SPANGHEW

Once, a long time ago, an old man told me about something he and his friends did in their youth.  Based on the time of the telling and the age of the man at time he told me the story, I’m going to guess it took place sometime in the late 1930s or early 1940s.

This was in Prescott, Arizona, and I’m going to guess there was still a lot of the Wild West in the area at that time. Kids get bored. So what they would do is gather up a few baseball bats. Find a truck and head out into the scrub brush after dark.

The rabbits would be dumbstruck by the noise of the truck and the headlights bearing down on them making them easy targets for the baseball-bat-wielding young men. We can’t really judge those kids by the standards of today. That wouldn’t be fair. So even though, at the time I heard the story, I was appalled, I tried not to let on that I was.

I have no idea when the word “spanghew” came into use. I’m going to guess it was even longer ago than when kids applied baseball bats to bunnies. I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would want to bat a frog into the air with a stick, which is the definition of “spanghew.” But there you are.

GOMBLE

Does everything need a name? An author once mentioned in a novel I was reading that not every character needs a name. Sometimes “mother” or “dark-haired man” will suffice.

At the time, it was a crazy thought for me. I’d been giving all my characters names. Even those that might only be in one scene in an entire novel. When you do that, it can get really difficult very fast to keep track of the names. It was extremely liberating to realize I didn’t have to name them all.

So I can’t help but wonder if we really need a word for those balls of snow or ice that form in an animal’s fur as they walk through the snow. But we have “gomble” so I don’t really have to wonder.

And I have to admit it’s a lot easier to say “Look! That dog has gombles” than to say, “Look! That dog has balls of snow hanging in her fur.” Now if we were talking about an unaltered male dog, I’m not sure you might not get a few stern looks using the first example.

SARCULATE

Today I will sarculate. Yesterday, I sarculated. For sure, sometime in the future, I will sarculate once again.

As opposed as I am to using a noun as a verb (or a verb as a noun as in “ask”), I think that in this one case at least, I might make an exception.  We have a large yard and it requires a lot of upkeep. I spend a lot of time pulling weeds … or “weeding” if I’m being lazy with my words … and conveniently forgetting my opposition.

I think that if I told my husband I was going outside to sarculate, he might ask me if that was not something I might rather do indoors.

Interestingly, the only known reference in the Oxford English Dictionary of the word “sarculation” is from 1733 in the writings of the agricultural innovator and writer, Jethro Tull.

So …  when I am outside sarculating, I do not have to worry about gombles because they don’t happen this time of year. And since I am not likely to encounter a frog, I will not be spanghewing either.

Photos and quote courtesy of The Institute for Creation Research; Poodle Forum; Home, Garden and Homestead; and Medium, respectively