Quirky words

IN the course of one day, the following quirky words came up: klatsch, gewgaw, hayloft, lagging,

layering, and quirk. They came unforced, and all earn their keep in English. It’s a receptive, absorbent wordstock, as if it welcomed oddballs.

Klatsch

No mystery about klatsch: I was at one, a ‘‘meeting devoted to talking’’. The sound mimics its noisy busy talking, akin to English clash, though that makes you think more of conflict or saucepan lids. In German they have a kaffeeklatsch, and so did we.

Gewgaw

The klatsching moved to names for the little objects we arrange on ledges or shelves as personal, quirky ornaments. Bricabrac; knickknacks; gewgaws. As quirky things they attract rhythmic and babyish names, or why else do they all reduplicate? Same with bibelot,

bauble, doodad, tchotchke . . . Of these, gewgaw figured in the klatsch because we disagreed how to say it: geegaw (like heehaw) or as written, gewgaw. Readers, join in, and make the klatsching a hubbub.

Hayloft

By comparison, hayloft is plain AngloSaxon, not childlike: it’s the loft where one puts hay, or used to. Hay is simply OE for mown grass, heg or hieg, long ago

*haujam in protoGermanic.

And loft is OE for sky, like German luft in Lufthansa. But it came to mean the chamber of a building which is high up next to the sky. It connects to lofty and to

lift and a lift. The quirk here is in my own mind: this all began with the scrabblegram YOHLTAF, which resisted solution because it sounds like an ancient ritual drinking vessel.

Layering

Back in the klatsch, the brains trust was discussing the coming cold snap, and how many layers of clothing would suffice: 4, 5, 6 . . .? We spoke of layering, in a new use based on other actions: lasagnamaking, and how Russians in Antarctica would put cloths over their boots.

Lagging

Layering isn’t mysterious, because it simply turns the noun

layer into a verb, as with format or process. But then the group mind, moving on, likened feet to waterpipes, that in cold weather you would lag. Only to lag is also to delay or linger. This lag is a homonym, meaning insulation, also a convict (old lag). The quirk is in the wordstock, since to

layer is to lay, which is legen in German yet nothing to do with legs or lags. Thus to waylay is

wegelagen, ‘‘to beset the public ways’’, to ambush.

Quirkiness

Now if you are thinking that this quirk leads nowhere, and nor does this meditation, blame klatsching; only don’t you also wonder how users of English steer a path among so many homophones which have few syllables, and a wordstock of over a million words? These are mostly ordinary words, coming from AngloSaxon, eroded and assimilated during the 1500 years since Hengist and Horsa sailed across the North Sea.

Quirk

And quirk itself is another. Once it had the dubious sense of a quibble or evasion (c. 1500). It relates to German quer, meaning ‘‘across’’, so that a transverse flute is the querflo¨te, which replaced the recorder type that you puff straight down into. Underneath lies the idea of twisting or slanting. A quirky word is one which springs a surprise.