A teacher of English as a second language asks our Facebook group to name some unusual words for ordinary things. The group’s suggestions include winklehawk, which means an L-shaped tear in cloth, and diastema, which means a gap between one’s teeth. In his 1926 book History in English Words, Owen Barfield offers this lyrical observation about etymology: “Words may be made to disgorge the past that is bottled up inside them, as coal and wine, when we kindle or drink them, yield up their bottled sunshine.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Unusual Word for Ordinary Things”
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.
Jan Bettel Ellis of Chelan, Washington, teaches English as a second language.
And she also leads workshops for volunteer teachers of English as a second language.
And she was trying to come up with some unusual English words for common items because she thought it would be a good exercise for the volunteer teachers to be confronted with those English words that maybe don’t make sense, but sort of do in a sentence.
So she went to our Facebook group and asked for examples.
And our listeners there were so helpful.
They gave her a whole lot of words in that category.
For example, winklehawk.
Do you know this word, winklehawk?
No.
If you have a winklehawk in your pants, it’s an L-shaped rip.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, doesn’t that ring a bell?
Well, I think we may have talked about that a long time ago.
It’s an old Dutch term that means a carpenter’s L-shaped tool.
So if you have an L-shaped rip in your pants, that’s a winklehawk.
And another one was diastema, which I feel like I knew at one point but forgot.
Diastema is a word for the gap between your teeth.
So think David Letterman.
It comes from a Latin word that means interval.
But it was just so cool the way all these people chimed in with words for things that you know of.
Don’t quite have the name for it.
Yeah.
And it was also interesting to follow the discussion on Facebook because other ESL teachers chimed in and talked about how they would teach new teachers by making them learn a conversation in Japanese, just a short conversation, so that they could have the experience of experiencing what you do when you learn a foreign language, which is you see that wall of words.
And every once in a while you can break out a brick here and a brick there.
But I’m going to share some more of those words that our listeners shared later in the show.
Outstanding.
If you’ve got an unusual word for an ordinary thing, share it with us, 877-929-9673,
Or email words@waywordradio.org.
One of my favorite quotations about etymology comes from Owen Barfield,
Who in 1926 wrote the book History in English Words.
And Barfield said,
Words may be made to disgorge the past that is bottled up inside them as coal and wine when we kindle or drink them yield up their bottled sunshine.
Ooh, bottled sunshine.
Isn’t that great?
Yeah, coal and wine.
To compare the two of those.
I know, I know.
Yet at the bottom of it, they both have to do with the sun on the leaves.
Yes, yes.
And just that image of words yielding up all that richness.
That’s true.
Yeah.
