Ickle-Uckle

 Ickle-Uckle

First published in Column 8, date unknown, but some time in the 1990s

There are days when I wish I'd been an etymologist - that is, a person who chases after the meanings and derivations of words. (As opposed to an entomologist, a person who likes pulling legs off spiders and wings off flies.)

I'm always intrigued by the peculiarities of English, the way it interconnects with other languages, and the curious gaps we have in it.

A particular gappage problem struck me the other day when I realised how few words ending in -ck went on to become -ckle words. We have plenty of words of the lack, lick, lock, luck variety, (although very few in the leck area), but nowhere near as many in the lackle, lickle, lockle, luckle department. (-ng words that have no -ngle are another cause of concern.)

And even when we do have them, they have no logical link with each other. I mean, what do buck and buckle have in common? Nothing at all, and it appears that they're not even relatives. One comes from the Old English for a he-goat, bucca - so how did he get to be Billy? - and the other from Latin, buccula, a little cheek (of the facial type), which then became a cheek strap. Now you find these cheeky straps all over the place.

Tack and tackle are a slight improvement, both of them having some connection with sailing, but tick and tickle? Tick began life meaning to touch, but fled away from its teasing little friend, tickle, and turned corners into a sound, or a mark, or even motivation, as in "what makes her tick?" - it isn't a touch...!

Pick and pickle are not related at all. Pick comes from piken, meaning what it still does, but pickle comes from pekel. So when Peter Piper picked his peck of pickled peppers, he was making no-cousins into next-of-kin.

This is all very well, however. There seems to me to be a gold mine of words that we haven't even begun to use, let alone explore their possible meanings. Why do we make up new words when we have all these old ones available?

Where are duckle, luckle (winning $2 on Instant Kiwi?), puckle, and ruckle (a handy word for footballers)? And anyway, where's knuck if there's a knuckle?

What about backle, hackle, (heckling incompetent politicians), lackle, knackle, (a skill?), packle, quackle, (what ducklings do), rackle, sackle, and whackle (a gentle clip round the ear)?

Where are beckle, deckle, feckle, (and if it comes to that, where's feck, the opposite of feckless), neckle, peckle, and wreckle (just avoiding a dint in your car)?

What happened to dickle, hickle, lickle (a 50c icecream), mickle, nickle, (not nickel), quickle (a short trip out for morning tea), rickle, and wickle (after the candle's burnt out)?

Or dockle, hockle (junior hockey player), jockle (a junior jock), lockle, mockle, knockle (a hesitant tap on the door), pockle (a zit, or acne), rockle, sockle (what's left after the other one's lost in the wash), and tockle (the rest between tickles)?

Going in reverse is just as bad. When did we lose the ank in ankle, or the wrink in wrinkle, the dang in dangle, or the ming in mingle? Why do we lack the jing in jingle, and the wrang in wrangle?

We need to use these words!

When we slip on the stairs and give our foot a twinge, that's an ank. When wrinkles haven't quite made it they're only wrinks. Something that's about to dangle is only in the state of dang, and if we're the sort of person who doesn't like crowds, we'd probably prefer to ming.

Jing happens when one of the sleigh-bells has lost its dang, as in Jing Jing Bells, Jing Jing Bells, Jing Jing all the way. The husband in the TV ad who's about to throw the chair at his family and decides not to, is at the point of wrang.

We need to put the value back into feck. For example, he was a man full of feck - a much more straight-to-the-eyeball word than self-esteem.

And let knuck take its place as the word for knuckles when they're lying down flat.

Well, how else do you describe them?

Guess which one of these words is fictitious,
even though it appeared in an encyclopedia