The seasoned logs in our stoves are blazing this week, with their cheerful flames holding
the winter chill at bay. Now it’s time to think about next year. I’ve cut down some trees in the past, but it’s dangerous work, and I’ve had some close calls. I only use experienced arborists now to bring them down. One called me up once to tell me he could come the next day “to fall the trees” and I thought he must be one of those people who always mix words up. I remember my mother, who was somewhat proper, correcting me when I was a kid: “it’s to FELL a tree,” and so it is — except when it isn’t. “To fall a tree” has been around for centuries, showing up in the Lewis and Clark journals, for example. Along with it, we get a “falling axe, falling wedge” and a “faller” (lumberjack), used from New England to the Pacific Northwest. “Fall” also shows up in other tenses: “They have fallen two trees today” instead of standard English “they have felled.” It seems logical to use “fall” instead of “fell” because we say “it’s going to fall, it has fallen,” but there is a reason why it’s “e” and not “a” in the meaning “to make something fall,” going back to a sound change at the time our linguistic ancestors were climbing into boats in Germany to take over Great Britain (the sixth century). This is the same change that gave us “man/men”—but let’s save the details for a later week.
We didn’t have a wood stove where I grew up, but we did have a fireplace. I went out
to gather fallen branches for it once with my father, and he told me not to take anything that was “dozy” — starting to rot. It was the first and only time I ever heard that word used, but at one time it was found all over New England and in a 1960s survey still survived in Maine. It goes back to Scandinavian words for sleep, and was also used as a verb: “he found the wood had dozed.” In the South, it showed up as “doty” and, like “dozy,” seems to be a word from older generations. “Dozy/doty” competed with and were defeated by “punky,” which comes from “punk wood” or just plain “punk” as in “I wanted seasoned hardwood and he sold me punk.” Punk was important in the days before matches, used as tinder when people would strike a flint to get a spark. In the old Anderson tale “The Tinder Box,” that box was filled with punk. Its origin is a mystery, but there is an even older meaning that shows up in Shakespeare: a prostitute.
My grandmother was at Cornell in 1920 and in a journal bemoaned the fact that her
grades were “punk” — lousy. It was still in use when my mother was at Cornell, 25 years later. Makes you wonder when it eventually died out on campuses. But of course “punk” isn’t dead. The meaning “a young hoodlum” first showed up around 1900, and the music scene embraced it as a badge of honor in the 1970s to describe the latest iteration of rock — a great example of how meaning wanders: from woman of ill repute to worthless wood to worthless grades to worthless teenagers to proud music genre.
“Punky” wood lives on, “dozy” is dead. … or is it? Let us know.
Dale Coye is a member of the American Dialect Society. He has taught English and the humanities at several universities and worked in area theaters as a dialect coach and director. He grew up on a dairy farm in central New York and now lives in Wilton.
Do you have a word that you’d like to know more about? Email news@ledgertranscript.com with WORDS in the subject line and we’ll get your word to Dale.