Swarthy

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Christian.

Hi, Christian.

I live in Austin, Texas.

Great.

What’s up?

Well, my wife and I got in an argument about a week ago over the word swarthy.

I used the phrase swarthy-eyed. You know, you can use it like, you know, the good pirate calls to the bad pirate. He calls him, you know, oh, you swarthy-eyed dog. And my wife, being an English teacher, corrected me, and I don’t agree.

So she was saying that swarthy meant hairy. And my understanding is that swarthy could be used to describe someone of dubious nature or just darkly complected.

Hairy.

Hairy, yeah.

Well, like Governor Blagojevich.

Like Robin Williams without a shirt?

Yeah, well, yeah, something more along that nature.

Okay.

Hairsuit.

Hairsuit.

Hairsuit.

Here’s the problem with this all the way around. The first one is it doesn’t mean hairy.

Okay.

Now, it can mean somebody who is dark complected, olive skinned, dark haired. Perhaps there are hirsuit, but it’s all part of the package. It doesn’t on its own mean hairy. Does that make sense?

Because you could actually have somebody who’s hairy, but it’s all blonde hair.

Right.

Fabio isn’t swarthy.

That’s right.

And they would not be swarthy. It would have to be dark hair and also the dark skin that goes with it and just kind of a Mediterranean look. That’s typically what I think.

And then you said something along the lines of it means two things. It means shifty or disreputable or something?

Yeah, yeah.

Someone of ill repute or dubious nature or questionable morals, I guess.

Yeah, now we’re getting into some precarious territory.

Because swarthy doesn’t mean that either. All it means is dark-complected. And if you look in large text databases, you will find that the top 10,000 uses of swarthy, the different ways it’s used, they refer to things like swarthy complexion, swarthy visage, swarthy cheek, swarthy face, swarthy skin, swarthy coloring, okay?

Sometimes you can use it to refer to the entire person. But again, you’re referring to their entire appearance and not just their hair.

Swarthy ruffian, swarthy fisherman, swarthy fellow, swarthy miner, and so forth, all right?

But it does kind of have that connotation.

Well, it does because it’s used by people who use it. It’s kind of a code word for dirty foreigner. That’s what it is. And it’s not a nice use of swarthy.

So I guess the bottom line is it doesn’t have anything to do with hair. It does have to do with color. And then it kind of gets a little fuzzy on that. A little messy from there.

So you can go back to your wife, the English teacher, and say, honey, you were wrong.

You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to wait for the podcast. I’m going to show up in her classroom and play it for her.

Oh!

For our homeroom.

Oh, yeah.

Well, you know, if you need a couch to sleep on.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for your call.

Yeah, thanks. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Oh, that’s not good. You can’t do that.

You know, in my household, these kinds of battles about language are always very lively because, as you know, my wife is a linguist slash lexicographer, and I’m a lexicographer, and so the two of us are constantly like, well, no, actually, and we get down to the finest detail and start throwing references around. And then finally we just throw our hands up and go, oh, let’s go have dinner.

Because at some point it’s just not worth it, right?

That’s right.

It’s Clash of the Linguistic Titans in your household, isn’t it?

Mm—

Yeah.

If you have a linguistic dispute, we’d be happy to try to solve it or at least mess things up for you.

The number is 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.