A Fad and a Few Other Words

In the previous essay I mentioned that I was arrested by the second part of the definition of fantod: "A crotchety way of acting; a fad." "I had a hard time putting up with the child's constant fantods." A fantod, as we saw, is a sort of snit, or swivet, or tantrum, or "prickly" behavior. How is a "fad," then, like this? If you search the Internet, you will find articles on the difference between a fad and a trend, and you will find discussions of fad in articles on the phenomenon known as the "bandwagon effect," but you don't find any connection between fad and personal behavior. Indeed, we think of a fad as something social, as something that we are all too sophisticated to become hooked into...

The Real Meaning of "Fad"

The OED tells us that the origin of fad, like many a good word, is uncertain, but it is defined, in the first instance, as: "a crotchety rule of action; a peculiar notion as to the right way of doing something; a pet project, esp. of social or political reform." Or, as the Century says, "a matter of no importance; a whim..." The oldest (1834) attestations of the word in English point out that it is something peculiar to the individual, on the one hand, or that it relates to social or political reform, on the other. Two sentences will illustrate this. From Eliot's Middlemarch (serialized in 1871-72):

"It is your favourite fad to draw plans.
"Fad to draw plans! Do you think I only care about my fellow-creatures' houses in that childish way?"

Thus, a fad is a peculiar whim of an individual, a whim that could be characterized as something "childish." Then, from 1834, we have:

"Uncle need not fuss himself about the Doctor becoming a Bishop, as it is all a fad."

Here, the meaning of fad is a "pet project" that relates to some kind of social or political reform. By the 1880s, however, the word had adopted a wider sense of "a hobby" or a "craze" [by the way, a quick glance of the development of the term 'craze' indicates it may have gone through a similar evolution]. From 1881: "The Engadine is the last fad of the moneyed classes." And, from 1884: "Sloijd..the last new 'fad.'" What, by the way, is "Sloijd?" My flippant answer is, "Well, of course, it's a fad." But it was/is a Scandanavian form of handicraft or woodworking, which became all the rage in the 1880s in England. Look at this page, and see the way that the titles on "sloyd" multiplied in the 1890s. We have, for example, The Teacher's Handbook of Slojd (1891) or Slojd, or, Hand-work as a Factor in Education (1887). That it came to America shortly thereafter is seen in this 1900 title: American Sloyd. Naturally, this book was by a guy named Larsson. Now, will someone tell me what the Engadine was?

Once the term had become associated with a modern social "craze," the older signification was lost. But for the first 50 years of its existence, a fad was a personal peculiarity. Any chance of resurrecting that usage?

Other Words for the Day

I still have lots of words I would like to examine today, among them grig, grihastha, crocket, bostangi, fastigiate, robalo, busk, sorosis, shabrack, solan and shunpike. I am starting to get the feeling that these will take me one more essay. But let's make a beginning.

Let's "bundle" grig and grihastha, since they live on the same "block" in the dictionary. While grig has several entries in the OED, the most common usage seems to be "an extravagantly lively person, one who is full of frolic and jest." The first use of it in this way came from a 1566 translation of Horace's Satires: "A merry grigge, a iocande (jocund) frende." The only previous use of the term in English was as a "dwarf," and so that meaning may also be in the 1566 usage. But soon the words "merry" and "grig" seemed inseparable and a grig came to mean a merry person. From 1652: "I'll to my Griggs Again; And there will find new mirth to stretch And laugh."

Though the journey in the dictionary is only a few words to get to grihastha, the mental distance to get there is immense. Grihastha is a Sanskrit term meaning a "married Brahman householder," and so it is "a Brahman in the second stage of life, which carries with it certain social obligations, as the duty to marry and have children." The word first came into English only in 1871, and the Encyclopedia Britannica has an entry on it in its 1876 edition: "The pious Brahman...was enjoined to pass through a succession of four orders or stages of life..[The second is] grihastha..or householder."

Well, we might as well learn the other three stages now, don't you think, and then reflect for a moment on this way of viewing life. The stage just before grihastha is brahmacharya and the succeeding phase is vanaprastha. The final one is sanyasa. As this article tells us, each of these is really an ashram or "shelter," and I rather like that imagery, since the word "shelter" indicates a rightness and a "protection" by the universe of you in that condition. Each ashram was supposed to last 21 years, with the total life's span then being 84 years. Not too different from the Biblical, "The years of our life are three score and ten or maybe by reason of strength four score." Well, brahmacharya is the "shelter" of youth or learning, which requires discipline, guidance and purity for its full flowering. We already know a little about grihastha, which emphasizes the duties of an individual towards family and society. Then, from ages 42-63 is the vanaprastha or "hermitage" stage, where a person returns to contemplation, to reflection on earlier learning, and for guiding society from this contemplative strength. Finally, from 63-84 we have the renunciation phase, where a person, full of wisdom, inwardly aims to renounce all outer goals/ambitions of life. Instead, the person becomes a teacher of spiritual knowledge and no longer partakes in social and political concerns. Thus, if you "add it all up," we only spend 1/4 of our live in the "outward" duties of life; the rest is spent in learning, reflection on learning, and teaching/self-discipline.

Conclusion

I must say that even though my culture and training was Christian, and I am a minister, and have a Ph. D. in Biblical studies, etc. etc., that this division of life makes very great sense to me. Though I can't overlay it on my life precisely (I finished my doctorate at 30, for example, and kids weren't "out of the house" until I was 53), I see that now, at age 56, I am living the perfect life of the vanaprastha. I do nothing but think, write and, increasingly, involve myself in public policy where I think I have something to say. I don't yet long for the sanyasa state, perhaps still having too much of human ambition in me, but that will come, no doubt in about a decade....

See how much fun we have, and how much learning is done, simply by "going slow" in the dictionary? I guess I now have to finish the other words.

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