pognophile

Spoiler alert

Any word with ‘phile’ on the end immediately looks vaguely threatening, doesn’t it? Luckily, in this case, it’s fairly innocuous. A pognophile is someone who (hopefully in a healthy way) really likes beards. It has a pretty wide definition, and can include anyone who loves growing their own beard, beards on other people and even those who study beards (because apparently that’s a thing).

Etymology wise it’s quite a straightforward one. ‘Pogon’ is the Greek work for ‘beard’, while ‘phile’ is a suffix we put on the end of words to show that someone loves the thing that comes before it (if that makes sense). ‘Phile’ comes from another Greek word, ‘philos’ which means ‘to love’. If you’re scared of beards, you’re a pognophobe, poor you.

The longest beard in the world belonged to one Hans Nilson Langseth (born in 1846), a Norwegian man whose facial hair was a whopping 17 feet and 6 inches long (that’s 5.334 metres in new money). If you fancy having a go at beating his record you should probably get started now though – it took him 60 years to grow it that long. Apparently beard hair dies once it gets past about five feet. So you have to mat the dead hair at the end into dreadlocks to make it strong enough to keep growing. Ewww, I bet there was all sorts of crap in there. And somebody probably knows exactly how much crap there was in there, as the beard (sadly now sans Hans) is in the Smithsonian. You can see a picture of it in all its glory (and still attached to Hans) here.

biddy

We use the word ‘biddy’ to describe an old woman, usually in a derogatory way – ‘a nosy old biddy’, for example. Before I start getting cross about that (spoiler alert), here’s some etymology.

In the early 19th century, lots of Irish people were upping sticks and heading off to the US of A for a new life. Upper-class American families often paid for young women to make the trip, who’d then work as domestic servants to pay for their passage. In fact, this happened so often that these women came to be known as ‘biddies’, a shortening of ‘Bridget’, a popular Irish girls’ name. Which I think means it’s racist, as well as sexist. At some point it started being used to describe old ladies, which is where we find ourselves today.

(‘Biddy’ also seems to be a slang term for a chicken, although I don’t think that’s related to this meaning.)

Sadly, using a female name for a negative personality trait or as an insult still goes on today – the latest being ‘Karen’ for an entitled (usually) white woman who always runs to the manager to complain. There’s also a ‘Becky’, for a privileged, sheltered and unlikeable young woman (I believe the kids say ‘a basic bitch’). This one was made famous by Beyonce’s 2009 song ‘Sorry’ (‘Becky with the good hair’), but also appeared in Sir Mix-a-Lot’s 1992 hit ‘Baby Got Back’. In this case Becky was a lady with a big butt, which he liked very much and could not tell fibs about. ‘Stacy’ is another one – an unattractive woman who’s vain and rude, and only interested in sex (GOD FORBID). Worryingly, this one comes from incel culture, when men who live in their moms’ basements blame women everywhere for the fact that they’re celibate.

The only male equivalent I could find is a ‘Chad’. But predictably, this one actually has some positive connotations – a Chad is a sexually active Alpha male whose antics in the bedroom are never held against him. Then of course there’s the slew of other defamatory words for women with no male equivalent (or, if there is one, it’s often positive – like ‘spinster’ vs ‘bachelor’), most of which are related to sexuality. For example: cougar, gold-digger, bimbo, drama queen, slut, whore, nympho, tramp, slapper… I could go on. But I won’t, because it’s depressing.

capricious

If you’re feeling capricious, it means you’re full of caprice, AKA a sudden and seemingly unmotivated notion or action. So it basically means you’re feeling impulsive or unpredictable, or you’re a bit fickle (we use it to describe weather quite a lot). I decided to look into the backstory of ‘capricious’ because I heard somewhere that it comes from the Italian word ‘capro’ for ‘goat’, and referred to the way goats are all frisky and unpredictable (and eat just about anything). But a little bit of research revealed that it actually has nothing to do with goats at all. It does involve another, much smaller animal though…

Try to contain your excitement.

Caprice came to us via French from an Italian word, capriccio. This originally referred to someone suddenly shuddering with fear rather than being all unpredictable. It’s a smooshing together of two other Italian words: capo, which means ‘head’, and riccio, which is their word for ‘hedgehog’. That’s because when you shudder in fear your hair stands on end, making you a ‘hedgehog head’. Nice, right? But absolutely nowt to do with goats, sorry.

Hedgehog facts:

• The average adult hedgehog has between 5,000 and 7,000 spines.

• Hedgehogs are nocturnal, and one of only three animals that hibernate in the United Kingdom (the other two are bats, and the hazel dormouse which I suggest you google immediately because it’s SOOOOOOO cute).

• They’re surprisingly fast – a hedgehog can run over six feet per second and walk over two miles in a night.

• Baby hedgehogs are called ‘hoglets’ while a group of hedgehogs is called an ‘array’.

(You probably shouldn’t actually put a hedgehog in a cup.)