Night Worries

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Megan.

Hi, Megan. Where are you calling from?

Indianapolis.

Oh, welcome to the show.

Hi, Megan.

Hi. My question was about a word, I think it’s pronounced utkere, and it’s spelled U-H-T-C-E-A-R-E.

Okay.

And is it a noun or a verb? I was a little confused about that. And I think it means to to lie awake with dread.

Yeah, it is a noun, and you don’t see it that much.

Did you find it in a list of words that should be revived or something like that?

I think it was an article about that, yeah.

Yeah.

Ux que eres, I would say.

Okay.

Yeah, it’s Old English.

It’s one of those compound words.

There are a lot of words in Old English where they just put two words together,

And you might translate it as dawn care.

That is, the cares and worries that you have right before the sun rises.

You know, you wake up and you start worrying about something that’s bad in your life.

And we only see it in one piece of literature, apparently, in an old poem from the 10th century that’s often called The Wife’s Lament.

And it’s a really sad poem.

There are a lot of these poems from that period of time in Old English that are just really, really sad about loneliness and family leaving you or your friends dying.

There’s a really sad corpus of poems, and that word appears in one of them.

So you said it could be broken down to dawn care.

That’s kind of like a direct translation of the two compound parts.

Yeah, uchtes.

So the U-H-T is dawn.

Yes.

And the C-E-A-R-E is care.

Right.

Which looks a lot like the modern care, but the meaning is different.

It’s still about feelings and emotion, but it’s not so much about caring for someone.

It’s your cares and your worries.

Exactly, that kind of care.

What got you to wondering about that?

I liked the definition of it.

I wasn’t really sure how you’d use it.

I didn’t know how you’d use it in a sentence, I guess,

Because I wasn’t sure if it was a noun or a verb or what it was.

I couldn’t find anything about it when I looked it up.

Yeah, there’s not a whole lot about it.

In that particular poem, the woman is talking about Don cares that I had

Wondering where my husband was or something like that because he’s gone off someplace.

So you could say I have ut care if you wanted to.

But I hope you don’t.

I know.

No, I just, I never heard it.

And when I looked it up, I couldn’t find anything about it.

So I was just calling and thank you for answering my question.

Sure.

We’re glad to help.

Thanks, Megan.

Thanks.

Take care.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Or try us on Facebook or Twitter or SoundCloud or Stitcher or anywhere you find us.