GRIN DING

Since the invention of spelling and punctuation, bloopers have provided untold amusement. Recently, I bought a tee shirt which says, “Let’s Eat Grandma!” above a horrified cartoon grandma. The caption below horrified grandma reads, “Let’s Eat, Grandma! PUNCTUATION SAVES LIVES.” An anecdote regarding nuances of spelling “burro” and “burrow” admonishes that those who confuse the two words do not know their ass from a hole in the ground. I still remember from my early days as an English teacher the student who claimed to have a “wench” on the front of his truck. (I will let you insert your own sarcastic comment here about women and hoods.) Even creative hyphenation can provide linguistic amusement.

Around the corner from my house, a man has a business in the back of his house. The sign out front reads “GRIN DING,” with a hole (not a burrow, though) separating the “N” and the “D.” I know that his business entails sharpening tools, but I still enjoy thinking about what exactly a “grin ding” might be. I know that a “wing ding” informally means “a lavish or lively party or celebration,” according to the “American Heritage Dictionary.” Might a “grin ding” be a type of wing ding?

To this end, I looked up “ding” and found familiar meanings, specifically “to ring; clang” and “to dent or nick.” Ringing or clanging a bell might elicit a grin, especially if a dinner bell is being rung. On the other hand, having your car dented or nicked might elicit an upside down grin.

When I looked up “grin” to see what kind of fun I might have with my “grin ding,” my findings quite surprised me. Come to find out, “grin” originally had a more somber meaning than “to smile broadly, often baring the teeth, as in amusement, glee, embarrassment, or other strong emotion” as the “AHD” defines it in current usage. Actually, the origin of the word goes back an Old English word which means “to grimace” or “to mutter.” Until now, I have always associated grinning with harmless fun (unless Jack Nicholson was the one grinning).

This finding sent me scrambling for my “Oxford English Dictionary.” The first definition of “grin” given, a noun usage, reads, “A snare for catching birds or animals, made of cord, hair, wire, or the like, with a running noose.” A subsequent definition as a verb reads, “To catch in a noose; to snare, ensnare; to choke, strangle.” At this point, my broad smile vanished, replaced with an urge to put on a turtle neck shirt. The fourth definition reads, “Of persons or animals: To draw back the lips and display the teeth.” This definition strips all overt emotion from the act of grinning, whether the grinner be human or animal.

Sufficiently horrified at the grim turn of the history of “grin,” I consulted David Crystal and Ben Crystal’s “Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary & Language Companion.” In Shakespeare’s usage, “grin” means “bare the teeth, grimace, snarl.”

My grin parade got rained on. My enthusiasm for throwing a “grin ding” has dulled. The “Grin” Reaper has stolen my smile. I guess I will just have to grin and bear it.

NOTE: During a break from writing “GRIN DING,” I began reading a profile in the 1 Sept 2014 “New Yorker,” “The Troll Slayer: A Cambridge classicist takes on her sexist detractors,” by Rebecca Mead. I found this passage: “Beard observes that there is not word in Latin for ‘smile,’ and makes the striking suggestion that the Romans simply did not smile in the sense that we understand the social gesture today.” Mead goes on to quote Gregory Hays’ refutation of this claim: “’It may well be that the Romans did not smile, as we do, to indicate greeting or willingness to serve. But the smile of amusement, pleasure, or approval is probably as Roman as gladiators and stuffed dormice.’” Who would have thought that the history of smiling or grinning would be so fraught?