There’s a word hole in a hedge or wall made by the repeated passage of a small animal. It’s called a smeuse. This dialect term from the UK is one of hundreds from Landmarks, a book of essays in which Robert Macfarlane seeks to reanimate our connection with nature by showcasing some of the specialized language involving features of the natural world. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Smeuse”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
Grant, I have a new word for you.
Yes, please.
Smuse.
To smile when you watch the news?
It’s not a verb.
Okay.
It’s a noun.
It’s S-M-E-U-S-E.
Smuse.
Smuse.
And it’s a dialectal term from Sussex in Southeast England, and it means the gap in the base of a hedge made by the regular passage of a small animal.
And this is in current use.
Yes.
Oh, that’s adorable.
Well, I thought you’d like it, and I wanted to share it because I learned it from a passionate lyrical book of essays and glossaries called Landmarks.
It’s by the British author Robert McFarlane.
The book is an effort to reanimate our connection with nature by collecting more than 2,000 terms that are used in various dialects all over England.
He says their terrifically fine-grained vocabulary about the land and natural phenomena used by farmers, fishermen, sailors, scientists, miners, climbers, shepherds, and other people.
And he calls it a book about the power of language to shape our sense of place.
For example, he says, now that I know the word smooth, I will notice the signs of creaturely commute more often.
And it took me a while to understand this, but I started to relate it to my own experience of camping here in the desert in Southern California.
Because the first few times I did it, it was just not so much a landscape, but what Robert McFarlane calls a bland escape.
That is, you can’t distinguish things.
It’s not so legible.
And then you start to learn the names of different plants, agave, yucca, creosote, manzanita.
And it starts to make more sense to you and you start to connect more with nature around you.
You learn to spot a tarantula hole, for example.
And so this book is a kind of celebration of words and nature that connects us to the natural world.
I love it.
And this is Robert McFarlane.
And the book is?
Is Landmarks.
And I’m going to share some more examples later in the show.
Outstanding.
Sounds like a wonderful book.
We know that when you read a book, you come across words you didn’t know, but you want to share.
This is the place to do it. 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.
