Voracious Silence, that Quiet Interlude While Eating

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name’s Kinsey and I’m calling from Pittsburgh.

Hi, Kinsey. Welcome to the program. What’s up?

Thank you. I heard your show and immediately thought of something I’ve been thinking about for years, which is I’ve always felt that there should be a word for the silence that falls around a dinner table when the food arrives and everyone is really enjoying it. It’s just such a nice moment of camaraderie and shared experience. And I want to call it something.

Oh, that is a really nice moment, isn’t it? Particularly because to make that moment happen, a lot of people had to put their sweat and energy and talents into making that meal, right?

Yeah.

And gathering everyone together and setting the table and all that sort of stuff to make the event of the meal. Do you have any candidates for that expression?

I don’t. My brother-in-law told me one that was a German expression, and I can’t remember it right now. But I was thinking of something along the lines of like, Sobre Mesa in Spanish describes that moment when after dinner everyone is having conversation and nobody wants to leave the table yet. Like something that kind of embodies that feeling.

But at the beginning.

Yeah, you’re thinking at the beginning.

Yeah, when the food arrives. There are two possible German expressions that might be the one that you heard. One is Gefragesserschweigen, which kind of means a gluttonous or voracious silence. Does that sound like the one your brother-in-law told you?

I think so, yeah. But the other one is Genustele, which basically means enjoyment silence.

I like that.

Yeah, I like that one. One little linguistic note on that last word. It’s a strange compound. So two words made into one that has three S’s in a row, which is really rare.

Wow. So as a linguist, I really love that.

That’s nice.

Konnuchte-la.

Yeah. And that first one sounds like that French phrase, silence gourmand.

Yeah.

Silence gourmand. Silence de gourmandise.

Oui, oui.

Yeah. There’s a passage in Guy de Maupoussant’s book where he’s talking about the silence when somebody is carving the bird at the table and everybody’s like sort of salivating, you know, waiting, waiting for that moment. But it’s foreign expressions, both that German and that French are just a little, I think they’re a little too complex for English. But there is an expression that we have in English, Kenzie, that might work here and that’s companionable silence.

Yeah. When you’re able to sit comfortably with the friend and neither one of you feels the need to start a phony conversation or do useless small talk because you can just sit together because that’s how bonded you are as friends. And you have both silence. And think about the origin of the word companion. It comes from Latin words that literally have to do with eating bread together. It’s a relation of pantry and words like that.

The other word that I was thinking of is insipid, which is the term for the first few notes of a work of music, insipid. So it’s not insipid. It’s not, it’s I-N-C-I-P-I-T, right?

Yeah. I don’t know. Companionable silence might be the best of all of these in English. What do you think?

I really, I like companionable silence. I like the one word nature of insipid, of like that initial moment that everyone is enjoying together. And I’ve already forgotten but the one in German with the three S’s, I thought also kind of encompassed that feeling. It’s G-E-N-U-S-S-S-T-I-L-E. Basically means enjoyment, silence.

Cool.

Well, thank you so much.

Yeah, something tells me we’re going to hear from a lot of listeners about either suggested terms or terms that they’ve heard in other languages or in English. So thanks for asking that question. Keep listening.

All right.

Thanks, Ganty. Thanks for asking that question.

Bon appétit.

Bon appetit.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

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