gauche

‘Gauche’ describes someone or something that’s awkward, tactless or lacking social graces. If you did any French at school, you probably remember that ‘gauche’ is French for ‘left’, and that’s exactly where we get this word from. But why does ‘left’ translate to using the wrong fork at dinner or calling without texting first (shudder)?

(Before I get into this, apologies to any members of the left-handed community, which includes my mum, for what I’m about to say.)

A bit of Michaelangelo’s The Last Judgment showing Christ waving his arms in the air like he just don’t care, sorry, I mean separating the righteous from the damned with his right and left hands.

Historically in Europe, being left-handed was associated with being clumsy or downright evil. This was down to the fact that 90% of people are right-handed, and us humans have always had a tendency to view anything outside the ‘norm’ with suspicion. It’s down to language too (handy for me) – the word ‘sinister’ literally translates to ‘on the left side’ in Latin, while ‘dexter’, meaning ‘right’, implies skill and cleverness, and has given us words like ‘dexterous’.

Many major religious and spiritual traditions heavily favoured righthandedness too. It all kicked off with poor old Eve (of course), who, according to later medieval legend (it actually doesn’t specify in Genesis), was created from Adam’s left side – and we all know how that ended up. According to one online source I found, the Bible has over 100 favourable references to the right-hand alongside 25 unfavourable ones to the left-hand. For example, in Psalm 118, it says ‘The right hand of the Lord is exalted: the right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly’. And the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew describes how God will divide nations on Judgment Day ‘as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats; and he shall set the sheep [the good guys AKA the righteous] on his right hand, but the goats [the damned] on the left’. Poor old goats.

Lefties don’t fare much better in Islam either – in the Middle East, the left hand is seen as dirty, mainly due to the custom of using it to, well, wipe your bum. (There’s a theory that this is where we get ‘cack-handed’ from, though the origins are thankfully shrouded in mystery.)

So, after centuries of religious bias, linguistic snobbery and literal witch-hunts, ‘left’ had ended up with quite a bit of baggage. And when 18th-century English aristocrats started pinching French vocab to sound cultured (the earliest recorded use of ‘gauche’ in English is in a letter by one Lord Chesterfield in 1751), they adopted ‘gauche’ as a snappy insult for anyone lacking high-society polish – turning a simple direction into a go-to phrase for being a total social disaster.

lullaby

You know what a lullaby is – a song you sing to a baby that won’t sleep (hello to my nephew). ‘Lullaby’ comes from the Middle English phrase ‘lullen’, which means ‘to lull’, and ‘by’ which means, well, ‘by’ or ‘near’. So it literally translates as ‘to lull near’. We’ve been using the word ‘lullaby’ in English since at least the 16th century.

So far, so straightforward. But, there’s another, more sinister explanation. Before I get into it, I should preface this by saying this is ‘folk etymology’ which is when we change or reinterpret the origin of a word over time, usually due to a popular or widely held (wrong) belief about its meaning (see ‘penthouse’ for an example). So everything after this point is probably bollocks. But let’s just go with it, because it’s much more interesting.

Lilith and snake pal (not the name of the painting) by John Collier

In this explanation, the word ‘lullaby’ comes from ‘Lilith abi’ which means ‘Lilith, begone’ in Hebrew. In some Jewish mythology, Lilith was the first wife of Adam, before Eve (PLOT TWIST). Unlike Eve, who was made from Adam’s rib, Lilith was created from the same clay as he was, which made them equal. Because of this she got a bit uppity – literally – and refused to lie underneath him when they were getting jiggy with it, or have his children. You go, girl.

Because of all this bloody feminism (I bet she wanted equal pay and dresses with pockets too), Lilith was either banished from the Garden of Eden or left of her own accord (I hope it was the second one). In the wilderness around the garden she became a demon who preyed on newborn infants and seduced men in their sleep (using reverse cowgirl, presumably – no missionary for our Lilith). She’s often shown as having wings, or as a snake.

Lilith appears in various Jewish texts, including the Talmud and the Zohar. And depending on who you talk to she’s either a symbol of female empowerment and resistance against the patriarchy, or a dangerous and evil woman who threatens the very order of creation. I think you can probably guess which side I come down on.

Anyway, back to lullabies. For whatever reason, Lilith has got a reputation for stealing babies. One belief is that this is because she was jealous of the attention Adam and Eve gave their children, while another says she could only have demon babies, so she stole human ones to make up for it. Either way, singing ‘Lilith abi’, or a lullaby, was a way to ward off Lilith and protect your babbie from her evil/feminist clutches.

I told you it was better than the real answer.