Tanned, tough and mysterious.

Dear Word Detective:  I’ve heard a quaint little phrase for describing resilience nearly all my life, but have no idea if ever such a product exists.  Cobblers, makers of leather articles and tack have looked askance at me when I enquired of the item in question.  From whence did this arise:  “as tough as whit leather”?  Thank you for any assistance you may offer, or even for an incredulous look. — Mark.

Don’t worry — I don’t do incredulous looks.  I learned years ago to assume that if I’ve never heard of the word or phrase a reader is asking about, it simply means that my education is incomplete, not that the reader is loco in the coco, as my father used to put it.  Of course, I do get the occasional inquiry from Planet Non Compos, but I can usually spot those from the exclamation marks and creative capitalization in the subject line.

I’d never heard of “whit leather” before your question arrived, but you seem to be in good company wondering about the phrase “tough as whit leather.”  Wandering through Google, I came across a passage in Tom Wolfe’s 2001 novel “A Man in Full” in which a character is musing on the women in his life:  “Serena … not even thirty yet and already tough as whit leather … How the hell had that expression floated into his head? … His daddy used to say it all the time … Never could figure out what whit leather was….”  I wonder if Wolfe himself ever looked up “whit leather.”  I suppose he must have, just in case it turned out to be something scandalous (which, as Robert Browning discovered, is a real danger when you use a word you don’t understand).

In this case, however, “whit leather” is entirely proper and quite interesting.  It’s simply an alternate form of “white leather,” and is usually spelled as one word (“whitleather”).  The form “whitleather” dates back to the mid-14th century in its literal sense, and has been used figuratively since the early 17th century.

“Whitleather,” as it turns out, is leather, often goatskin, that has been tanned and treated with alum and salt.  That process not only lightens the color of the leather, but also renders it soft and pliable, yet very strong and tough, making it a popular material for straps and thongs.  Whitleather also used to be known as “alum leather” and “Hungarian leather,” and a tanner who made whitleather was known as a “whittawer,” the archaic verb “to taw” meaning (what else?) “to prepare leather by steeping in alum and salt.”  I’m not a big leather buff (I’ve been wearing the same belt for nearly 20 years, in fact), but I’ll bet there’s an easier way to make white leather today.

The phrase “tough as whitleather” in a figurative sense meaning “tough, hardened, resilient,” often applied to a person, has been popular since the 17th century (“A widow o forty-five, As has sludged like a horse all her life, Till ‘er’s tough as whit-leather..,” D.H. Lawrence, 1913).  But “whitleather” has also been used, figuratively, in comparisons of softness and even paleness (“Her eyes grew preternaturally pale, and her lips wan as whit-leather,” 1839).

Interestingly, another use of the word “whitleather” since the 18th century has been as a synonym for the “paxwax,” the tough, thick ligament connecting the skull of a large quadruped (horse, ox, etc.) to its spine, thus supporting its head.  This use of “whitleather” is probably derived from the ligament’s similarity to strong thongs made of “whitleather.”

Whoopsies.

Dear Word Detective:  I love community theater and am lucky enough to have been cast in several musical productions.  We are currently presenting “The Sound of Music” and are intrigued by the word “flibbertigibbet” which we, as the nuns, use to describe Maria.  I am imagining it comes from the flitting to and fro of butterflies or birds.  But I am asking for your help with its origin. — Marsha.

The hills are alive … run!  You know, every so often I realize that I’ve never actually seen “The Sound of Music,” just the same few movie clips over and over on the TV.  (We call it “the TV” out here in the boonies.)   But that doesn’t seem to prevent that darn song from running through my head.

I haven’t heard anyone actually use the term “flibbertigibbet” aloud in years, and even Google News comes up with only an anemic twenty-six hits for print use lately.  I did, however,  have the word on my mind a some months ago after seeing the film “Julie & Julia,” a painfully tedious chronicle of one blogger’s attempt to leverage unearned fame and fortune on the life and reputation of the late Julia Child, author of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.”  I would characterize “Julie & Julia” as essentially a very boring vampire movie.  Anyway, Meryl Streep, adding insult to injury in my view, chose to portray Child as a whooping flibbertigibbet, which the American Heritage Dictionary defines as “a silly, scatterbrained, or garrulous person,” and which Child was definitely not.

Onward.  “Flibbertigibbet” is an interesting, and more than slightly mysterious, word.  As far as anyone has been able to determine so far, it first appeared in print in 1549, with essentially the same “blithering fool” meaning it has today.  Though “flibbertigibbet” is, strictly speaking, a gender-neutral word, in practice it is, and long has been, usually applied to women.

Although that basic sense of “flibbertigibbet” has been in constant use since the mid-16th century, there have been two interesting exceptions.  In King Lear (1605), Shakespeare used “Flibbertigibbet” as the name of a demon (“The foule Flibbertigibbet … hurts the poore Creature of earth”), apparently drawing the name from a list of such creatures published several years earlier.  Two centuries later, Sir Walter Scott, in his novel Kenilworth (1821), used “Flibbertigibbet” as the nickname of an impish, impetuous child.  Until “King Lear,” incidentally, “flibbertigibbet” had been spelled in a wide variety of ways (including “flybbergybe” and “flebergebet”) but Shakespeare’s version became the standard spelling (apart from occasional excursions such as “Flibber de’ Jibb” later in the 17th century).

The source of “flibbertigibbet” was, as far as anyone has been able to tell, our old friend onomatopoeia, the “echoic” formation of a word in imitation of a sound or other characteristic of a thing.  “Flibbertigibbet” almost certainly arose as an attempt to duplicate the sound of someone babbling or prattling on in meaningless chatter.

The air-brained motormouths among us have given us more than just “flibbertigibbet,” of course.  The words “babble,” “prattle” and “chatter” all also originated as onomatopoeic attempts to replicate the sound of someone who has nothing to say but simply will not shut up.