wow.

And so the women in your family have used this word.

Yes, on my mother’s side. And my dad was, my grandpa, my McQuellen, was Scotch-Irish. And I don’t know what the Fosters were. And then my great-grandmother was a, Robertson was her maiden name. So I truly can’t tell you ethnic heritage.

Well, Lois, I’m interested in the Scottish connection because what I know about Gner is that it was popularized by a wonderful book in 1950 called Ounce Dice Trice, which is this book of wordplay, particularly for young folks. And it was written by Alistair Reid, who was a Scottish poet. And he was actually a scholar of South American literature. He did translations of Pablo Neruda and Borges.

But in that book, which has got these whimsical illustrations, it has this definition of Gnur, which is G-N-U-R-R. It says, what is Gnur? Gnur is the substance that collects after periods of time in the bottom of pockets or in the cuffs of trousers.

How about that?

How about that? My mother was absolutely correct. She would be saying, told you. Always have to listen to mama.

So how is Reed spelled?

R-E-I-D or R-E-E-D?

It’s R-E-I-D, Alistair Reed. And the book is really charming. You know, we’re often asked, what book can I give to kids to get them interested in language? And this is a book from 1958, but it’s really delightful.

It goes on to say, Gner is a smaller variety of Oos. And then it leads you on to Oos, which is defined in this book as the airy, furry stuff that ultimately gathers under beds. And Gonomies. It is also called trilbies, kittens, or dust bunnies. And interestingly enough, that is a word that you’ll see in Scotland.

Yeah, dust bunny is very familiar.

Yeah, O-O-S-S-E.

Okey-dokey.

Yeah, and as for the other term, I don’t know of a term. You’re thinking it’s like funsel for the little thing that’s dangling down that maybe used to be part of a cobweb and it just collects things?

I’m not aware of anything like that unless it’s a combination of a couple of words, you know, just a made-up word like fun or fun and tinsel or something like that.

I don’t know, Grant.

No, I’ve never heard of funsel, but it’s definitely worth it. When you said that, it’s like tinsel. Maybe it kind of looked like a piece of tinsel, you know, the long stringy things people put on Christmas trees.

Fun tinsel.

Yeah, really cheap tinsel.

But, Lois, thank you so much for sharing your memories and your stories and we appreciate the call. Take care of yourself.

Thank you.

Bye for now.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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