Hawk is from Proto Indo European kap, “to grasp”, also the ancestor of have, behave, heavy, heft, capable, capture, behoove, etc. Kap became habukaz in Proto Germanic, and hafoc in Old English, and hauk (hawk) in Middle English. The word is appropriate for a bird which swoops down from concealed perches and attacks prey with claws especially designed for grasping.

Spiritually, hawks are associated with the hunt — desire and reaching toward goals. The word hawk suggests the hunting tactics of the bird itself: from a place of safety, a balanced, even, purposeful will is extended, leading to a container (the grasp).

In the late 1300’s, primordial was borrowed into English from Latin primordialis, meaning “first, original arrangement”. Primordialis was from primus, “first” (origin of primal and prime), plus ordiri, “to begin weaving or arranging”. Ordiri is also the root of order, and comes from an ancient Latin word for arranging the threads of a loom.

Phonosemantically, primordial stirs inklings of ancient powers and origins. Primor- indicates a tremendous energy that arises from a point and manifests a deep, earthy power; the result being the generation of patterns and order on a grand scale. The connection here between primordial and weaving recalls the phrases “the web of life” and “Indra’s net.”

Thanks to Nio for suggesting this word of the day!

A word created by Lewis Carroll for his poem, Jabberwocky, which begins:

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gire and gymbol in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

(Be sure to note the pronunciation guide in the Wikipedia article.) Carroll had a lifelong love of nonsense — or at least, things that appeared to be nonsense — and his poetry contains many excellent examples of it. Carroll wrote inspired nonsense: things that seem like they ought to make sense, but somehow don’t; or things that appear not to make sense, but become more sensible the more you think about them. Whenever anyone asked him what his “nonsense” poetry meant, he had a ready reply: “I don’t know.”

His manner of working was instructive. His poetry apparently came to him one, two, or a few lines at a time, often out of order. The first line of The Hunting of the Snark that “came to him” was the last line: For the Snark was a Boojum, you see. He knew immediately that it was indeed the last line, and he would have to wait for other lines to come to him so that he could find out what came before that.

He loved to make up words, frequently by combining existing words, but sometimes out of whole cloth. Brillig is a time of day, about four o’clock, the time you start broiling things for dinner. Brillig sounds a little bit like the word broiling, especially if you imagine it worn down with use in an unaccustomed context. The -ig ending also suggests a frequent suffix in German, as in fleischig, “fleshy”. Phonosemantically, brillig might be better suited to a brighter time of day, such as the morning, since it shares its primary syllable with brilliant, indicating a sudden burst of tight, high energy that fills an area with light.