Skyscraper makes literal sense once you picture a head scraping the sky, the image Alice in Carlsbad, California saw when comparing herself with her cat. Before it meant a tall building, skyscraper referred to the topmost sail on a sailing ship, also called a moonraker. It later described a very tall horse, a tall man, and a high fly ball in baseball or cricket, before the name stuck to the late-1880s towers rising as Chicago rebuilt after the fire. Spanish rascacielos, French gratte-ciel, and German wolkenkratzer, “cloud-scratcher,” use the same upward-scraping image. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““Skyscraper” First Meant a Ship’s Topmost Sail, Not a Building”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi.
Hi, who’s this?
This is Alice from Carlsbad, California.
Hello, Alice. Welcome to the program.
Hi.
Thank you. It’s great to be here.
Oh, boy. Welcome. What’s happening out your way?
Well, my question was about the word skyscraper.
And it came about that I was writing about little animals and cats and treating cats gently and saying that, you know, when I put my cat down, I put her down on the floor. Because compared to a cat, a human being is like a skyscraper.
And then I had to laugh at myself because I got the image of my head scraping the sky. And then I had to laugh because I thought, I never think of skyscraper when I think of the word skyscraper. I just think of tall buildings.
Exactly.
How did that come to be the word?
So you were picturing yourself as a type of Paul Bunyan, an Alice Bunyan.
There you go.
And your cat was your blue ox.
Or the Empire State Alice.
There you go, yeah. Very tall, but with, you know, with my head in the clouds, I guess.
Yeah.
Well, you know what’s really cool about this is even earlier than it was applied to buildings, skyscraper was applied to the topmost sail on those old sailing ships, you know, with all the sails.
-huh.
It literally scraped the sky, right?
Yeah, it did.
Yeah.
Yeah, and you know what else it was called? It was called a moon raker.
I love that.
I love that.
Yeah, that’s, you know, skyscraper and moonwaker, they’re both very visual, rich visual images.
Yes, yes, they are.
They’re very sensuous, I think.
And later on, skyscraper came to be applied to a really tall horse as well. And then I think it was, what, the early 19th century? Occasionally been used for tall men or a ball shot up in the air in baseball or cricket.
And then, about what time?
Late 19th century, I think.
Late 19th century.
Late 1880s, more or less.
Yeah, yeah.
They started building those big, tall buildings and what to call them.
Yeah, when Chicago, after the fire, started to rebuild, basically, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And, you know, they also use that term or forms of that term in other languages, too. Rascacielos in Spanish, which means the same thing. The same in French. It’s graciel.
Yeah, yeah.
G-R-A-T-T-E hyphen C-I-E-L. Scrapes. Scrape the heavens, basically.
Yeah, isn’t that great?
And Alice, you’re going to love this one. In German, the name translates as cloud scratcher.
Isn’t that fabulous?
That’s really cute. Poetry in everyday language.
I love it.
Thanks for calling, Alice.
All right.
Thank you.
I appreciate you looking into my words for me.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
I love it when you have those moments when you just, you’ve used a word all your life, skyscraper, skyscraper, and it sounds sibilant and fun and fun to say. And then all of a sudden you pull a word apart and you think, oh my gosh, it’s made up of two other words.
I love those moments.
Tell us about yours.
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