Word of the day: gam

You might wear out your index-finger running up and down the columns of dictionaries, and never find the word. Dr. Johnson never attained to that erudition; Noah Webster’s ark does not hold it. Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for many years been in constant use among some fifteen thousand true born Yankees. Certainly, it needs a definition, and should be incorporated into the Lexicon. With that view, let me learnedly define it.

GAM. NOUN — A social meeting of two (or more) Whale-ships, generally on a cruising-ground; when, after exchanging hails, they exchange visits by boats’ crews: the two captains remaining, for the time, on board of one ship, and the two chief mates on the other.

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851).

An incomplete survey:

Gam did make it into a dictionary in Melville’s lifetime: The Century Dictionary (1889–1891, online here) has entries for the word as a noun and verb. The word is missing from Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913, online here), but it appears in Webster’s New International Dictionary, second edition (1934). Or it at least appears in my 1954 copy. As a noun: “A herd, or school of whales. A visit between whalers at sea, hence, Local , U.S. , social intercourse between persons ashore.” As an intransitive verb: “Naut . To gather in a gam;— said of whales. To engage in a gam, or, Local , U.S. , in social intercourse anywhere.” As a transitive verb: “To have a gam with or visit with.” The OED has another noun, gamming , which is missing from Webster’s Second and Webster’s Third. It, too, describes a visit at sea.

In The Century and Webster’s Second , gam refers first to whales and later to human beings. In Webster’s Third and the OED, it’s the other way around. So Melville’s meaning came first. It would seem that sailors at some point must have begun to describe whale gatherings in terms of their own stop-and-chats.

But whence gam ? The Century suggests “Perhaps a var. of jam .” The OED suggests that the word may be a variant of game, “Amusement, sport, fun; pleasure, enjoyment.” Webster’s Second : “Origin uncert.” Webster’s Third: “perh. short for obs. gammon talk, chatter.”

Surprising to me: gam has meant “leg” since 1785. I think of that gam as originating in old-movie talk: “Nice gams, sister.”

Also from Moby-Dick
“Nothing exists in itself”
Nantucket ≠ Illinois
Quoggy
“Round the world!”

[That lovely bit of punctuation — “To gather in a gam;— said of whales” — says a lot about the spaciousness of Webster’s Second . Compare Webster’s Third ’s perh. and obs.]

Happy Father’s Day

[Photograph by Louise Leddy. August 22, 1957.]

It was a Thursday, probably in Brooklyn. That’s my dad Jim and me. He or my mom cut the circle and pasted the photo into the “baby book.”

Happy Father’s Day to all.

Wa kei sei jaku

Elaine and I attended a Japanese tea ceremony today. It was a beautifully calming occasion and one that I would want to experience again. A scroll on a wall had the four characters above, the four principles of the tea ceremony as given by Sen Rikyu. A placard below gave their equivalents: wa kei sei jaku, or harmony, respect, purity, tranquility. Here is a page with further explanation. The relation to current events is pretty clear. What the world needs now: wa kei sei jaku.

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Excerpts and more excerpts from Kakuzo Okakura’s The Book of Tea

Cole’s Portuguese sardines

French sardines, they say, are the best. Portuguese sardines, they also say, are the best. They say so many things, don’t they?

When I spotted, in our international grocery, a single can of Cole’s smoked Portuguese sardines, I had to have it, or them. When I pulled the lid, after waiting for more than a week, I found five sardines. They were skin-and-bones sardines, but with the meatiness of their skinless and boneless kin. They tasted light and smoky, like an elegant, mysterious appetizer. There was nothing fishy about these sardines. They were great. They were sardinhas espectaculares.

The only problem: price. Our nearby international grocery charges $7.99 for a can. The Cole’s website, as I have discovered, sells the same can for $3.99. Even that price seems steep. But $3.99 for an occasional treat? That’s reasonable. Cole’s also has skinless and boneless Portuguese sardines, $4.99 a can. I’ll bite.

I have yet to see French sardines in person, or in a can. Et toi?

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

NYT on Charleston

The horrific church shooting in Charleston, S.C., leaves the nation at an all too familiar juncture — whether to do something positive to repair society’s vulnerabilities or to once again absorb an intolerable wound by going through what has become a woeful ritual of deep grief followed by shallow resolve to move on toward  . . .  what? Toward the inevitable carnage next time.

So begins a New York Times an editorial about the killings in Charleston, South Carolina.

“Round the world!”

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851):

Round the world! There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where those that we left behind secure, were all the time before us.

Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of that demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.

Also from Moby-Dick
“Nothing exists in itself”
Nantucket ≠ Illinois
Quoggy

[Whelm: “To cover over completely; now esp., to cover with water or other fluid; to cover by immersion; to overwhelm; engulf.” And “Figuratively, to cover or engulf completely and disastrously; to overwhelm; as to whelm one in sorrows.” Definitions from Webster’s New International Dictionary, second edition.]

How to improve writing (no. 60)

My son Ben thought I would like writing about this first sentence of a Reuters article:

A San Francisco-based driver for smartphone-based ride-hailing service Uber is an employee, not a contractor, according to a ruling by the California Labor Commission.

I see four problems:

1. The pile of phrasal adjectives. “San Francisco-based driver for smartphone-based ride-hailing service Uber” has the ungainliness of Hammacher Schlemmer headlines, though Reuters at least uses hyphens.

2. The repetition of -based with different meanings, which is at least slightly jarring. A driver may be based in a city, but the service isn’t based in a phone.

3. The lack of agency. Michael Harvey’s The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing suggests a crucial question to ask about a sentence: Who did what? Here the action — that a commission ruled — is buried in a phrase at the sentence’s end.

4. Too much material for a single sentence. The overloaded opening sentence is a symptom of journalese. (See also this post.)

My attempt at improvement:

The California Labor Commission ruled today that Uber driver Barbara Ann Berwick is an employee, not a contractor. Uber, a San Francisco-based company, markets a mobile app that allows users to arrange for transportation with drivers.

Some news stories describe the ruling as applying to all drivers. But it applies only to Berwick. Adding her name adds clarity. I’m not happy about “San Francisco-based.” I’d prefer “a San Francisco company,” but that phrasing might suggest that Uber is a local business. “San Francisco-based” at least beats “headquartered in San Francisco.” I thought it more important to identify Uber (rather than Berwick) as based in San Francisco. The driver’s location could come in later in the story.

Related reading
All OCA How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 60 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Today’s Zippy

Reading Zippy is more fun that The Waste Land — all the hidden references! Today’s strip channels the 1948 film They Live by Night.

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All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Moby-gibberish

I read a partial sentence in a dream this morning and wrote it down when I woke up: “from whence the initials carved into the surface of the whale rendered the ship a perennial Sea Hag.”

The obvious inspiration: chapter 68 of Moby-Dick, which describes a sperm whale as covered with “numberless straight marks” that appear to be “engraved upon the body itself.” Ishmael compares these marks to hieroglyphics. The Sea Hag sailed in from another fictional world: Popeye’s.

I have also dreamed an oracular remark from a Paris Review interview and sentences from The Elements of Style. And once, long ago, a passage from an unpublished poem by David Jones. I wish I had written that one down.

Reader, do you read in dreams?

Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)

Quoggy

Text from Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851). Image from the collective unconscious.

Also from Moby-Dick
“Nothing exists in itself”
Nantucket ≠ Illinois

[Quoggy : a spelling of quaggy , “Of flesh, a body, etc.: soft, yielding, flabby. Also fig .” (Oxford English Dictionary ). The Dictionary cites Melville’s sentence.]