[lit-ideas] Re: 'Hereabouts' of June 26th
- From: epostboxx@xxxxxxxx
- To: Lit-Ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2017 07:41:25 +0200
On 26. Jun 2017, at 03:24, david ritchie <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I had imagined that there was no such thing as a runcible spoon, but
Wikipedia says that sometimes a grapefruit spoon with serrated edge is
implied. We have one…I think.
I was somewhat surprised to read the Wikipedia entry and the ‘authoriities’ it
quotes on the subject of the runcible spoon.
What one finds pictured in the Wikipedia entry is, to my mind, a ‘spork’ (for
which Wikipedia also has an entry, and to which the ‘runcible spoon’ entry does
supply a link).
I have (stashed away ‘somewhere special’) a piece of tableware which I have
always known as a ‘runcible spoon’. (I also have several — indeed a set of —
sporks.) A search of images under ‘runcible spoon’ on the internet turns up
nothing satisfactory, but the rubric ‘fluted spoon’ produces desired results.
(How I knew to choose that term is a mystery to me.)
Just how, where and when I acquired the artefact which I know as a ‘runcible
spoon’ is, alas, a fact lost in the mists of aging memory. A family heirloom?
A garage sale in Canada? A flea-market in Germany? A boot sale or charity shop
in Great Britain?
(I am also uncertain as to when I made the connection between the term
‘runcible spoon’ and that object — I do know that it was not coincidental with
my obtaining the artefact. I vaguely remember at some point in my past making
that ‘epiphanic’ connection — my mind performed the mental equivalent of
uttering something like, ‘Aha — so *that’s* a runcible spoon!’)
As to the etymology of the term ‘runcible’: while I do regard the ‘science’ of
etymology to be one of the more creative of the lieterary arts, I would
hesitate to apply (as many ‘authorities’ do) the judgement ‘nonsensical’ to the
term.
The German noun ‘Runzel’ means ‘wrinkle, line, furrow’; the verb ‘runzeln’
translates as ‘to wrinkle’; the adjective ‘runzelig’ as ‘wrinkled, wrinkly,
lined, furrowed.’ The English term ‘corrugated’ is translated as ‘runzelig’.
I leave it as an exercise to the reader as to whether the adjective ‘runzelig’
(‘wrinkled, wrinkly, lined, furrowed’) is appropriate to the items found when
one enters the term ‘fluted spoon’ in the appropriate field of an ‘advanced
Google image search’:
https://www.google.com/advanced_image_search
In my mind — and on my tongue — it is but a short lateral linguistic step from
‘runzelig’ to ‘runcible’. I’m surprised that no etymology for the term which I
have yet discovered mentions this. (Perhaps I missed my calling.)
On Jun 25, 2017, at 1:53 PM, Ursula Stange <ursula@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I had a friend from Fiji (he was born there as his parents were missionaries)
who had a runcible spoon….
Ursula, does any of what I write above, or the images to which I provide links,
bear any relation to the ‘runcible spoon’ of your memory?
Chris Bruce,
wondering whether all this to-do about a ‘runcible spoon’
is an indication that he was born with one in his mouth,
in Kiel, Germany
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