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January is a month that looks two ways, to the past and to the future, as does the God Janus for whom the month is named. It is appropriate then that the Word of the Month for January 2016 is ‘unsnecked’, a word connected with doors, gates and latches. When January’s door is unsnecked, at the start of a New Year, you can symbolically move out towards the future and back into the past.
Kathleen Morris’s article examines the word dialect word ‘unsnecked’ in the context both of Nicholson’s poem ‘Do You Remember Adlestrop’ and of its traces in dictionaries, stoically facing the fact that the word may well disappear entirely as both doors and door furniture continue to change. Fortunately for Nicholson readers the word is preserved in a humorous little poem which even has links to January. All is revealed in the article below… |
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''Yes,
Yes, Yes!' he shouted, as the happy accident
Unsnecked the trapdoor of his memory.'
At this point in 'Do You Remember Adlestrop?' (Sea to the West), I stopped in my reading, entranced by that word 'unsnecked'.
I cannot remember the last time I saw the word in writing; it is so much one of those words which belong to the spoken rather than the written vocabulary.
The basis of the word, ‘sneck’, appears in dictionaries as both a noun and a verb, with the meaning of 'latch'. The word derives from Middle English, so may once have been more geographically widespread than it is now - dictionaries currently seem to note it as a dialect word used in Scotland and/or northern England.
The noun is probably more often used than the verb, as in phrases such as 'leaving the door on the sneck', meaning latched but not locked. In fact, 'unsneck' does not appear in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, which is typical of the size of dictionary used in most homes or offices. But does it need to? English is a versatile language, where words can be inferred and created easily. A noun can change into a verb (who would have imagined 'text' as a verb a few years ago?), and meanings are reinforced or negated by a simple suffix or prefix. So, if you know the word ‘sneck’, you don't need a dictionary to work out ‘unsnecked’, even if you have never seen or heard it before.
The Concise Oxford does have its uses, though, in pointing out that ‘sneck’ is related to ‘snatch’; then it says that ‘snatch’ (from Middle English ‘snechan’ or ‘snache’) is probably also related to snack. So when you snatch a snack between meals you are indulging in linguistic redundancy as well as too many calories. And similarly, a sneck is something you operate with a quick snatch of the finger, a simple catch, rather than a lock which requires a separate key and takes much longer to open or close.
You will find ‘unsnecked’ in the complete OED, defined as 'unlatched, off the latch', a northern or Scottish word. The earliest written example dates from 1796 - 'gang on, leave the door unsneckt'. The form of the quotation is significant, being a phrase of dialect or vernacular rather than literary English. As little dialect English was written down prior to the 18th century, ‘unsnecked’ had probably been around in popular speech for centuries, unrecorded.
Yes, Yes!' he shouted, as the happy accident
Unsnecked the trapdoor of his memory.'
At this point in 'Do You Remember Adlestrop?' (Sea to the West), I stopped in my reading, entranced by that word 'unsnecked'.
I cannot remember the last time I saw the word in writing; it is so much one of those words which belong to the spoken rather than the written vocabulary.
The basis of the word, ‘sneck’, appears in dictionaries as both a noun and a verb, with the meaning of 'latch'. The word derives from Middle English, so may once have been more geographically widespread than it is now - dictionaries currently seem to note it as a dialect word used in Scotland and/or northern England.
The noun is probably more often used than the verb, as in phrases such as 'leaving the door on the sneck', meaning latched but not locked. In fact, 'unsneck' does not appear in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, which is typical of the size of dictionary used in most homes or offices. But does it need to? English is a versatile language, where words can be inferred and created easily. A noun can change into a verb (who would have imagined 'text' as a verb a few years ago?), and meanings are reinforced or negated by a simple suffix or prefix. So, if you know the word ‘sneck’, you don't need a dictionary to work out ‘unsnecked’, even if you have never seen or heard it before.
The Concise Oxford does have its uses, though, in pointing out that ‘sneck’ is related to ‘snatch’; then it says that ‘snatch’ (from Middle English ‘snechan’ or ‘snache’) is probably also related to snack. So when you snatch a snack between meals you are indulging in linguistic redundancy as well as too many calories. And similarly, a sneck is something you operate with a quick snatch of the finger, a simple catch, rather than a lock which requires a separate key and takes much longer to open or close.
You will find ‘unsnecked’ in the complete OED, defined as 'unlatched, off the latch', a northern or Scottish word. The earliest written example dates from 1796 - 'gang on, leave the door unsneckt'. The form of the quotation is significant, being a phrase of dialect or vernacular rather than literary English. As little dialect English was written down prior to the 18th century, ‘unsnecked’ had probably been around in popular speech for centuries, unrecorded.
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In The Dialect of Craven in the West-Riding of the County of York, Volume 1, by William Carr, a 19th century work now available on Google books, ‘unsnecked’ is also defined simply as ‘unlatched’. The illustrative sentence, 'She drew the bar, unsneck'd the door', is taken from Jamieson's Popular Ballads, another indication of the milieu where ‘unsnecked’ would be most readily understood.
A modern e-book, The Sawman, by Ronnie Hewitt, contains the sentence, 'Geoff unsnecked the gate', clearly indicating a latch rather than a lock, as well as neatly pointing up the fact that certain kinds of doors or gates are more likely to have a sneck than others. |
After the consistency shown in all these sources, it is something of a surprise to see the definition at www.collinsdictionary.com: - ‘verb, transitive (Scottish); to remove a latch or lock; unlock.’ Collins' definition, as well as its description of the word as purely Scottish, seems out of step with others, and with general usage.
The image in the poem indicates a quick, informal unlatching - an instantaneous flash of memory, rather than the longer and perhaps clumsier process of working through a logical progression of thoughts, as in the process of reaching for a key and manipulating a lock. Nicholson uses the word 'un-latched' in his earlier poem 'Have You Been to London?' (A Local Habitation), with a very different effect. Was the use of 'unsnecked' in 'Do You Remember Adlestrop?' intended to stop the reader short? Probably not; more likely, to emphasise the informality of the action. The conversational tone of the poem needs this more informal vocabulary.
‘Sneck’ (and its derivatives) has always been a word scarcer in writing than in speech. Is it likely to become even scarcer in the future, for reasons unconnected with linguistics or literature? As white plastic rather than painted wood becomes the default option for both domestic and commercial front doors, and insurance companies specify the security measures which must go on them and how they should be used, snecks are disappearing.
Fewer doors feature an old fashioned sneck now, and even the Yale type lock is vanishing. In 'To the Memory of a Millom Musician', Nicholson uses the phrase, 'He snapped the yale'. Even though a yale catch is not really a sneck in the traditional sense, people still refer to this kind of lock as one that can be 'left on the sneck', an example of how words can expand and mutate in everyday speech. A yale can be regarded as a sneck from the inside, when it can be operated with a flick of the thumb, but from the outside it is still a lock, requiring a key. Perhaps a hybrid or half-sneck?
But the movement away from snecks in any form seems inevitable, at least for 'proper' doors. Even windows and garden sheds are changing under the twin pressures of plastic and insurance companies; most new windows also lack any sneck-type fastening, replaced by integral key-operated locks. Snecks are being relegated to smaller, secondary uses - garden gates, cupboards, rabbit hutches, and trapdoors. Will the word also go the same way, or will it change, as it did for Yale locks, to be used with a slightly different meaning in the future?
The image in the poem indicates a quick, informal unlatching - an instantaneous flash of memory, rather than the longer and perhaps clumsier process of working through a logical progression of thoughts, as in the process of reaching for a key and manipulating a lock. Nicholson uses the word 'un-latched' in his earlier poem 'Have You Been to London?' (A Local Habitation), with a very different effect. Was the use of 'unsnecked' in 'Do You Remember Adlestrop?' intended to stop the reader short? Probably not; more likely, to emphasise the informality of the action. The conversational tone of the poem needs this more informal vocabulary.
‘Sneck’ (and its derivatives) has always been a word scarcer in writing than in speech. Is it likely to become even scarcer in the future, for reasons unconnected with linguistics or literature? As white plastic rather than painted wood becomes the default option for both domestic and commercial front doors, and insurance companies specify the security measures which must go on them and how they should be used, snecks are disappearing.
Fewer doors feature an old fashioned sneck now, and even the Yale type lock is vanishing. In 'To the Memory of a Millom Musician', Nicholson uses the phrase, 'He snapped the yale'. Even though a yale catch is not really a sneck in the traditional sense, people still refer to this kind of lock as one that can be 'left on the sneck', an example of how words can expand and mutate in everyday speech. A yale can be regarded as a sneck from the inside, when it can be operated with a flick of the thumb, but from the outside it is still a lock, requiring a key. Perhaps a hybrid or half-sneck?
But the movement away from snecks in any form seems inevitable, at least for 'proper' doors. Even windows and garden sheds are changing under the twin pressures of plastic and insurance companies; most new windows also lack any sneck-type fastening, replaced by integral key-operated locks. Snecks are being relegated to smaller, secondary uses - garden gates, cupboards, rabbit hutches, and trapdoors. Will the word also go the same way, or will it change, as it did for Yale locks, to be used with a slightly different meaning in the future?
Kathleen Morris
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AFTERNOTE
‘Do You Remember Adlestrop?’, the poem referred to in the article above, can be found in Norman Nicholson’s Collected Poems on page 369. It is a poem of compliment to the early 20th century war poet, Edward Thomas, whose poem beautifully simple but mysterious poem ‘Adlestrop’ captures the quintessence of an English summer. It is fascinating that Nicholson imagines someone tripping the poet’s memory with the key question ‘Do you remember Adlestrop’, as Edward Thomas is laid up in bed with a sprained ankle in the extremely cold January of 1915. Nicholson, as a TB sufferer, was surely familiar with the way in which enforced bed-rest can be conducive to creative thought. Thomas’s fictional response to the question is the delighted ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ with which the quotation heading Kathleen Morris’s article starts. Nicholson pictures Thomas remembering a sunnier past (the afternoon in June when the now-famous train stopped for no obvious reason at Adlestrop) from the perspective of Thomas’s cold and probably rather miserable present. The consequent poem which is released by the ‘sneck’ of the question will resonate far into the future, to inspire many readers yet to come, amongst whom will be Norman Nicholson himself, in the cold winter of 1915 still just a one-year-old child. The word ‘unsnecked’ turns out to be a surprisingly apt one for January, one that has made clear the links across the years between one poet and another, however different their modes and moods might have been. Antoinette Fawcett |