Useful and Interesting Free Rice Words--Essay 15

The words I would like to focus on in this essay are sudary, muzzy, strumous, sclaff, cultch, pituita, tikoloshe, spagyric and tarsitis. I see I also have two left-over words from an earlier list: pogonion and calvarium.

An Introduction to Two More Parts of the Head

1. and 2. In earlier essays I have looked at parts of the ear (auricle), including the helix, anti-helix, tragus and other parts; some parts of the eye, including the cilia, supercilium, palpebra, ectocanthion, and sections of the head including the glabella, philtrum, and nares. Today I point out the pogonion and calvarium. The OED defines the calvarium (from Latin calvus, meaning "bald" and calvaria, "skull") as "that portion of the skull which is above the orbits, temples, ears, and occipital protuberance." Thus, the calvarium is the "top" of the head. A strange picture of it is here-strange because it is a scrimshawed calvarium, scrimshawed with a nude male full-figure with chest and abdomen opened and in part-dissection. I suppose we won't forget calvarium for a while now, will we? The pogonion is "the foremost point on the midline of the chin." The word is derived from the Greek word for "beard": a pogonologist, for example, studies or writes about beards. This appears to be synonymous with the menton or gnathion, though a 1940 quotations differentiates them: "Wilder..recognizes a second landmark on the chin just above the gnathion, namely the pogonium, the most projecting median point of the chin." A more recent quotation talks about the pogonion as the "soft tissue" area in the middle of the jaw. So that would give the impression that it is the indentation or the dimple, but how can that be the most "anterior" point? Well, some day I will ask a facial anatomist my question...

To The List

3. Sudary opens up all kinds of interesting words and ideas. It is from the Latin word sudor, "sweat," and is a napkin or handkerchief used to wipe sweat or tears from the face. But from the earliest days in English (14-15th centuries) the word was associated with the veneration of relics. I suppose that because saints, and Christ, were said to sweat in their trials, and because there always seemed to be someone around to wipe the sweat from the brow, the sudary, or "sweat-cloth" became an honored object. From 1835: "A monk fumbled at the sick man's mouth/ With some undoubted relic--a sudary of the Virgin." More technically, sudary can refer to the napkin around Christ's head in the tomb, a sort of winding-sheet. In ecclesiastical terminology, a sudary is a cloth of linen or silk, often fringed. Sudary and sudarium are often used interchangeably. The latter is also a handkerchief, of course, but is more precisely defined as "the cloth with which, according to legend, St. Veronica wiped the face of Christ on the way to Calvary, and on which his features were impressed." Even though there is no biblical evidence for Veronica doing this, this didn't deter medieval artists. For example, here is a representation of St. Veronica with the Sudary by El Greco.

But our "sudor"-type words go far beyong this. A sudatorium is a "sweating-room," sudation is "sweating" or "perspiration" as is sudoresis. All of the "sudor" words appear in the OED right after Sudoku; if the latter can become a fad, why can't the former words? Finally, the word sudorous means "sweaty." From 1646: "The strigments and sudorous adhesions from mens hands." We could talk about the sudorous exhalations coming from the gym or the weight room; the sudorous bodies locked together in conjugal endearment; or other things. By the way, strigment is "the dirt and perspiration scraped off the skin with a strigil or otherwise." One can "absterge strigments" from the body, even if people might give you a blank look if you tell them that is what you are doing...

4. The most prevalent use of muzzy is as an adjective to describe people who are "dulled, drowsy, spiritless, confused, mentally hazy or dazed" (OED, sv. 1b). It can also relate to something presented to the mind which is vague, hazy or imprecisely defined. From 1943: "I...have developed a violent cold in the head which perhaps accounts for why I felt so muzzy in the brain." Or, more recently, "The buses stop and they get out, dull and muzzy." "After the ten-hour plane flight, the lights went on and people began yammering and waking up, confused and muzzy." Or, "The explanation was vague and muzzy, with no attempt to clarify important terms."

5. Let's skip over one of the words and finish this essay with sclaff, a term from golf [freerice.com spells it sclaffe, but the OED lists it as sclaff]. It is "a stroke in which the club scrapes the ground before hitting the ball." Thus, to "sclaff" a shot means to scrape the ground behind the ball in trying to strike the golf ball. The word goes back to the end of the 19th century--just when golf was "heating up" as an important sport. It may have arisen as a complementary word to "baff," a verb meaning "to strike the ground with the sole of the club-head in making a stroke." Thus, one sclaffs the ground if you hit it before it touches the ball; one baffs it if you hit ground and ball simultaneously. Isn't it great that things have evolved to such a degree that we have separate words for this? By the way, this 1858 quotation from Chambers' Journal tells the names of the golf clubs used in that day: "The names of the wooden-headed clubs principally used at St. Andrews..are as follows: the play-club, long-spoon, mid-spoon..putter, and baffing-spoon" [sort of like a wedge, I would imagine]. Here is a picture of an 1840s style baffing-spoon.

My zeal in defining these words has still left me with about six from the above list--for the next essay.

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