thunkard

Maria Von Trapp of

The Trapp Family Singers.

"Proudly I talked about

someone being a "thunkard"

anauthorsorchard.wordpress.com

noun

nonce word

jocular

[thunk-ard]

thunkard: an individual whose mental exertions have reduced him or her to a stupor

Early 20C. United States

From Bingo Boys and Poodle-Fakers: A Curious Compendium of Historical Slang.

Collected from the Best Authorities. London: The Folio Society, 2007, 102.

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THUNKARD IN USE.

From "Are You Out Of Your Mind?" by Clifford C. Kuhn, M.D.

One reason I have trouble trusting myself is that I've had a lifelong addiction to thinking. Like any addict, I have become unbalanced. As certainly as drinking too much gets me drunk , thinking too much gets me thunk . As a drunkard I'm not likely to be thinking clearly, but as a thunkard , I'm definitely thinking too much to trust my instincts. To me, thunkeness is nothing more than the state of being afraid of all the possibilities in everything.

Dr. Clifford Kuhn is both a psychiatrist and a comedian. He is professor of psychiatry at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. His current book is entitled The Fun Factor: Unleashing the Power of Humor at Home and on the Job. www.kentuckianahealthfitness.com

—

From The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria Augusta Trapp:

I invented a method all my own, in which I wanted to apply what I had learned about one word to as many like-sounding words as I could find. This proved later to be fatally wrong, and it still haunts my English of today. For instance, I had learned: freeze-frozen. I wrote underneath in my precious little notebook: "squeeze-squozen" and "sneeze-snozen" Proudly I talked about someone being a "thunkard", explaining wordily that I had thought if drinking much makes a person a drunkard, so thinking much, like that professor I had in mind makes him a "thunkard."

Maria Augusta Von Trapp. The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, 1949.

—

And finally, this light verse by Walter G. Doty from the April 5, 1916 edition of The Albany Evening Journal:

Why not?

If a female Duke is a Duchess,

Would a female spook be a sputches?

And if a male goose is a gander.

Would a male moose be a mander?

If water you freeze Is frozen.

Is the maiden you squeeze, then be squozen?

If a thing you break is broken.

Would a thing that you take be token?

If the plural of child is children.

Would the plural of wild be wildren?

If a number of cows are cattle.

Would a number of bows be battle?

If a man who makes plays is a playwright,

Would a man who makes hay be a haywright?

If a person who fails is a failure,

Would a person who quails be a quallure?

If the apple you bite is bitten,

Would the battle you fight be fitten?

And if a young cat is a kitten.

Then would a young rat be a ritten?

If a person who spends is a spend thrift,

Would a person who lends be a lend thrift?

If drinking too much makes a drunkard,

"Would thinking too much make a thunkard?

But why pile on the confusion?

Still, I'd like to ask in conclusion:

If a chap from New York's a New Yorker,

Would a fellow from Cork be Corker?

—Walter G. Doty in The Albany Evening Journal, Wednesday Evening, April 5, 1916.

http://fultonhistory.com/newspapers

•

DECONSTRUCTING THUNKARD

Because our standard dictionaries have failed to address the word thunkard, a word ringing with notes of playful meaning, it falls to me to assay an explanation of how the root thunk and the suffix -ard interplay to make meaning.

THUNK

First, thunk, which the Oxford English Dictionary describes as the "dialectical and jocular past tense and past participle of think, verb."

Note the markers "dialectic" and "jocular," the latter defined as "Of the nature of, or containing, a joke; said or done in joke; comic, humorous, funny."

Before we get to thunk in its modern function as a jocular word, we should first note its entrance into English, as a dialectical word. The earliest known citation in print of thunk came in 1876 with a scholar's notation about thunk's frequency of use the dialect of New Yorkshire: "Think.. Thuongk in the past [tense], in which tense it is of constant occurrence."

Thereafter, thunk took to the motley with non-stop jocularity, either as the past tense of the verb think or as a noun meaning "a think." Its first appearance in the jocular occurred in 1887, as a verb, in a New Orleans journal titled The Lantern in the sentence: "Who'd a thunk it?" The earliest citation of thunk as a noun came to us much later, in 1922, from the pen of James Joyce, who wrote "Have a good old thunk" in his novel Ulysses.

Eventually, speakers began to exploit thunk's onomatopoetic sound of a collision:

• as a noun, meaning "a sound of a dull blow or impact,"

• as a transitive verb, meaning "Make a thunk; fall or land with a thunk,"

• as an adverb, as in "with a thunk," and

• as an interjection: "Thunk!"

-ARD

Now, on to the suffix -ard. The OED records -ard's arrival in Middle English words derived from Old French in such words as bastard, coward, mallard, wizard. Then it moved on, rising in its own English voice as a namer of things, e.g. placard and standard (in the sense of flag).

Eventually, users amped-up the energy of -ard by employing it as a suffix stating "one who does to excess, or who does what is discreditable," as we see in such snarlers as buzzard, drunkard, laggard, and sluggard.

As you can observe, -ard keeps hard, colloquial company. Witness again the negative human traits in coward, bastard, coward, drunkard, laggard, and sluggard. Each word denotes the absence of virtue, which Aristotle saw as the golden mean between, on the one hand, vices of deficiency, coward, and, on the other, vices of excess, drunkard.

Quite simply, -ard is the perfect suffix for thunkard, "an individual whose mental exertions have reduced him to a stupor," one so slumped and retrograded that his mind cannot even reach for the standard past tense form of the verb thought, defaulting, instead, to the doltish form thunk.

We might also try to imagine (with a stretch) the process of intense thought magically transmogrifying itself into a physical object, specifically into a big airborn bolus gone ballistic, which swings around and thunks the thinker on the noggin, thereby sending her mind into thunkardy.

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THE SOUNDS OF THUNKARD

Now, let's investigate the sounds generated by thunkard (beyond its self-contained, self-evident thunk). I'm talking about the u in thunk and the r and d in -ard. The best source for playfully idiosyncratic yet on-the-mark essays on the sounds of the alphabet is Roy Blount Jr.'s book, Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences; With Examples of their Usage Foul and Savory. (I hope you enjoyed reading that subtitle as much as I enjoyed typing it.)

•

ROY BLOUNT JR.'S COMMENTS ON THE SOUNDS OF U, R, AND D.

U:

The sound that comes from deepest down — the grunt vowel, the dull thud vowel, the vowel we may utter when punched in the stomach—is the flat u-sound. It's not quite where when we think, saying to ourselves Hmmmmm. . . . . When we can't come up with a word, we temporize by grunting uh or um. And when we say something obvious, people say: Duh. Yes is unh-hunh, no, unh-unh. (Or, if you eschew nasal seasoning, uh-huh and uh-uh.) Come again is hunh? (Or huh?) (320)

—

R:

[There are] the er, ar, or sounds in are, earth, earnest, origin, hormone, urge, urtext and "murder your darlings."

There's dog-growl: rrrrrr; and pirates' favorite letter: arrrrr. And roar, which I heard the poet David Wagoner describe as "obviously from a word before language." (248)

—

D:

Can we imagine . . . thud or clod ending in any other letter?

Do I mean to say that every word ending in a d is pejorative? Good God, no. Consider bed, wood, bud, and food. And d begins dear, darling, dove, and daddy. But you know how how well s works in suspicious and l in lullaby? That's how effective d is in heavy downer words: dull, drugged, drudgery, dunce, dump, dunk, duffer, dust, dud, dolt, doddering, dowdy, doleful, dunderhead, dung, doo-doo, damn, doldrums, dead. (70)

From Roy Blount Jr. Alphabet Juice. New York: Sarah Crichton Books, 2008.

•

THE SONICS OF THUNKARD

Adding to what we have said about the meanings generated lexically through the apt mating of thunk and -ard, we can now add the following commentary on the sounds in thunkard, based upon (admittedly) selected comments from Roy Blount Jr.

Passing over the lithe th, which Blount does not address, nor will I because of its thin contribution to thunkard, we go to the sonic u by imagining a thunkard in an extreme funk having been being reduced to uttering nothing much more than duh, uh-huh, uh-uh, and hunh[?] We can also hear in thunkard the illiterate r from pre-language utterances, as well as the dark d, lead consonant in such "downer words" as dunce, dolt, doddering, and dunderhead — each of which, take note, could serve as a synonym for thunkard.

•

That's all, except for this:

If twittering too much makes a twittard,

Does posting too much makes a postard?

And if texting too much makes a textard,

Would blogging too much make a bloggard?

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quaternary

thefreedictionary.com

adj.

[kwah-ter-nair-ee] or [kwa-ter-ner-ee]

quaternary: fourth in a series

15C: from Latin quaterni: four each

•

QUATERNARY IN USE:

Fred Astaire, Michael Jackson.

To Astaire, the dance was primary — his main story — and he had it filmed accordingly. In Jackson's videos, the dance was tertiary, even quaternary (after the song and the story and the filming). The camera repeatedly cuts away, and, when it comes back, it often limits itself to the upper body. Jackson didn't value his dancing enough.

Walking on the Moon: Michael Jackson in motion" Joan Acocella The New Yorker July 27, 2009, 77.

•

COMMENTS

Readers unfamiliar with quaternary can easily enough discern its meaning in Acocella's sentence through a simple calculation: if song comes first, story second, and filming third, then dance must be fourth, or quaternary.

But after primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary, what comes fifth in the sequence, Fiftanary? Nicklenary? Afterfourthinary? Most of us do not know.

A good place to learn the answer to such a question is Ask the Experts at AskOxford.com, where, among the FAQs, we find this question, What comes after primary, secondary, tertiary?, and its answer:

The sequence continues with quaternary, quinary, senary, septenary, octonary, nonary, denary. Words also exist for `twelfth order' (duodenary) and `twentieth order' (vigenary).

But another question arises: Of what use is such an antique sequence of words in daily spoken discourse, especially when we have that efficient sequence of first, second, third, followed by fourth, fifth, sixth?

NUMBER WORDS IN ENGLISH

Before answering the question, it would be helpful to know precisely what kind of "number words" we are dealing with.

Quaternary is the fourth word in what is called an ordinal sequence, a sequence of numbers which tells us rank or position: 2nd best, 3rd fastest, 5th in line. As their name suggests — ordinals tell us the order of things.

Note that there are two other types of "number words" at work in our language: cardinal numbers and nominal numbers. Cardinal numbers, also called counting numbers, show quantity, telling us "how many": 5 fingers, 14 friends, 6 degrees of separation. Nominal numbers, which we could call specifiers, enable us to identify something numerically: jersey number 4; zip code 02116A; Macintosh operating system OS X — with X, here, working as the Roman numeral for 10.

Now, back to the ordinals, which, as we've seen, come in two sets.

One set uses the words first, second, third, followed by fourth, fifth, sixth.

The second opens with primary, followed, naturally enough, by secondary, but then moves on into less familiar territory with the terms tertiary and quaternary. Thereafter, we find ourselves looking down an arcane corridor of Latinate derivatives: quinary (5th), senary (6th), septenary (7th), to name but three of them.

OF WHAT USE IS THE LATINATE ORDINAL SEQUENCE?

Let's return, now, to our question: In daily spoken discourse, of what use is the Latinate ordinal sequence, which opens with primary, secondary, tertiary and continues with quaternary, quinary, senary?

The answer is threefold. Two of the words in the sequence are of primary utility; two others, of secondary utility; and the remainder, of scant utility.

We need primary because, besides meaning first, it can also designate "of chief importance, principal" and "not derived from caused by, or based on anything else." We need secondary, because besides meaning second, it can also designate "less important than, or resulting from someone or something else that is primary." These two words are rich with useful meanings. —The New Oxford American Dictionary

For daily speech, tertiary and quaternary can be useful when describing three or four elements, but best limit their use to what I would call "learned environments." These words are more at home in written rather than in spoken English.

I would value the remaining words in the ten-fold sequence, from the sixth to the tenth position, as being — each in its own place — merely, well, quinary, senary, septenary, octonary, nonary, or enary. As for the 12th and 20th positions — um — what were those words again?

•

QUATERNARY, IN THE DOMAINS OF GEOLOGY AND MATHEMATICS

Besides functioning as a number word, quaternary also defines certain geological and mathematical entities. To give the word its full lexicological due, then, here are its geological and chemical denotations as recorded in The New Oxford American Dictionary:

Quaternary

Geology of or relating to, or denoting the most recent period in the Cenozoic era, following the Tertiary period and comprising the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs (and thus including the present).

Chemistry denoting an ammonium compound containing a cation of the form NR4+, where R represents organic groups or atoms other than hydrogen. • (of a carbon atom) bonded to four other carbon atoms.

•

QUATERNARY CELTIC KNOT, A FOUR-CORNERED CELTIC KNOT DESIGN

Finally, there is the quaternary Celtic knot, so called because it has four distinct sections within its design:

Avia Venefica, symbolism maven at Whats-Your-Sign.com, tells us that quaternary Celtic knot designs vary widely in meaning, depending upon the era and region of inception, as well on as the artist's intention. Meanings typically associated with Quaternary Celtic Knots include the following:

• Indication of the four directions: North, South, East, West.
• Indication of the four seasons.
• Indication of the four great treasures of the Tuatha
• A more modern indication of the four Latin Gospels in the Book of Kells
• Indication of the four elements: Earth, Fire, Water, Air
• Indication of the four Celtic fire festivals, Samhain, Beltane, Imbolc, Lughnasadh.
• An emblem of Brigid, also known as the Queen of the Four Fires a she demonstrates her four-branched wisdom of hand, hearth, head and heart.

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ALL TOGETHER NOW

Finally, here they all are, in order, as if posing for a final photograph, the Latinate ordinals:

1st • Primary

2nd • • Secondary

3rd • • • Tertiary

4th • • • • Quarternary

5th • • • • • Quinary

6th • • • • • • Senary

7th • • • • • • • Septenary

8th • • • • • • • • Octonary

9th • • • • • • • • • Nonary

10th • • • • • • • • • • Enary

12th • • • • • • • • • • • • Doudenary

20th • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Vigenary

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996 w.

maven

In memory of

William L. Safire, 1929-2009,

language maven of the first order.

noun

maven: An expert, a connoisseur; a knowledgeable enthusiast, an aficionado.

[Yiddish meyvn expert, connoisseur ]

• The most trying type [of customer] of all..is the ‘mayvin’. The word is of Yiddish origin, has entered the language. 1952 N.Y. Times Mag. 21 Sept. 5.

The currency of the word is said to have been boosted by the advertising campaign for Vita Herring, launched in the United States in 1964:

• Get Vita at your favorite supermarket, grocery or delicatessen. Tell them the beloved Maven sent you. It won't save you any money: but you'll get the best herring. 1965 Hadassah News Let. Apr. 30 (advertisement)

• I don't think your project is exactly the answer to a dictionary mayven's prayer.1985 Maledicta 8 125.

• I have in mind such English language mavens as William Safire and Robert MacNeil. 1991 Eng. Today Oct. 57/2.

—The Oxford English Dictionary Online.

•

MAVIN IN USE

William Safire, 79, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and language maven for the New York Times, whose penchant for the barbed and memorable phrase first manifested itself in speeches he wrote for the Nixon White House, died Sept. 27 at Casey House, part of Montgomery Hospice in Rockville. —Joe Holley, The Washington Post, Post Mortem, "William Safire 1929-2009, Rapier-Witted Conservative Columist Safire Dies," Monday, September 28, 2009.

Read the full essay here.

-

Not a hopeless hypochondriac of history, nor a nabob who was negative and nattered, maven of the English tongue whose wordy mystery he believed to English-speaking people mattered, [William Safire] was a columnist the New York Timesallowed to disagree with its opinions. —Gershon Hepner, Physician and poet,The Huffington Post, Posted: October 3, 2009 03:08 PM.

Read the full essay here.

NOTE: The opening phrases of Hepner's sentence echo "hysterical hypochondriacs of history" and "nattering nabobs of negativism" — playful epithets Safire invented in his speech-writing days for Vice President Spiro Agnew, who used them to describe the U. S. Media.

•

COMMENT

Though I rarely agreed with the assumptions behind William Safire's political rhetoric, I admired the directness and vigor of his expression, even if I sometimes winced at his word choices (Hillary Clinton: "a congenital liar") or at times wondered why he could just not let go of certain tenuous claims (notably, his repeated purport of a link between Qaeda's Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein serving as a sufficient warrant for invading Iraq).

But I never doubted the authority nor failed to enjoy the playful pronouncements of his New York Times Magazine column "On Language," always among my first-reads every Sunday morning. Sans Safire, Sunday mornings will never be quite the same.

A sample:

HISTORICAL ALLUSION WATCH

What's that you say, falconer? I can't hear you. My once-bulging file of poetic allusions is flapping near emptyily. Writers who used to show off their erudition no longer sing in the bare ruined choir of the media.

Paul Krugman of The Times is doing his best to preserve the grand tradition of oblique poetic quotation. He recently wrote: "Right now Mr. Obama's backers seem to lack all conviction, perhaps because the prosaic reality of his administration isn't living up to their dreams of transformation. Meanwhile, the angry right is filled with passionate intensity." No Bethlehem slouch, he; that's based on William Butler Yeats' familiar "The Second Coming," in which "things fall apart; the center cannot hold" and "the best lack all conviction, while the worst/are full of passionate intensity." —"On Language," Sept. 6, 2009, 12.

"No Bethlehem slouch he," of course, brings to mind the poem's final lines: "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

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