Wednesday, October 04, 2006

lock

Between the position of the mouth that pronounces it and its prominence in words such as "loose," "lucid," and "mellifluous," the letter "l" is one of the alphabet's most flowing, easy-going letters. The word "lock," in travelling from such an attitude to the solid presence and abruptness of the "ck" sound, seems to somehow recreate the process of locking. This process, while not the only work done by the word, is closely related to its other uses. We say that a game is "a lock" for a certain team if a win is a foregone conclusion, that our votes are "locked in," that something has been done "lock, stock and barrel." In each of these cases, something final and irreversible has taken place; there is no going back.

A curiously unrelated meaning, with which we are all familiar but of which I cannot make head or tail, considering the word's other meanings, is a piece of hair. Words are mystifying sometimes.

1 Comments:

Blogger Mo and The Purries said...

This reminds me of the great poem
The Rape Of The Lock

I also like the term "lip-lock"

October 05, 2006 12:25 PM  

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