Some would say not to open an essay with such a peculiar topic. Some would suggest I ease off a bit from my fascination with vocabulary and write about something less “wordy.” Someday I shall, but today I’d like to begin with a somewhat unusual subject which deals with the matter of… some.
But not the usual use of “some,” as in “an unspecified number of people or things.” No, I am thinking of “some” as an expression of admiration for an achievement, as in “That was some party!” or, even better, “That is some fine way to begin this essay, Professor Engel!”
This meaning came into our language centuries ago, surprisingly to describe well-made hand tools, such as hammers and planers. Those tools were considered high quality if they fit comfortably and beautifully in one’s hand.
In those early days of English, adjectives occasionally followed nouns, rather than preceding them, as in many other languages. Thus, when a tool fit well in the hand of a workman, it was referred to as “hand-some”, one that the vendor could sell for a…you guessed it…handsome profit. Within one century of its first use in the1400s, the adjective had drifted from modifying the most attractive hand tools to modifying the most attractive men who used them.
This is why “handsome” is almost exclusively used for males. Yes, it can also be used to describe a particular type of bold, dignified, statuesque female. But we mostly think of the word as masculine, since we simply say “He’s handsome” but, if used with a female, we usually must specify this with “She’s a handsome woman.”
This gender division is quite evident when describing a good-looking person. It’s “handsome, rugged, and chiseled” for males; “pretty, beautiful, and stunning” for females. I do remember a popular exception in junior high school, when the boys talked about “cute” girls while the girls compulsively giggled over “cute” boys.
Alas, my beauty back then was mostly inner so I wasn’t one of those “cute boys” being giggled at over lunch in the cafeteria. Thank goodness I didn’t know back then that “cute” is just a shortened form of “acute” and wasn’t even in use before the twentieth century. Before that, it was only “acute” and meant “intellectually attractive or sharp.”
Had I known that fact in eighth grade, I can imagine myself enthusiastically explaining to my peers that I was actually really “cute” if they’d just add that initial “a” to the beginning of the word. I can also imagine myself being banished to eating lunch alone. I can also see myself rereading Johnny Tremain, the American Revolution novel assigned to every breathing fourteen year old in 1960s America. I’d be re-re-reading it to be so acute on the test that I’d get a big old red A-plus -- something I enjoyed collecting much more than action figures or stamps.
I don’t think I’ve ever minded not being handsome. But I do remember later being jealous of our senior class president, who was not only good-looking but was one of those top-athlete, top-scholar, top-actor types. He made the rest of us non-triple threats, in our vivid high school vernacular, “wanna puke.”
When he was out sick one winter with mono, I happened to be in my English teacher’s classroom after school when the mother of this paragon (yes, she was stunning, too) came to pick up his assignments. (If you must know, I probably stayed late to clap blackboard erasers, volunteer for hall monitor duty, or ingratiate myself in other ways to smooth my path to future A-pluses).
I still remember my teacher smiling and telling the mother: “Oh, we all think your son is such a dashing young man!” Dashing! That’s what I decided that I resented most about him. I knew nobody was going to call me, the earnest grade-grubber, “dashing.”
The next day I was complaining to a friend about my never being thought of as dashing. We were both excited because a huge snow storm was forecast for that evening, which guaranteed no school tomorrow. He had the perfect solution to my problem. He suggested that at the height of the blizzard tonight, I run outside to our mailbox and back so that, even without the one-horse open sleigh, I could at least be dashing through the snow.
Email Elliot at huffam@me.com or click here