Read Online Wordcatcher by Phil Cousineau - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Phil Cousineau
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humble admission, “Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst,” it made sense how he waited and watched, and watching, finally saw what he wanted to shoot. Bon courage to all those who follow the light. Lest we think artists are humorless, let us recall Larry the Cameraman’s words in Groundhog Day , “People think that all cameramen do is point the camera at things, but it’s a heck of a lot more complicated than that!”
Camera (Ansel Adams at Point Lobos)
CANADA
A country in North America; the land of my ancestors. According to Alberto Manguel, the name of his adopted homeland was granted when the first Spanish explorers landed in British Columbia and exclaimed: “ !Acá nada! ” (Here’s nothing!”). In “A Case of You,” Saskatoon, Saskatchewan’s’ own Joni Mitchell described one of the most unusual tributes to a lover on record, so to speak, when she wrote about how she took a cardboard coaster and in the light of a blue television screen, “I drew a map of Canada / Oh Canada / With your face sketched on it twice.” From down under, in Australia, comes a story that’s almost too good to be true; it goes like this. In 1770, the intrepid Captain Cook was exploring the northeast coast, near a river he named the Endeavour,
when a peculiar animal carrying her young in a pouch on her stomach came bounding by. Cook asked an Aborigine from the Guugu Yimidhirr tribe what it was. “ Gangurru ,” he was told, which the English sailors heard as kangaroo , and later entered folklore as “I don’t know.” Cook duly recorded it in the ship’s journal as “kangaroo.” And it’s said that when Spanish explorers arrived in southeastern Mexico they asked a leader from the Yucatec Maya people where in blazes they were, and were told: “Yucatán!” which actually meant “What do you want?” or “I don’t understand your words!” Whether or not these folk etymologies are literally true, they reveal the rare cracks of light and humor from the official reports of these colonial powers, as if to say, yes, there were misunderstandings.
CANOODLE
To caress, pet, fondle; lovemaking . A titillating verb, an amorous euphemism. Cuddling, with the promise of a little action; a humorous way to describe fooling around without sounding like one—a fool, that is. A word that snuggles up to you and asks to be embraced. The American Heritage Dictionary suggests that it could be related to the English dialectal canoodle , donkey, fool, and it’s not hard to imagine Eddie Murphy’s donkey in Shrek asking a girly donkey to canoodle in the back of the barn. But it is the suggestion of being a Fool for Love , as Sam Shepard wrote about in his tumultuous stage play, that gives the word the
mule-kick of meaning. The AHD also hints at a connection with the colloquial German knudeln , to press or mold with your fingers, as with dough, which conjures up the possible origin of how a little canoodling could lead to sighing to your lover, “my little dumpling.” Here is a case of being so delighted with a new word that I went racing home—in Berkeley, circa 1981, on my 850 Yamaha—to check my dictionary. I had just seen The Lady Eve at the now sadly defunct University Theater and heard Ann Sheridan purr these lines about what she planned to do with her beau: “[I’m going to] finish what I started. I’m going to dine with him, dance with him, swim with him, laugh at his jokes, canoodle with him, and then one day about six weeks from now…” She didn’t have to say more. Companion words to use with your inamorata , your lover, include croodle , which Robert Hunter tenderly defines in his collection of words from Chester as “to snuggle, as a young animal snuggles against its mother.” And who can forget the amorous alliteration of Ian Dury and the Blockheads, in the mellifluously named “Honeysuckle Highway,” when they sing, “Cruising down carnality canal in my canoe can I canoodle ?”
CANT
Any jargon used
Camera (Ansel Adams at Point Lobos)
CANADA
A country in North America; the land of my ancestors. According to Alberto Manguel, the name of his adopted homeland was granted when the first Spanish explorers landed in British Columbia and exclaimed: “ !Acá nada! ” (Here’s nothing!”). In “A Case of You,” Saskatoon, Saskatchewan’s’ own Joni Mitchell described one of the most unusual tributes to a lover on record, so to speak, when she wrote about how she took a cardboard coaster and in the light of a blue television screen, “I drew a map of Canada / Oh Canada / With your face sketched on it twice.” From down under, in Australia, comes a story that’s almost too good to be true; it goes like this. In 1770, the intrepid Captain Cook was exploring the northeast coast, near a river he named the Endeavour,
when a peculiar animal carrying her young in a pouch on her stomach came bounding by. Cook asked an Aborigine from the Guugu Yimidhirr tribe what it was. “ Gangurru ,” he was told, which the English sailors heard as kangaroo , and later entered folklore as “I don’t know.” Cook duly recorded it in the ship’s journal as “kangaroo.” And it’s said that when Spanish explorers arrived in southeastern Mexico they asked a leader from the Yucatec Maya people where in blazes they were, and were told: “Yucatán!” which actually meant “What do you want?” or “I don’t understand your words!” Whether or not these folk etymologies are literally true, they reveal the rare cracks of light and humor from the official reports of these colonial powers, as if to say, yes, there were misunderstandings.
CANOODLE
To caress, pet, fondle; lovemaking . A titillating verb, an amorous euphemism. Cuddling, with the promise of a little action; a humorous way to describe fooling around without sounding like one—a fool, that is. A word that snuggles up to you and asks to be embraced. The American Heritage Dictionary suggests that it could be related to the English dialectal canoodle , donkey, fool, and it’s not hard to imagine Eddie Murphy’s donkey in Shrek asking a girly donkey to canoodle in the back of the barn. But it is the suggestion of being a Fool for Love , as Sam Shepard wrote about in his tumultuous stage play, that gives the word the
mule-kick of meaning. The AHD also hints at a connection with the colloquial German knudeln , to press or mold with your fingers, as with dough, which conjures up the possible origin of how a little canoodling could lead to sighing to your lover, “my little dumpling.” Here is a case of being so delighted with a new word that I went racing home—in Berkeley, circa 1981, on my 850 Yamaha—to check my dictionary. I had just seen The Lady Eve at the now sadly defunct University Theater and heard Ann Sheridan purr these lines about what she planned to do with her beau: “[I’m going to] finish what I started. I’m going to dine with him, dance with him, swim with him, laugh at his jokes, canoodle with him, and then one day about six weeks from now…” She didn’t have to say more. Companion words to use with your inamorata , your lover, include croodle , which Robert Hunter tenderly defines in his collection of words from Chester as “to snuggle, as a young animal snuggles against its mother.” And who can forget the amorous alliteration of Ian Dury and the Blockheads, in the mellifluously named “Honeysuckle Highway,” when they sing, “Cruising down carnality canal in my canoe can I canoodle ?”
CANT
Any jargon used
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