cozenage and cotquean and crannog and crambo and couvade

For some reason I misplaced my notes on pages 261-280, and I am not going to recreate them now. So, let's go through a lot of individual words that need to be learned and then pause on a few that interest me.

The List

Let's start with coracle, which is a small boat used in Britain from ancient times. I wonder if it sailed to Greece and was carried overland to the famous shrine, it might have been known as the coracle of Delphi. A corody is an allowance of provisions for maintenance dispensed as a charity. The OED informs us that it was already obsolete in the 17th century; maybe that explains my fascination with it. Corves is the plural of corf, which itself is the singular of corves. I have to confess my love for corymb, defined as "a flat-topped inflorescence" because the Collegiate has a great picture of inflorescences. I am sure that most readers are happy to know that inflorescence can be pictured. Oh, by the way, an inflorescence is "the mode of development and arrangement of flowers on an axis." For example, a few of the inflorescences depicted on p. 641 are "raceme," "corymb" (which really looks like a Hannukah candelabrum), "umbel" and "panicle." So many things to learn when you stop to think about it.

Then we have coryphaeus, the leader of a party or chorus, and costive, meaning affected with constipation. The OLD has a term constipo, meaning "to crowd together," from which we get "constipation" (where things are really crowded together, as it were), but there is no Latin or Greek word standing behind "costive." It can also mean "slow in action or expression," but I wonder if you used the term in the following sentence, "Hey, bud, are you costive?" whether someone would take offense. Well, I suppose that would imply that a person knows the word "costive," a big assumption indeed. Next time you think of calling someone a "tight-ass," use the word "costive" instead. It will stave off the decline of the West.

Continuing with The List

I think I will just focus on the "list" in this essay. A cothurnus is a boot worn in classical theater, while a cotoneaster is an Old World flowering shrub. Cotquean is probably an obsolete word, but our dictionary uses it and defines it as either a masculine woman or a man who busies himself in women's affairs. The Century even gives several quotations for the concept, such as the cute "I cannot abide these apron husbands; such cotqueans." Whoops, Shakespeare uses it, and so we have to keep it in the dictionary. In Romeo & Juliet, Lord Capulet says, "Look to the bak'd meats, good Angleica: Spare not for cost." The Nurse responds, "Go, you cot-quean, go, Get you to bed."

Moving along. A coude is a certain kind of telescope, a coulis (pronounced ku LAY) is a thick sauce, coulisse is a backstage hallway and a couloir is a steep gorge. I can't help mentioning couchant, which I already knew how to spell, because it ushers in the strange and wonderful world of heraldry. Remember all those lions as heraldic creatures? They can be couchant, which means reclining, or passant, walking, or rampant, running and guardant, meaning looking at you. It can be looking at you while it is running, though you hope it doesn't run into a tree in the meantime. Countertransference fits right about here, but I can't get into that simply because I like psychology. I simply don't want to burden you with all my hang ups, ya know? Courgette is zucchini and coypu is nutria, though I suppose you need to know what nutria means in order fully to know coypu. Well, who is stopping you from looking it up?

I skipped over couvade, which I didn't mean to do, which is a custom in some cultures in which when a child is born the father takes to bed as if bearing the child and submits himself to fasting, purification or taboos. A wonderfully Eurocentric quotation from 1871 tells us all we need to know: "This highly eccentric practice has been illustrated and explained by Mr. Tylor [who wrote about it a few years earlier. Tylor was one of the first great anthropologists who posited stages of human culture based on certain religious practices] under the name of the couvade or Hatching, by which it is known in some of hte Bearn districts of the Pyrenees." What a bunch of cotqueans! Really now.

I just love words too much, I suppose. Cozenage is next, which means fraud, but I would love to take some time some day to probe whether this word emerged in connection to writs of cosinage and that whether our concept of fraud really originated in a word describing "cousins." Well, on to crambo, which is a game in which one player gives a word or line of verse to which each of the others has to find a rime." What isn't clear to me is whether the game requires the person to finish the line with the actual words used by the poet or is free to make one up, as long as it rhymes. Well, I never was very good at games.

Conclusion

Well, I am running out of space for today, so let's just stop with crannog. The Collegiate has it as "an artificial fortified island constructed in a lake or marsh originally in prehistoric Ireland or Scotland." Yikes. The OED has it as "an ancient lake-dwelling in Scotland or Ireland." So, is it the island or the dwelling? I am not going to get to the bottom of it now, but I bet it won't be a word they choose in Cheyenne.

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