My Folly

When I was a teenager, my mother told me, in exasperation, that I possessed a “lack of good sense.” Indeed, the on-line American Heritage Dictionary (AHD) defines the word “folly.” I don’t remember specifically what I had done to elicit that comment, nor at the time did she actually use the word “folly” or “foolish.” (As it turns out, both “folly” and “fool” descend from a Latin word meaning “windbag” or “bellows.”)

Imagine the irony of me ending up living part of my year on a barrier island named Folly Beach. The name “Folly Beach” has caused no end of confusion among friends and family. Even though we have sent out “change of address” cards, people still hesitate—seemingly in confusion--before they say “Folly.” In speech and in writing, frequently the word becomes “Foley.” I figure this confusion is because who wants to live at a place named for “lack of good sense,” although my mother would approve.

Come to find out, Folly Beach was NOT named after that meaning of “folly.” According to Gretchen Stringer-Robinson in Folly Beach: a brief history, “The word ‘Folly’ is derived from Old English, meaning an area of dense foliage,” which opens the opportunity for jokes about “coming out of the woods.” Even though Folly Beach is nicknamed “Funky Folly” because of its laid back atmosphere and aging hippie population, the real origin of the word “folly” as in Folly Beach deals with foliage, not lack of common sense. Sorry Mama!

Recently, a friend and I were talking about the word “folly.” She informed me that “folly” has a meaning I had never heard of: a structure, such as a pavilion in a garden, that is chiefly decorative rather than practical in purpose, according to the on-line AHD. Curious, I googled “folly” to find a whole world of ornate architecture with little to no functional value. Here is a link to an article in Mental Floss detailing various architectural follies. My favorite is number 5, the Dunmore Pineapple in Scotland.

Also, in the world of folly, we have the follies, “an elaborate theatrical revue consisting of music, dance, and skits.” At Folly Beach, we can foolishly engage in song and dance on an island of foliage; that is, in folly we can perform follies on Folly.

Thanks, Theresa!

What Does Shakespeare NOT Say? Surf: "Hold acquaintance with the waves"

Shakespeare wrote a lot of words about a lot of topics, including words themselves. Hamlet bemoans the meaninglessness of words, “Words, words, words,” in a conversation with Polonius. He illustrates the comic potential of the misuse of words with Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, when the uneducated Dogberry incredulously asks, “Dost thou not suspect my place?” (meaning “respect).

In his plays, Shakespeare used 31,534 different words. By comparison, the average English speaker knows and uses between 10,000 and 20,000 words. (We should thank our elementary school teachers for all of those vocabulary tests!)

You should be able to imagine, then, my challenge in finding a word that Shakespeare did NOT use, as a departure from my series “What Does Shakespeare Say (WDSS).” My one rule was that the word had to be in existence when Shakespeare was alive and writing, which disqualified words such as “internet” or “automobile.”

I wracked my brains for months until finally, Hurricane Irma provided me with The Word: surf. Friends posted pictures on Facebook and media also posted pictures of (fool)hardy souls in the surf off Folly Beach as Hurricane Irma approached. In fairness to the Bard, the word in its modern form did not appear until 1680. However, its forerunner, “suffe,” appeared in the 1590’s, while Shakespeare was at the height of his dramatic powers. At least two of his plays involve ocean storms, providing the opportunity to write about “suffe” or “surf.”

Scholars date Twelfth Night, with its shipwreck in Act 1, scene 2, to the early 1600’s. At this point, the sea captain, trying to give hope to Olivia that her brother Sebastian has not drowned, claims to have seen him clinging to the boat after the shipwreck, “I saw him hold acquaintance with the waves.” I can testify after months of watching surfers off of Folly Beach that they do, indeed, “hold acquaintance with the waves,” so Shakespeare defined the word “surf” in this play without actually using it.

In addition, the impetus for Shakespeare’s final work, The Tempest, dated to 1610, rests on a storm, possibly of hurricane strength. “Who cares these roarers for the name of the king?” Boatswain asks when ordering the noblemen below deck during the storm. Someone at some point could have surfed in The Tempest.

To further support my claim, I dug into the history of surfing, finding timelines in Surfer Today and a timeline presented by the Surfing Heritage Foundation, which show surfing going back as far as 3000 BCE. (As a side note, the trivia I found most fascinating is that of Mark Twain surfing off Hawaii in 1866. I can imagine him in his bathing costume puffing on a cigar as he shoots towards shore. He published Mark Twain in Hawaii: Roughing it in the Sandwich Islands, Hawaii in the 1860’s and Mark Twain’s Letters from Hawaii as a result.)

Even though it took the natural disaster of Hurricane Irma to point the way, I am pleased finally to find a word that Shakespeare did NOT use, even though he could have!

LAGNIAPPE: Depending on your view of English class, it may be to your delight or chagrin to realize how many words and phrases common to modern English that we can blame or laud Shakespeare for inventing. Scholars credit Shakespeare with inventing 1700 words through methods such as functional shift, that is changing a noun to a verb, as in “eye,” the organ of vision, and “eye,” as in to scrutinize something, or just plain old making up words. (Here is another link to phrases Shakespeare created.)

Womanity or TheWoman Question

For many years, both as “an adult female human being,” aka a woman (according to the Oxford English Dictionary [OED]), and an English teacher, I have been interested in gender neutral language. Over the years, I have become accustomed to using “humankind” instead of “mankind” to refer to general groups of people although I still cannot say “personhole cover” with a straight face. When my daughter was a teenager, we dubbed one of our favorite Italian foods “personicotti” as our nod to gender neutral cuisine. At this point, I find it jarring to hear of “manning” instead of “staffing” a position. Sometimes, however, situations call for gender specific language. The recent Women’s Marches around the world advocated for womankind, for women’s rights, as well as for humankind.

Recently, I began reading Miriam Gurko’s The Ladies of Seneca Falls: The Birth of the Women’s Rights Movement. What serendipity to be reading this work at this point in history, when “herstory”--read that as women’s rights--is in grave danger.

In Gurko’s book, I ran across a word referring to “the nature of women,” as Merriam-Webster on-line defines “womanity.” Of course, I know “humanity,” although I have never seen “manity” used, so “womanity” caught my eye. Gurko describes reactions in various newspapers to the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention: “A typical editorial called the convention ‘the most shocking and unnatural incident ever recorded in the history of womanity.’”

Since I never recall seeing “womanity” used, I Googled the word. Of the multiple pages of hits, most of the links for “Womanity” referred to a not inexpensive women’s fragrance. Around page three, I started finding other references to “womanity” that carried their own sweet fragrances.

AWID (Association for Women’s Rights In Development) is an international organization fighting for women’s human rights. It presents the Womanity Award to someone who has worked to prevent domestic violence against women. The Womanity Foundation works to empower girls and women. “Womanity--Women in Unity” is “a weekly programme . . . which celebrates prominent and ordinary African women’s achievements.” I found three different publications entitled “Womanity Magazine,” one in Spanish, one in Greek, and one in Hungarian. Finally, I found a book, The Mysteries in Womanity: An Expository Revelation to the Sacred Divinity of Womanhood, by Apostle Adebayo Adeniyi, dated June 2011, but is out-of-print.

Next, I consulted my OED and was a little surprised to find the word, defined as “the normal disposition or character of womankind,” with a reference found from 1843. It seems, “womanity” was used briefly around the middle of the 19^th Century--usually in a derogatory sense--and then it fell into oblivion. Let’s clear the air. I would like to see the word get back into common usage as something other than a somewhat pricey fragrance, a word that women and men—humankind—can use proudly.

LAGNIAPPE:  While researching “womanity” in the OED, I ran a word new to me, ”womanthrope,” meaning “a hater of women,” or misogynist. Oscar Wilde used the word 1891. An author named Coldstreamer used it in 1902. Out of curiosity, I looked up “misanthrope” to find “a hater of mankind, a man-hater.” With womanthrope and misanthrope as companion words, what word would be the companion of misogynist?