08.01.08

Rasslin’ words

Posted in Figuratively Speaking at 7:26 am by Marion

FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING

Earlier this week, my husband called my attention to what he said was a mistake in an AP-staff newspaper story. He is a photographer, but when it comes to line editing, he’s a master in the tedious matter of spotting tiny mistakes in text.

“It says here ‘The Gators wrested the party title from West Virginia University,'” he calls to me from the kitchen.

Meanwhile I am breaking out with an enormous grin of pure joy.

The “mistake” in fact was a sparkling example of exceptional writing. Writers delight in nothing so much as a well-crafted phrase … though we’re usually a jealous, catty bunch, I understand the hardships of writing on deadline and take boundless pleasure when a peer in the press nails the perfect verb.

Such is the case with “wrest.” The word means to forcibly pull something from a person’s grasp, or to take something from someone after considerable effort or difficulty. It comes from the Old English work wraestan, to twist or tighten … and not surprisingly, with all those hard consonants, it has a Germanic origin related to the Danish vrist, related to wrist.

There was even a tool known as a wrest used to tune a harp or piano.

The AP writer managed a private joke with his fine use of the word wrest: You can imagine the effort it took to claim the party-school title, no doubt a moment of Olympic attainment.

In the course of wrestling with the term wrest, I realized there are several related words. If you wrench, you exert a violent twisting or pulling … say you’re trying to wrench out of a pitch before the salesperson corners you into signing. We also use wrenches to threaten said salespeople if they won’t leave us alone.

Wrench and wrestle come from the same Old English origin as wrest.

If you find yourself duped into the deal, you could say you’re a wretch … or a poor wretch, as we like to say. That is, an unhappy or unfortunate person. Oddly enough, this word comes from the Old English wrecca, a banished person, from the German Recke, warrior or hero.

That’s not surprising. There is no one so unfortunate as a hero, lonely in a way few of us can understand, because unable to share struggles, sacrifices and accomplishments with us mere mortals.

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