Editor's Corner

Good morning, friends! I was going to talk to you today about using “if” vs. “whether” in your writing, until I saw that we’ve done that three times in Editor’s Corner: 2021, 2014, and 2013. Well dang, people! Let’s start using them properly!

So, instead, today I’m going to share something that is related to the holidays, travel, and getting together with people we adore: winter ailments. There are numerous illnesses going around—I like to think I’m ahead of the curve because I had COVID and strep throat in the fall. But these words, from Mental Floss, are from the article: 10 Old-Timey Words For Winter Ailments. (See the full article for longer explanations of some of the words.)

meldrop

Derived from Scandinavian roots, meldrop was originally a drop of foam from a horse’s mouth as it chomped on the bit—the metal crossbar held in a horse’s mouth, the Old Norse word for which was mel. According to the English Dialect Dictionary, however, it came to have additional meanings in 16th-century Scots: Meldrop can be used to refer to both a drip of water from the tip of an icicle and a pendulous droplet on the tip of a person’s nose. [KC – What a lovely image: foaming horse mouths and a big snot-drop on someone’s nose.]

snirl

Besides being a long-forgotten dialect word for the nose—or for the metal hoop pierced through a bull’s nostrils—snirl or snurl is an old 18th-century dialect word for a stuffy head cold.

kiffle

To kiffle is to cough because you have a tickle in the throat.

fox’s cough

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this is a hoarse, scratching cough that refuses to clear up, apparently so-called because the fox’s call is so raucous and guttural.

sternutament

Sternutation is a 16th-century medical word for the act of sneezing, which makes sternutament an equally ancient word for a single sneeze.

awvish

Probably derived from a corruption of half or half-ish, awvish describes someone who isn’t exactly unwell, but who isn’t feeling their best. A similar and equally evocative term from the 18th century was frobly-mobly, or fobly-mobly, which the lexicographer Francis Grose defined as meaning “indifferently well” in his Glossary of Provincial and Local Words in 1839. [KC – I like this one! It’s kind of like “so-so.”]

presenteeism

The opposite of absenteeism is presenteeism—a term coined in the early 1930s for the act of turning up to work, despite being unwell.

headwarch

Waerc was an Old English word for pain (which derives from the same ancient root as work). That makes headwarch an equally ancient word for a headache, which only survived into recent decades in a handful of dialects from the northern counties of England. [KC – Honey, can you turn the music down? You’re giving me a headwarch.]

kink-haust

As a verb, kink can be used to mean “to cough convulsively,” while a haust or hoast is a single cough or tickle in the throat. Put together, those words combine to form a dialect word, kink-haust (or kinkhost), which according to the 19th-century book Vocabulary of East Anglia was once used to refer to a combined “violent cold and cough.”

alysm

And finally, if some or all of the above apply to you, it might be worth remembering this obscure term from psychology and psychiatry: The restless boredom or ennui that comes from being unwell or confined to your bed is called alysm.

On that note, I hope you avoid the “yuck” and have a happy and healthy January!

Kara Church | Technical Editor, Advisory | Knowledge Enablement

Pronouns: she/her | Call via Teams | jackhenry.com

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