Welcome to Learned, a short, weekly look at language, education, and everything else under the sun. I’m Joel, amateur linguist and professional slacker. This week, we're laying out some accoutrements.
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One of my favorite look-at-me* words is accoutrement. By definition, it means equipment, accessory, or a soldier's gear (minus the weapons.) But, because there are no true synonyms in English, I've always felt that it had a nuance not contained in this definition - an accoutrement is something that enhances the rituals built around our pastimes...
One of the first results for “gear.” I’ll take it. Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash
Here's what I mean. Say you buy a record player. It's cool, you're happy. But, after a while, you realize you need some accessories. So you get a record cleaner, extra needles, a cool case for the needles, some specialized boxes for the actual records themselves and so on. These products have a functional purpose and help keep your collection organized and tidy. But, the thing that elevates them from accessory to accoutrement is in how they're used: Soon, you find that the ritual of playing a record has taken on some extra dimensions. You take the record out of the sleeve, wipe it down with the cleaning set, adjust the needle, and finally start the show. All these extra steps might have helped preserve your collection, but it's more likely that they've enhanced your enjoyment of the act of putting on a record.
Here's a different example: Imagine a cocktail set. You have the shaker, the stirrer, the specialized glassware for different types of drinks, maybe a decanter or three... Now, do you need a cocktail set and accompanying bar cart to either make or enjoy a cocktail? Not in the slightest. But having the set means you might enjoy the process of making and serving a cocktail more. It enhances the act more than it does the actual drink.
Now here's a counter-example: I love testing out bass guitar pedals and I've got more camera gear than is reasonable in this day and age, but I wouldn't consider either guitar pedals or camera lens accoutrements specifically because they help the musician or the photographer achieve a specific purpose that can not be readily had with the gear or equipment already available. In other words, you buy a new pedal because it helps you create a new sound, not necessarily to make the act of playing more fun and you buy a new camera lens to let you take a different kind of photo, not because there is any inherent joy in carting around yet another piece of gear.
Another good example: if you’re writing on a typewriter it’s because you want the experience, not the finished result. Trust me. Photo by Pereanu Sebastian on Unsplash
The trouble with accoutrements (and equipment and accessories, really) is that they can all too easily turn into junk. My wife and I are not very big wine drinkers. We might buy a bottle once every couple of months and, even with two of us, might still have half a bottle left at the end of the night. So, while on vacation several years ago, we bought some wine accoutrements in the form of bottle stoppers and wine glasses. Guess what sits in the drawer and on the shelf unused and half-forgotten?
All this has been on my mind as I have been procrastination shopping - you know, scrolling mindlessly through Amazon while putting off doing other things like grading student papers - and keep finding myself landing on various pieces of equipment, accessories, or accoutrements related to one or another of my hobbies and interests (thanks algorithm!) There's the etched glass whiskey decanter, the Electro-Harmonix Bass Big Muff Distortion Pedal, and a stacking container set suitable for storing small electronics components, fishing gear, or Lego bricks. Tempting.
But, the reason I bring all this up is that, pedantic though it may seem, thinking through the nuances of near-synonyms helps me make sense of the world as I move through it, bombarded on all sides by propaganda, fake news, and advertising, not necessarily in that order. By using these ideas that are similar enough to appear together in a dictionary but different enough to have their own nuances, I can label the impulses and reactions I have just as I can label the items (be they physical or abstract) that trigger them in the first place. It helps.
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That's all for this week. Stay safe, stay curious. Learn something.
Joel
*look-at-me words: words you ostentatiously say in their non-English pronunciation to show off how worldly and cultured you are. Say, for example, pronouncing accoutrements as acoo-tre-mon instead of acoo-tre-ments. Au revoir.