Chef is a French word that’s distantly related to both chief and the Latin cap (“head”). But in Lycoming County, it can be an acronym—that is, a pronounceable abbreviation like NATO, AWOL and YOLO. To be specific, here in Central PA, CHEF stands for Christian Home Educators’ Fellowship—a homeschool co-op that’s been meeting weekly in Montoursville for more than 20 years.
My own CHEF lit. class is currently covering Harper Lee’s beloved 1960 Pulitzer-winner To Kill a Mockingbird. Since I’m always seeking some worthy theme for “Weird Words” in Webb, I couldn’t help noticing how much oddball vocab comes up in the novel—partly because it’s set in the deep South nearly 90 years ago.
So for the next couple of weeks, we’ll work on some of those words. Most definitions will come from dictionary.com or Merriam-Webster—and I’ll cite which Mockingbird chapter(s) contain each term. I’m also ditching my usual alphabetical layout, instead presenting the words in the order in which they appear in the book. (That’s partly because I need another week to finish re-reading it—literally for the 16th time!) –
Chattel (CHAT-ul, noun) – Used in the plural in TKM, this refers to movable personal property (i.e., not buildings or land). Among the ancestors of narrator Scout Finch—which is the context for its use in Chap. 1—chattels could also refer to slaves.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about this word is its close relation to cattle and capital. They are actually doublets—in other words, virtual synonyms deriving from a single source-word. So you can see that historically, one’s cattle was one’s capital!
The doublet is a fascinating linguistic phenomenon that you can search for at Webb online—since “Weird Words” covered it way back in 2023; other examples include frenetic/frantic, frail/fragile and hospital/hotel/hostel. In fact, chef and chief are doublets, too.
Flivver (FLIV-ur, noun) – American slang for an old, cheap car; “jalopy.” Can also mean anything of lousy or inferior quality. As with many of our country’s colloquialisms, its origin is unknown. (Both this and the next word are from the same sentence in Chap. 1.)
Beadle (BEE-dul, noun) – This usually designates a minor church official with simple worship-service duties (like the better-known sexton). But in TKM, it appears to refer to a policeman—since Arthur Radley & co. “resisted arrest by Maycomb’s ancient beadle,” who later arranged criminal charges against them.
Scuppernong (SKUP-ur-nong, noun) – “A silvery amber-green variety of muscadine grape”—or the vine on which it’s found; or wine made from these grapes. Named for a lake and river in North Carolina. Scout uses this word in Chaps. 4, 6 & 22.
Hoodoo (HOO-doo, noun) – It’s tempting (and perhaps helpful) to lump this word together with the better-known voodoo—since it means “a body of practices of sympathetic magic traditional especially among African Americans in the southern U.S.” While it can also mean a vertical rock-column of the kind found in Bryce Canyon, there’s no doubt Scout means it in the witchcraft sense; it comes up in Chap. 7, when she and Jem find whittled figures of themselves in a neighborhood tree—and Scout at first flings them down, using hoodoo almost as a synonym for voodoo. Also found in Chap. 12.
The next several words I’m looking at are all from Chap. 8, and I’m going to wait till next week on those. Eventually, we’ll cover such TKM outliers as morphodite, touchous, asafoetida, champertous and chiffarobe.
My Word program red-lined all five of those—so we’ve got work to do!
