In a 1991 Book-of-the-Month Club survey, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird ranked second only to the Bible as “making a difference in people’s lives.” According to Lee biographer Charles Shields — who also provided the above statistic — the book still draws a million readers every year.

So most folks in Webb-land have probably read the novel (and if not — well, it’s an experience every American should have at least once!). But even if you know Mockingbird, I’ll bet you still can’t define some of its oddball vocabulary: champertous, yaws, shinny and asafoetida, for example.

Here at “Weird Words,” we’ve been looking at this — inspired by my recent use of Lee’s best-seller in a local lit. class. (Those kids loved it, too, BTW.) All told, I found more than two dozen weird words; but in discussing the context and background, we’ve been able to cover only 5-6 per article — in the order in which they appear in the book. And so … moving along from last week:

In Chap. 12, narrator Scout Finch and her brother visit an all-black church with Calpurnia, the family’s indispensable housekeeper. Here, the kids encounter several unfamiliar items and customs; these include singing with no hymnal, and locking the church doors till the weekly collection is sufficient to help the family of Tom Robinson — jailed client of Scout’s lawyer-father.

Words from that episode:

Asafoetida (ass-uh-FET-uh-duh, noun) – Scout notes this among the unfamiliar smells of perfume, cologne and talcum. It’s a gum resin produced by a carrot-family plant in the Middle and Far East. Used for medicine and cooking, it is in this case mixed with hair-dressing — as a treatment for hair loss, dandruff and split ends, among other things. Also spelled asafetida.

Unceiled (un-SEELD, adj.) – Like ruthless, ceiling is one of those terms we use way more than its original root — so that we’ve kinda forgotten the actual base-word. For the record, ruth means “mercy” or “sympathy” — while ceil means “to overlay with wood or plaster” (dictionary.com). But Cal’s church, being rather tight on funds, has no such covering for its walls or its … ceiling; but — what the heck do you call it when there isn’t one?

Impedimenta (im-ped-uh-MEN-tuh, noun) – Related to impediment, this is “baggage or other encumbrances that impede one’s progress, esp. supplies carried with an army” (Random House Collegiate). Scout is clearly using this word in a figurative or mildly ironic sense, as she sees none of the “familiar ecclesiastical impedimenta” of her regular church life — such as piano, organ or paper bulletin.

Her word contains the familiar Latin base ped-, meaning “foot” — as in pedal, pedestrian and centipede (the Greek version is pod-); with the negative prefix im-, it conveys the sense of tripping up or slowing down.

Voile (VOIL, noun) – “A light, plain-weave, sheer fabric of cotton, rayon, silk, or wool used especially for making dresses and curtains” (American Heritage); here in Chap. 12, it’s what Cal’s Sunday best is made from. I suppose most readers know this word, but it was new to me when I first read the book in eighth grade, and I still didn’t know it till today — not even how to pronounce it. Yeah, I know — shame on me; but … did you ever notice how it screws up reading if you can’t pronounce a certain word? Somehow, you have to be able to hear it in your brain — even if you aren’t reading out loud. Weird.

Well, that takes care of the church visit; so instead of moving on to future chapters, I’ll deal with one final outlier that occurs several times in the novel:

Jitney (JIT-nee, noun) – Used in several passages but perhaps most notably in Chap. 15, jitney was originally a small bus carrying passengers on a regular route (Merriam-Webster).

So … how on earth did it become the name of a popular general store in TKM — where many visits are made to downtown’s “Jitney Jungle”?

Simple enough, actually: fare on those buses was often a nickel, so jitney came to mean the coin as well; and thus, the Jitney Jungle offers a variety of items that could be bought for five cents. Older readers may recall the similar “five-and-dime” from younger days; I suppose contemporary equivalents would be Dollar General, or Five Below.

Phew; prices have gone up a bit.