Episode 5 - Eager To Make My Point

According to my wife's cousin (Brandon Vogt, et al), Kansas is flat as a pancake. Brandon now lives in the sharp shadows of the Rocky Mountains, so we're going to take his word on all matters topological.

Years ago the late great announcer, Paul Sherwen, was calling the Tour de France bike race. As the race entered a mountain stage, Paul said some words that I'll never forget: 

"Now these boys are turning up into

the sharp teeth of the mountains,

and trust me, they didn't come here

to just go halfway up."

Let's join Paul Sherwen and think about those sharp mountain teeth.

Are you familiar with America's Sawtooth mountain range? South of Albuquerque we find the Sierra Cuchillo, the "saw knife" mountains. And of course you know the Sierra Nevada range in California. Does Sierra sound familiar? It means what it sounds like - serrated.

The ancient root of our word family today is -ak- meaning "sharp". In Episode 4, we discovered chevrons – obtuse angles. Obtuse describes the condition of being dull. You don't want an obtuse angle on your knife edge. You sharpen your knife to an "acute" angle. ak-ute. Sharp.

Sherwen was "accurate" (also an -ak- word meaning "exact", "precise") when he described the Alps mountain range as sharp. One peak is even called a "horn"…Mattherhorn, another is the Eiger mountain.

Words describe shapes in the three dimensional world. Those descriptive words then help describe ideas, attributes, and even feelings. Think of all things you refer to as sharp, from sharp dresser to sharp cheese, sharp eye, sharp wit, sharp tongue.

The word "acid" uses an ac sound instead of ak. Acid is often described as being sharp and this certainly includes foods with acidic ingredients (like lemons) which we say have a "sharp taste". In the early days of chemistry, scientists found that all acids had one component in common. They named this element: "oxygen" (ox is a form of our root -ak- and gen which means "cause" or "make" (as in generate)). Oxygen… Sharp making!

What if you made wine very acidic? The French call wine "vin" and if you make it sharp it's called vin – egar… "vinegar". We're reminded again of that sharp mountain in the alps - vinegar, Eiger, and of course eager.

Let's go ahead and pair our sharp wine with some sharp cheese? Bacteria is added to milk and the longer cheese ages, the more the bacteria converts the lactose sugars in milk into lactic acid.

Smells can be sharp, too. If your barbeque was bathed in acrid smoke, it's not going to taste good. Of course, an "axe" is sharp. If it’s dull, well then, you have an axe to grind!

Do you remember Wile E. Coyote? Wile E. mail-ordered his contraptions from The "Acme" Co. Acme means "highest" - the sharp point, the top, only the best. By the same reasoning, "acne" also means point.

BONUS WORD: Remember what my TV buddy said, "Now these boys are turning up into the sharp teeth of the mountains, and trust me, they didn't come here to just go halfway up."

Tour de France announcer, Paul Sherwen assured me that these two-wheeled gladiators haven't come to the sharp mountain points of the Alps to stop at half-way. But what if they had? How would we describe a person who stopped half-way up the sharp mountain?

"half" plus "sharp"
Half leads us to the word part "medi" as in medium and sharp leads us straight back to -ak-… "mediocre" - a literal word-picture of someone that had the ability or desire to go to Acme, the top, but stopped half-way. What a disappointment! Mediocre. That's a sharp rebuke!

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