Terri Lewis
A Rabbit Hole of Words
The scene: 1945. The action: Earl makes a move on his girl. I wrote the moon, the jalopy, the romance, but Alice pushed him away and flounced down the sidewalk. Then, to my surprise, the smitten fellow blurted, “Wait, you’re such a groovy girl.”
What the what? Groovy belonged in the 60s. Hippies, bell-bottoms, not returning soldiers and nylon stockings. The reader would toss the book down in disgust. I needed a date-appropriate word.
Luckily, I had a secret weapon, Word History in Merriam-Webster online. In the citation for “groovy” I clicked on the left sidebar to find its first-known use. 1937. Ralph might have said it in the scene, but was it common?
A ChatGPT query—“usage of the word groovy over time”—informed me it originated in the 30s jazz scene but came to a cultural peak during the 60s, popularized by the counterculture. Okay, I needed a synonym, preferably from the 40s.
Back in M-W, I clicked on “See more words from the same year” which brought me to the Time Traveler, which lists the first known use of a word during a particular year, starting in “Before the 12th Century” and proceeding by century until single years take over in 1500. (If you write medieval or renaissance history, this is a treasure trove.)
I chose 1945 and found well over a thousand words. Some—honcho, blip, and hard sell—have stayed in our vocabularies. Others have a whiff of age: gadzookery, encant, and chug-a-lug. The word A-bomb caught my eye.
In my story, Ralph blurted, “Wait! I like you. You’ve A-bombed my heart.” No wonder Alice runs. . .Not everyone will have time or inclination to fall down this rabbit hole (first use, 1948, Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland), but being a word nerd (first use, 1951) can enliven your manuscript (1551 from the Latin).
Terri Lewis fell in love with medieval history in college. Not the dates or wars, but the mysterious daily lives of the people. Building on this love, she read and traveled widely, until two sentences in a book bought at Windsor Castle led her to write her debut novel. Behold the Bird in Flight, A Novel of an Abducted Queen comes out in June. You can find her at terrilewis1.com.
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