Clinomaniacs, gongoozlers, and an obsession with the king’s head

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AND SO TO BED

Most popular on HH this week was the word clinomania, defined as “an excessive desire to remain in bed”. (The definition of the word excessive in that sentence is up to you.) 

It might sound like one of those words that only ever appears on viral “weird words” lists and has no real use outside of those (HH’s perennial nemesis, no less), but there’s actually a fair bit of history behind clinomania.

It first emerged in psychiatric literature in the late nineteenth century, with one article from 1890 identifying it as one of several “phases of sadness”, and defining clinomania as “the passion of staying in bed”. From there it fell into more widespread use in the mid 1900s (it made its debut in the American Illustrated Medical Dictionary in 1951), and has remained in albeit occasional use ever since.

Etymologically, the “clino–” of clinomania comes from a Greek word meaning “to lean” or “recline”. It’s not a particularly productive word root in English today, but it nevertheless crops up in a handful of undeniably useful words like clinopinacoid (“one of the three principal planes in the monoclinic system, running parallel to the vertical and inclined axes”, apparently), and the adjective clinoid (“resembling a bed”). 

Elsewhere this week we found out that: 

• in Italian, “reheated cabbage” means something more than reheated cabbage
• there’s a name for walking into a room and instantly forgetting why you’re there
• you can work out how hard something is to read by using this mindboggling formula
• if you’re boris-noris—or sometimes if you’re just Boris—then you act without thinking
• and Isaac Pitman tried to make English easier by making everything more complicated

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TALKING HEADS

The fact that a King Charles’ head is an object of an obsession, or something with which you are totally preoccupied, popped up on HH last week. 

Probably the only thing that most people know about King Charles’ head is that it was removed, fairly forcefully, at his execution in London in 1649. So what does the death of the only executed monarch in English history have to do with a mental fixation?

Well, if you’ve read Dickens’ David Copperfield, you might know this one already. 

In the novel, Richard Babley—better known by the somewhat unfortunate name of “Mr Dick”—is a kindly, gentle-natured but mentally damaged man who lives with David’s aunt, Betsy Trotwood, in her house in Dover. For years, Mr Dick has been working on his “memorial”—some manner of grand speech, eulogizing an unknown figure he greatly admires—but every time he sits down to write, thoughts of the execution of Charles I begin to drift into his thoughts and he ends up writing about him instead.

Mr Dick’s obsession, we’re told, stems from the fact that he sees parallels between his own damaged life and the downfall of King Charles: 

“Did he say anything to you about King Charles the First, child?” 

“Yes, aunt.”

“Ah!” said my aunt, rubbing her nose as if she were a little vexed. “That’s his allegorical way of expressing it. He connects his illness with great disturbance and agitation, naturally, and that’s the figure, or the simile, or whatever it’s called, which he chooses to use. And why shouldn't he, if he thinks proper?”

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1849)

Some commentators have in turn drawn parallels between Mr Dick’s struggle to keep his addled mind clear while writing with Dickens himself—and have even gone so far as to suggest Mr Dick’s troubled life might be the author’s nudge towards his own famously difficult childhood. But no matter how Dickens intended the character of Mr Dick to be interpreted, it is his obsession with King Charles that lies at the root of this expression.

Such was the popularity of Dickens’ work that by the 1860s King Charles’s head was already being used as an expression of obsession or fixation—and, in particular, an obsession that intrudes on your day-to-day life or stops you from working. And although not quite as common as it once was, the phrase remains in use to this day.

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GONE GOOZLING

HH tweeted the word gongoozler last week, defined by the English Dialect Dictionary as “an idle and inquisitive person who stands staring for prolonged periods at anything out of the common”. And it’s all just too strange to leave unexplored. 

Besides the fact that (according to the EDD at least) it apparently originated in and around the Lake District region of northern England, no one is entirely sure where the word gongoozler comes from—and the fact that it’s remarkably unlike just about every other word you can think of probably doesn’t help matters.

Most attempts to explain the origin of gongoozling suggest that it began life among nineteenth century “bargees” (i.e. people who live or travel on canal boats) and originally referred to all those who sit idly on the riverbanks and towpaths of England to watch life go by on the canal. In that specific sense, the word was resurrected and popularized in the mid 1900s by the writer LTC Rolt, who mentioned riverside gongoozlers in his hugely popular book Narrow Boat in 1944; moreover, the earliest written record of a gongoozler comes from a 1904 guide to the Canals and Navigable Rivers of England.

But was the word in use more generally before being picked up by bargees around the turn of the century? Or did the bargees coin the word themselves to specifically refer to riverside spectators before its adoption elsewhere? It’s all but impossible to say.

As for its etymology, the Oxford English Dictionary suggests that gongoozler might have an pair of etymological cousins in gawn, a Lincolnshire dialect word meaning “to stare vacantly”, and goozen, meaning “to stare aimlessly”. But even then, the EDD’s claim that it originates in the Lake District, 150 miles north of Lincolnshire, throws a spanner into the etymological works. 

All in all then, gongoozling remains something of a mystery.  

ANAGRAMS No. 7

Four more tricky anagrams to finish things off this week: the letters of each of these words can be rearranged to spell another dictionary word. What are they?

GYRATED

VIOLATED

ASPIRATED

STIPULATED

[Answer to last week’s puzzle: HOEDOWN, DOWNLOAD, WORKLOAD, MATCHWOOD]