Wordcatcher by Phil Cousineau Read Free Book Online Page A

14th century meaning “confused.” According to the charming Charles MacKay’s culling of Lost Beauties , mask surprisingly meant “ bewilder” back in the 13th century, and the verb maze meant “to bewilder and confuse.” As for the old saw that men can’t ever admit they are lost, let’s consider the ingenious response of Daniel Boone when asked if he’d ever been lost: “No, but I was once bewildered for three days.” His kindred spirit of a more recent time is Isadora Duncan, who urged other women artists, “You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you!”

BIBLIOTHÈQUE (FRENCH)
    A library, a paradise for book lovers. The earliest written record dates back 4,500 years to ancient Sumeria’s eduba , translated by its Akkadian conquerors as the “tablet house,” for its thousands of cuneiform books. Originally, bibliothèque meant “a box or warehouse of papyrus scrolls.” The word derives , drifts downriver to us like a reed along the Nile, from the Greek colony of Alexandria, whose famous library consisted of 700,000 biblion , papyrus scrolls, from biblios , the heart of the papyrus stalk, and byblos , rolled scroll or rolled book, the word used to describe what came from the Phoenician port that shipped papyrus rolls to Egypt. [Green] bibliophile Alberto Manquel describes the Library of Alexandria as “a very long high hall lined with bibliothekai, niches for the scrolls.” This was the Museion, The House of the Muses, The Place for the Cure of the Soul. Companion words: bibliography , a book list; bibliomancy , divination through books; biblioclast , destroyer of books; and biblioburro , “a rural book mobile system,” via donkeys, in Colombia. Bibliocaveat : beyond the uplifting aspects of libraries, a gentle warning about the addiction to books. H. L. Mencken tells us there are bibliobibuli , those who are book-drunk because they have read too much. “I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing, and hearing nothing.” Bibliophobia is the fear of running out of things to read, a familiar dread for those
on long plane flights or train rides. Eudora Welty visited her local Carnegie library every day as a young girl for her “sweet devouring” of the two books a day doled out by the librarian.

BONA FIDE
    In good faith, authentic, honest; without bad intentions, fraud, deceit, or deception. Today, we say, “He’s got the bona fides , he’s a five-tool ballplayer.” Or: “She’s got bona fide talent as a singer; she’s the real deal.” Figuratively, it points out authentic credentials. One of my favorites is the following example, from a pub custom in late-19th-century Dublin, Ireland. In those days the pubs closed at the traditional hour of 11:00 P.M., but it was also an hour when the back roads of Ireland still saw plenty of wanderers afoot, such as the gypsies, the traveling people. Often, they would knock on the doors of pubs they knew stayed open late for travelers, those who wanted a late meal or drink. But there was a law in Dublin that pubs could only sell alcohol to those who were true, authentic out-of-towners, so as to keep the locals from drinking after hours. Since those were days when many people still knew Latin, the phrase bona fide was used as a kind of password at the threshold of the pubs: “Aye, lad, are ye bona fide ?” Meaning, “Are you telling me in good faith that you are truly from outside Dublin?” If so, the lad could enjoy a late-night whiskey. In the Coen brothers’ rumpus of a movie O Brother, Where
Art Thou? Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney) asks his ex-wife, Penny Wharvey McGill (Holly Hunter) why she’s told everyone that he was hit by a train. Exasperated, she says, “Lots of respectable people have been hit by trains… What was I gonna tell them, that you got sent to the penal farm and I divorced