Today, we do page 56 of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition! It’s an excellent page, and it introduced me to a new kind of hat: cloche.
All the Words I Knew Before
Page 56 had a lot of words I knew, and I don’t see why I should deny them to myself. I was thinking about how we all know just when we learned some words. One example of that is the word “clique.” It is “a small, exclusive circle of people, especially with identical interests.” I learned it when I took Psychology when I was in high school.
Interestingly, it was taught by the music teacher. It was very much pop psychology. I think the instructor, Mr Wright, had received a minor in it when he was in college. You could get much the same education from reading Psychology Today. Or perhaps even that is putting on airs. Nevertheless, it was a fun and interesting class.
“Solitary, Celibate, I Hate It”
Similarly, I know when I learned the word “cloistered” (or close enough). It means “alone; separated from everything else; sheltered away from the world.” Or so the dictionary says. It has specific religious meanings. And I learned it when I was perhaps 12 years old. I was in the habit of checking out original cast albums of musicals from the library. One of them was 1776.
In the song “Yours, Yours, Yours,” Abigail sings, “I live like a nun in a cloister; solitary, celibate, I hate it.” So I looked it up. (It’s interesting that people consider me an intellectual; the only thing that is different between me and others is that I drag out the dictionary.) Here is the song. It’s very sweet:
Dropping Stock of Clone
Now a word I have no recollection of learning is “clone.” I won’t bother defining it. But it does seem that the idea of cloning had a great hold on our society in the early 70s. There were lots of movies about it. People were fascinated about it. Now that it is a real thing, people aren’t as interested.
All the Words I Didn’t Know Before
Some words seem too bizarre to be real. Thus it is with “clinker built,” even though I know it is a real thing. I’m sure for people into boating it is something they take for granted, but I have no experience with it. It means “(of ships) having boards or planks that overlap.” I was thinking of making it the word of the day, but I got distracted.
I often find myself looking for the name for a group of animals. There’s a great webpage for this: Animal Group Names. But only today I learned that there is a word for a group of cats: “clowder.” Although according to that page, a group of wild cats is called a “destruction.” That’s pretty cool.
There is also the simple word “cloy,” which is “to satiate or become distasteful through excess.” The word kind of makes me hungry. For the last month or so, food has tasted off. So the idea of eating enough to get sick of food sounds appealing. But this probably explains why I have now lost 15 pounds.
Cloche
I have a great fondness for women’s fashion. I used to really enjoy going clothes shopping with my wife. So I’m naturally drawn to any words that relate to women’s fashion. And I really like this: cloche.
1. a glass cover, usually bell-shaped, placed over plants to protect them from frost.
2. a woman’s close-fitting, brimless hat.
Date: late 19th century.
Origin: from French for “bell.”
Example: The “flapper hat,” as it is often called, is actually a cloche hat. It works best with short, cropped hair, which was the style in the 1920s –Lena Maikon, Knitter’s Lib: Learn to Knit, Crochet, and Free Yourself from Pattern Dependency
I come by clinker built from history. Viking longships were built that way. It allowed the hull to twist a bit in rough seas instead of break. There is a use for cloche they didn’t list. It is a cover placed over a plate of food. Usually seen on cooking shows or in pretentious restaurants. In the ’70s restaurants often used cheap, plastic ones that made the table’s order stackable. There was a hole in the middle for pulling them off instead of a handle. Mom always swore the sight of them meant the food was going to be bad. But she was a picky eater with unpredictable tastes at times. Were there lots of cloning movies in the ’70s?
“Boys From Brazil.” Probably more. The 1970s were prime time for dystopian sci-fi. Then “Star Wars” came along and killed off the genre for awhile. But it came back, it always does. Mary Shelley was definitely onto something.
That’s fun stuff about the stacked plates. I’ve never seen those.
Oh, that’s an excellent example! Although I always think that Hitler wouldn’t have been Hitler without the failed art career and all…
Yes, those are big in restaurants. Or they used to be. The dictionary is like that. They may have considered that definition unworthy. Or they may have just overlooked it. It isn’t a great dictionary — that’s one reason I’m tearing it apart.
I do recall a number of movies that dealt with cloning — but I may also be thinking of science fiction books and stories. But even Demon Seed deals with cloning; that’s more what I’m talking about.