For the Insider
The Grammarnator has been dormant for some time, but can always be roused by a headline, which throws its words out in bold print. Last week’s Monitor announced that “Candidates gird for voting in Indiana,” and I immediately reached for the nearest dictionary, which happened to be the one Merriam-Webster puts out for Scrabble users. It had a one-word synonym for gird, and if you think that “Candidates surround for voting in Indiana” makes sense, by all means make that your preferred dictionary.
I felt that more research was in order, so I went to my Webster’s Eight New Collegiate and then decided to head to the Concord Public Library, where the Oxford English Dictionary is laid out in 20 splendid volumes in a back room. And there I learned that a specific item is surrounded by the act of girding – one’s waist (since belt and girdle used to be synonyms). Or perhaps one’s loins, to make the connection familiar to many people. And that usage appears in a Biblical admonition: “Gird up your loins, and take my staff in your hand, and go your way.”
So far so good, but some explanation is called for. People walking around in ancient times usually wore long, flowing garments, and if they wanted to get anywhere fast, they would hitch up their clothing and cinch it around the waist. But they would also do that when preparing for battle. Hence it is that the word enters English in 1450 meaning “to prepare oneself for action.” And that is what the candidates were doing in Indiana, getting ready to fight it out for delegates. (Note: a video game called Magic: The Gathering has a Gird for War Challenge).
Also of interest was the photo of a Canterbury patriarch who “revels in his five-generation family.” Like gird, revel began with one meaning and then acquired another. Originally, way back in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the most famous English poem of the Middle Ages, a revel was something that happened in King Arthur’s court, namely “riotous or noisy mirth or merry-making,” with drinking and dancing. Surely this does not describe the older gentleman pictured sitting on a sofa holding a baby in his lap. But its other sense, coming along in 1754, does: “to take intense pleasure or delight in something.”
In any case, its best-known use is probably the original meaning. Prospero forsakes his magic at the end of The Tempest, saying “Our revels now are ended.” In today’s lingo: “The party’s over. No more fun and games.”
