Hurkle Durkle, Medicanes, and Misophonia

The Word Collector — Part 31

This is the latest in a series about new words and phrases, specimens collected during expeditions into the deepest, darkest literary and media wilderness, and displayed for perusal, purview, and pontification. These are new to me, but of course, you may know some or all of them already, in which case you are welcome to marvel at my ignorance.

medicane — a Mediterranean tropical-like cyclone. The word turned up during a recent analysis of what caused the recent awful flooding in Libya, a situation in which national decline due to civil war appears to have met climate change head-on, compounding the impact to tragic effect.

FOGO — another great acronym for the collection, and one many of us can relate to, fear of growing old, which turned up in an excellent Guardian article, that is well-balanced, highlighting both the intergenerational inequity caused by rising house prices and the UK pension “triple lock”, but also the way respect for the older generation seems to be going out of fashion in some societies.

“……he rose like a methane bubble in a slurry lagoon….” This rather marvellous phrase was used by George Monbiot as a rather unflattering comparison when describing the mysterious rise of blowhard Piers Morgan.

phlebotomy — this is the process of making a puncture in a vein, usually in the arm, with a cannula for the purpose of drawing blood. The procedure itself is known as a venipuncture, which is also used for intravenous therapy. This word turned up in a work-related conversation, one of those where you have bluff your way through, and quickly have to look up after afterward!

“valence of competence” — this expression was used on a BBC Radio show about how voters choose who to vote for. In this context, valence refers broadly to performance and competence. In its most simple form, a voter makes a valence-based vote choice when they make a choice based upon the performance of a party or candidate. This can be contrasted with positional voting, when a voter makes a choice based on a preferred policy goal, with identity-based voting — such as a choice based on class, ethnicity, religion or gender, or when a voter makes a choice consistent with their pre-existing party.

“….the trees sobbing with water….” — this lovely phrase turned up in an Observer article by author KX Song, writing about how long-distance running helps inspire her writing, in an article titled “Running marathons helped me write my novel”. If it was me, running would take up all my free time and just leave me exhausted — horses for courses as the old saying goes!

Döstädning — this is a Swedish word meaning literally “death cleansing”, which I came across in an article by Medium author Carol Finch, and encapsulates a concept I badly need to adopt, of clearing out clutter before it becomes a chore for our children when we die. The article is on the link below:

misophonia –this is a disorder of decreased tolerance to specific sounds or their associated stimuli, or cues. These cues, known as “triggers”, are experienced as unpleasant or distressing and tend to evoke strong negative emotional, physiological, and behavioural responses that are not seen in most other people.

In terms of examples, think of the noise of fingernails down a blackboard or similar, though it could be just someone sniffing or eating that sets a sufferer off. A link to the Guardian article where I saw the word is below, along with a link to the Wikipedia entry:

chiffonier — this word turned up a couple of times in “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger which I have been reading to describe some furniture in the narrator’s room, an unusual semantic choice when desk or drawers might equally have been used. I find it fascinating how words can come to occupy a very local cultural niche, so presumably the term was used at Salinger’s own school. The term chiffonier, also chiffonnier, may refer to one of at least two types of furniture.

Its name comes directly from a French piece of furniture, the chiffonier. The French name, which comes from the French for a rag-picker, suggests that it was originally intended as a receptacle for odds and ends that had no place elsewhere.

grippe — also from “The Catcher in the Rye”, is an old-fashioned term for influenza.

“…a kitchen island thriller” — I found this description of a series on Amazon (Wilderness) amusing to read in a review in “The Observer”, as Mrs. Pearce always comments enviously whenever a kitchen island is shown on TV. My budget runs more to a kitchen sandcastle than a whole island. There does seem to be a lot of “property porn” on different viewing platforms, with stunning homes on display, which inevitably provokes unfavourable comparison with whatever one has.

hurkle durkle — to finish with one to make you smile and to annoy Grammarly, this Scottish slang expression I spotted on Facebook, dates back to around 200 years ago, and to hurkle durkle is to lie in bed, or to lounge after it is time to get up or go to work, an experience most of us will have had at some time!

I hope you enjoyed this collection, and do share any favourites of your own in the comments.

As always, thank you for reading.

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