Can I Have a Word?

leaning into my logophilia

I woke up this morning not wanting to write a substack newsletter.

I’ve been working hard on memoir revisions all week, doing a lot of research into the early history of HIV-AIDS. The Seattle writing group I attend offered an interesting suggestion on Monday that has had my brain buzzing ever since.

And so I had my mind set on writing for the memoir this morning.

But when I sat at my desk, I glanced at an old page-a-day calendar that highlights hard-to-read kanji (the Chinese characters used in Japanese). This calendar used to sit on my desk at work (it’s from 2020), but I took it home at the beginning of the pandemic and promptly forgot about it. Hiro and I unearthed it while cleaning off one of our old desks, and I started tearing through a few entries each morning once more.

The entry for Thursday, 29 October 2020, reads 犬を嗾ける. I can read the hiragana, of course, having memorized them in 1987. And I can read the first character, 犬 (inu), which means dog. But that verb, 嗾ける, was mystery. I flipped the page to check the reading. 嗾ける is read けしかける (keshikakeru), but even with that information, I was still at a loss. Not a verb I’ve ever used.

So I switched to the tab where the online Japanese/English dictionary I use most frequently awaited, and entered 嗾ける.

The meanings include to incite, to instigate, to spur on, and, when talking about dogs, to set or sic. I never owned a dog when in Japan, and therefore never needed to sic that dog on anyone, so perhaps it not surprising that I didn’t know this verb (although that kanji is beautiful. One part 口 (kuchi), meaning mouth, and one part 族 (zoku), meaning tribe.).

And the reading, keshikakeru, reminded me of word that appeared in something I read yesterday, 怪しからぬ, keshikaranu. I’ve heard it used in Japanese a few times and had a rough idea of its meaning contextually, but hadn’t stopped to wonder it meant.

According to the dictionary, it is an interjection that means scandalous, shocking, inappropriate. Hiro went on to note that it is frequently used humorously when, for example, someone notes an image or video that is, from the perspective of the general public, salacious (yet, from a personal perspective, intriguing). One use he described was:

怪しからん！確認させて！

Keshikaran (grammatically identical to keshikaranu, although more modern)! Kakunin sasete!

How abhorrent! Let me have a further look (to make sure)!

So my calendar prompted me to write about words.

And as I opened substack to start writing, I recalled the title of my first attempt at memoir, a thinly veiled fiction I crafter in the 1990s.

And yes, I was still in the habit of using my confirmation name for a fourth initial. Feel free to guess what the second M stood for. =)

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I finished reading Gay Bar; Why We Went Out, by Jeremy Atherton Lin, and before cracking open Pretty Baby; a Memoir, by Chris Belcher, I paused to share with Hiro the new, beautiful words that Mr. Lin had taught me.

• Scopophilia is a type of sexual fetish whereby persons achieve sexual satisfaction via visual media, preferentially over sex with other persons. A person with such a fetish is known as a scopophiliac.

• Sinople is a quartz-based mineral, made red with iron in the molecular mix. The mineral color ranges from blood red to brownish red, although when used in heraldry, sinople can vexingly refer to either the color red or the color green. Mr. Lin, when in the chapters describing his time in London, referred, I believe, to “sinople-haired lads”. An excellent image.

• Sudor is the salty liquid excreted by sweat glands. Most writers would default to sweat, but Mr. Lin’s reference to “testicular sudor” had me a) running for a dictionary and b) loving the definition. Let’s all find ways to use sudor in a sentence! By the way, another related term that Mr. Lin introduced me to is osmolagnia, a sexual arousal that occurs in reaction to the smells of sudor.

• And the word I found even more delightful than sudor? Titivate is a verb and describes the little touch-ups you make when you, for example, pass a mirror on your way out, or when you notice your reflection in a storefront’s window, and stop to push a hair back in place, to straighten your eyeglasses, or to adjust your clothing.

Thank you for reading. I’ll have an issue on Japan travel basics ready next week.