Winklehawk

Filed Under March 2007, columns 

On a tear.

Dear Word Detective: I listen to a word show called “Says You” on public radio. They have a show segment of odd word definitions. One person has the correct definition, two others make up a definition and the other team has to guess the correct one. One week’s word was “winklehawk.” I’m not sure of the proper spelling. It is the “L” shaped tear in a piece of cloth or clothing. It was one of those words that stuck with me. Do you have any idea of the origin? — Dave Straka.

That show sounds like fun. I must warn you, however, that public radio word-puzzle shows have a spotty record when it comes to accuracy. In fact, last year grammarian Geoffrey Pullum posted an entry on the group linguistics blog Language Log explaining why Will Shortz was wrong in counting the word “these” as a pronoun in one of his NPR Weekend Edition puzzles.

“Winklehawk” threw me at first because not only had I never heard the word, but none of my dictionaries (and that’s a lot of dictionaries) had either, not even the Oxford English Dictionary or several collections of ancient and obsolete words. I finally ran “winklehawk” to ground, however, in John Bartlett’s 1849 Dictionary of Americanisms (where the “Says You” staff almost certainly also found it). Bartlett defines “winklehawk” as “A rent in the shape of the letter L, frequently made in cloth” (a “rent” being a tear, from the Middle English “renden,” to rip or tear, also the source of our modern “rend”). Bartlett notes that the term is sometimes rendered as “winkle-hole,” and declares it “a New York term.”

Most importantly, Bartlett pegs “winklehawk” as being rooted in the Dutch “winkel-haak,” a connection that makes perfect sense since New York, after all, used to be called New Amsterdam. “Winkel-haak,” as it turns out, is the Dutch term for a carpenter’s square, that L-shaped metal ruler used to mark precise square lines. I don’t speak Dutch, but apparently a “winkel” is a shop, especially a women’s dress shop, and “haak” is Dutch for “hook” (sharing a common ancestor with our English “hook,” in fact). So a “winkel-haak” was probably originally an L-shaped ruler for precisely measuring and cutting fabric or other materials. The application of the term to an L-shaped tear seems natural, and the change in spelling to “winklehawk” when the word entered English was to be expected, since “haak” is not an English word but does sound a bit like “hawk.”

 

 

Comments

3 Responses to “Winklehawk”

  1. johnducmanis on March 5th, 2007 12:30 pm

    Winkel the shop may well be derived from Winkel, German for ‘corner’ or ‘nook’. This makes a simpler derivation for “Winkel-haak” — maybe even makes the hook unnecessary. Whatever the -”hawk” part be, the corner shape of an L-shaped tear is quite sufficient to make it a “winkel-something” in the eyes of all the Dutch and Deutch immigrants. (Winkle van Rip???)

  2. videot76 on March 9th, 2007 7:54 am

    In Sweden, we have a very similar word for the aforementioned carpenter’s tool - “vinkelhake”. However, “vinkel” is our word for “angle”, and as the tool is used for determining and marking 90-degree angles, the origin for that part of the word seems obvious. It’s not unlikely that there may be a similar use in dutch, as the languages have quite a few similarities. A “hake” is, as you say, an older word for hook. As a hook doesn’t necessarily has to be J-shaped (certain types of old-fashioned door securers comes to mind), the L-shape of the tool is quite fitting - so it’s a likely origin for the name.

  3. pod46 on April 3rd, 2007 4:11 am

    Residing in Holland at the moment and trying to learn Dutch I can tell you that winkel here just means shop. For example at lunchtime today I will go to the local winkelcentrum, or shopping mall. As Dutch takes a lot from the Germanic languages of northern Europe it could well share a root with the Swedish vinkel described above.

    Hoek in modern Dutch means a corner or angle, as in Hoek van Holland, a right angled headland just south of The Hague where the ferries from England dock.

    So we have two words that seem to mean corner or angle - the derivation of this word seems to be folding in on itself. If we’re not careful this could turn into a linguistic Black Hole!

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