I didn’t feel yare by any means, in fact I felt as though I was in a kef, as I strolled through the wen. I turned down a ginnel towards the suq, accidentally kicking a tot and uttering a gar. I disturbed a mewing cat. It mowed but never moved. Lief I began to wonder whether the suq would be zoic. I was hoping to snup a dah from Ali the sutler.
Complete gibberish, right? But all the words are real and all of the unfamiliar ones are short. If you play Scrabble a good deal you may know all of these words and even their meanings. But everyone else should be at sea, so let’s unravel the paragraph above, word by word.
- Yare. I’m not sure why this word isn’t used a good deal. It means nimble, alert, prepared. When I hear a sound in the night and I get up to find out what it was, I’m either yare or frightened out of my skin, depending. So: well “I didn’t feel yare by any means”.
- Kef. This refers to a dreamy state, possibly drug induced. It is quite the opposite of yare. So “I didn’t feel yare by any means, in fact I felt as though I was in a kef.”
- Wen. A wen can be any of the following four; a sebacious cyst, a spongy headgrowth that some goldfish have, a character from the Old english alphabet derived from a rune and a highly congested city. I think we’ll go with highly congested city here. Ginnel. This is a word I heard time and again in Liverpool, but I’ve not heard it elsewhere. So you may know it. It means alley way. Suq. You may also be familiar with this word. I know it as souk, which is a Middle Eastern market. Suqs are not like normal markets, you bargain for things before you buy them. It’s the way it works. They always ask outrageous prices if you aren’t prepared to bargain. The correct bargaining strategy is to feign interest. The first thing you show interest in should not be the thing you want.
- Tot. This has multiple meanings too, most of which you will know; tot as a small child or a small amount (of rum, perhaps) or as a verb “to tot something up.” Here it means none of those. It means a bone or some other object one might retrieve from a pile of garbage.
- Gar. “Shiver my timbers” is a gar. Having one’s timbers shiver, btw, is what happens at sea in wooden ships when the weather is bad and the ships taking a battering. It’s the old sea dog equivalent of “cross my heart and hope to die” – a mild curse. So “I turned down a ginnel towards the suq, accidentally kicking a tot and uttering a gar.”
- Mow (and Mew). The word mew doesn’t just describe the noise a cat can make, it can also mean moulting. Thus a mewing cat may not be making a sound as in this instance. To mow is to make a grimace, when your’e not cutting grass. “I disturbed a mewing cat. It mowed but never moved.”
- Lief. Lief means both soon and gladly. In the above paragraph is means soon. Zoic. You might just know this one, or be able to work it out. Literally it means containing evidence of life. “Lief I began to wonder whether the suq would be zoic.”
- Snup. A suq is a good place to snup. To snup is to buy something of value which some less discerning person has discarded or sold cheap. I once came across an antiques dealer who had a painting that was snupped from him. It was a Constable. The worst part of it was that he got into the newspaper so everyone knew he’d been snupped. It even got on the national news.
- Dah. A dah is a short heavy Burmese knife, often with an ornate ivory handle. It’s conceivable that you could find one in a suq.
- Sutler. And a sutler is the right kind of person to get a dah from. Believe it or not, a sutler is a camp follower, who hangs around the army to sell provisions to the soldiers. So, I was hoping to snup a dah from Ali the sutler.
See also:
10 Curse Words You Don’t Know
10 Insulting Words You Don’t Know
10 Nonsense Words You Don’t Know
10 Words You Don’t Know With Limericks
10 Units of Measure You Don’t Know
Click here for the full list of postings: Words You Dont Know
Click here to BUY the book: Words You Don’t Know on Amazon
~ Thomas Jefferson
