Fabulous word, pogonip.
I subscribe to Dictionary.com. Mostly when their words come through of a morning, I heave a word-weary Marlene Dietrich sigh.
“Daaaaahlink,” I intone mentally to some synapse somewhere out there in the cybersphere: “Tell me something I do not know.”
And I kick its shabby feet off the edge of the stage with my very shiny black knee-length boots, to roars of raucous laughter from all the other spurned words in the audience.
But today there was a new stranger in town, and he intrigued me. He was somehow colder and more detached than all the rest. My finger was drawn irresistibly to the mouse. What, in Gods name, was this pogonip?
It transpires pogonip is a fog made of fine ice crystals, suspended in the air. It has to have high humidity to work: and of course stringent sub-zero temperatures. The particles of water in the air freeze: and then they settle gently on everything in sight.
The Shoshone Native American tribes helped the word in its pioneer days, when it was young. They gave the word which spawned it: payinappih, their word for a cloud. America has not cornered the market in pogonips, it seems. That bleak Siberian wasteland also sports them, and other geographical pockets around the world.
Such extremes, Darling. So seductive. Come in, pogonip, and take a load off.
Shaking myself out of a reverie, I became aware that two relentless eyes, suspended on four relentless legs, were boring into my skull, and it was time to take the six of them out into the night.
Extendable lead on, we headed out into sub-zero temperatures.
A fog hangs everywhere right now. A Dickensian, frozen haze which smothers the light, it seems, at its inception. It flocks to streetlights, hanging round their light like rather unsettling guests at a party. they say nothing, they just watch intently.
As the dog and I went on our base little progress, everything that is usually malleable was still. The leaves which shimmer gently at the passing of a car were silent and immobile.
They are held in a corset of ice: that dowager, December, has them sitting stiffly, frosted with the most brilliant diamonds she can proffer. Back straight, gels. Let us remember our decorum.
So when Mac pads along the grasses he breaks them. I can hear them snap, and the ice with them.
And now, we have something a little like a pogonip ourselves. We rarely have quite such beautiful ice-on-ice. It is an unusually stunning first freeze. Everything is white, and everything has a rim of tiny, intricate ice crystals which grow longer and more exquisite with each hour.
Such detail is seductive. It is as if nature is using a process with even more detail than our human process of etching.
Like Marlene, the inventor of etching as a method of printing came from Germany. Daniel Hopfer, born in 1470, was a maker of armour. Like his contemporaries he would coat his armour in a waxy residue, making a pattern in the wax where he wanted his final pattern to appear. If he dipped the armour in acid, the wax would ensure only the inscribed design was eaten out of the metal. A delicate, intricate form of metal decoration.
But Hopfer had a much greater vision. He used iron plates to etch patterns: and then he inked them. If he impressed them onto paper it was possible to do a whole print run of these entrancing pictures.
The house of my dreams would be hung with etchings and engravings. I do not care for plummy Gainsboroughs and winsome Turners, and you can take your Impressionists and donate them with all speed to the Tate. But etchings: they are a different matter all together.
I am not the only one. I remember wandering around Knole Castle in Kent, which is all oak panelling and dark gentlemanly power. But there is one room there: and pasted all over the wall, without even the affectation of frames, are etchings, from ceiling to floor.
And that haunting film of Roman Polansky’s, The Ninth Gate, based on The Club Dumas: the entire plot centres around a set of mediaeval prints, each with tiny differences which together make a code.
The medium is compelling.
And I don’t know why. What is it about these fabulous creations, so very dependent on line, that moves me like no masterpiece in oils can?
The early etchings and engravings, from the sixteenth and seventeenth century, are a mine of historical information. Their lines can be clumsy and heavy-handed: but they tell a story no historian could relate half as well.
By the eighteenth century men commonly used the etching for biting social comment. William Hogarth drew the streets of London in the same way Thackeray sketched Vanity Fair.
And then again, there were those gracious portrayals of the great houses, of knot gardens and mansions and academies and gracious squares. All life is there, in those line-drawings which paint history with such detail.
I do have a favourite etching, or possibly engraving, of all time.
If I could, I would have it plastered all over a feature wall of my house, so I could pour a mug of tea, just sit and gaze.
It is called ‘An Exact Delineation of the Cities of London and Westminster and the Surburbs and all the throughfares, highways, streets, lanes and common allies’. And it was drawn in 1658.
It is a map of London before so much of its life had flowed under the bridge of time. It shows the old St Paul’s, and the Fleet River still up and above ground. It shows the Globe and the bear gardens and the Thames teeming with seventeenth century sailing ships and rowing boats. It shows every house and every street and every garden, and I find it enchanting beyond words.
Online, one can only view it in sections. I have tried printing it out and sticking it together, in the past, with limited success: but I feel another attempt coming on.
Sometimes nature etches everything in white and stills itself for a moment in time. For centuries, now, man has been doing the same with metal and acid, lines and movement, culture and comment.
And each of those hundreds of thousands of still-frames, whatever its style and persuasion, continues to be a moment in time which can, with a little application and analysis, be unpacked.
So kick the boots of those oil paintings off the stage: heave a word-weary sigh: and pick up an etching. Because count on this: it will tell you something you do not know.
Kate Shrewsday 
I’ve been parked here for ages, just relishing this post. Hope you find the etching in its entirety.
Thanks for pogonip, the word made my heart and brain clap their hands.
Glad you enjoyed it, Cindy, thank you -It is a very cool word indeed, isn’t it? Now to experience one….
I have had a great deal of experience with etching in the last few years. I need no acid or wax or plates. The artist has been time, the canvas my face and the lines are ornate now but I would not consider them decorative. These wrinkles complement my white hair(I skipped silver and gray stages) and they are sort of little badges I wear proudly as I have certainly earned every one.
Badges of distinction …. 😀
Couldn’t have put it better, Thysleroux….we, and time, work hard on these etchings of ours….thanks Carl.
I love travelling through your words and descriptions, Kate – such a delight. You have a real gift.
What a cool word pogonip is – I shall try and find a way to use it in a sentence!
Keep warm!
And you, Sunshine, and you…lovely to have you back after your adventures in Freshly Pressed land….fabulous post, that: and may I say your new header pic is just brilliant…
Wonderful etching, Kate. I can see my favourite literary character, Matthew Shardlake, walking and riding through these streets.
Funny you should say that, James, because I discovered this just about the same time I discovered Shardlake. Those wonderful descriptions of the old St Pauls in those books- it’s right there, just up from the Thames, for all to see. Happy browsing.
“Pogonip” sounds like the name of a wannabee knight on a quest to erradicate ….
Anyway… very interesting post!
Good Sir Pogonip….one for you, Thysleroux?
Pogonip, beautiful, and hopefully shortly, after exposure, followed by a nip of something warming.
So you are the gel who fell for the line “Come up and see my etchings?”
I’d fall for it every time, I regret to say, Sidey….I think that nip of something warming sounds and excellent idea….
Pogonip! Superb word. Where is it, when will I find it, and, most importantly for an old soul like me, will I remember it at just the right time to repeat? Lovely, lovely post.
I wondered if my American friends might have heard it before, but it seems to have delighted us all today 🙂 Just google pogonip and revel….
Interesting. Good word!
I signed up for dictionary.com as well a long time ago. But, like you, I found most of the words so boring and unoriginal I just stopped reading the daily emails altogether. Perhaps it is time to actually open the next one.
In truth, I just neglected to cancel them, Kristine 🙂
It may be a blue moon before the next seductive word comes along…
Reading your posts is such an adventure, Kate; I never know where I’m going to end up, and I’m always learning something new. I remember those ‘pogonips’ from the prairies (Canadian) where I grew up – although I hadn’t heard this word before. Incredibly beautiful, they are – magical… I wouldn’t mind seeing one again, but have to admit I’m not that anxious to spend much time where it’s cold enough to have them (I sound like the kind of person who wants to have her cake and eat it too :)). You’ve got me wondering now what we did call them – perhaps an ice fog, or something equally boring. Oh, no, it was a hoarfrost.
Hoarfrost has a rather lovely ring to it, Ruth. And I do sympathise on the need to see one again, but not necessarily feel it. I was saying to someone only today, all the way through this post I was thinking of the Dr Zhivago film, and those frozen, utterly still wastes of Russia. That white winter palace where the Doctor and Lara take shelter: being that cold must be utterly debilitating. Thanks for those lovely comments 🙂
Wonderful post, Kate.
Loved: “They are held in a corset of ice: that dowager, December, has them sitting stiffly, frosted with the most brilliant diamonds she can proffer. Back straight, gels. Let us remember our decorum.”
Like most of your audience, Pogonip is a new addition to my vocabulary.
Like Gospelwriter, I’m not anxious enough to see one to travel north in the dead of winter. Sub Zero temps and me don’t mix.
Don’t come anywhere near the UK then, Nancy. We’re in the grip: one of my friends in Scotland says she’s battening down the hatches after a forecast of mins 20 degrees centigrade tonight. December is a stern old woman here 🙂
I’m convinced that the frost around oxfordhsire was more of a pogonip than a hoar frost…. freezing fog, not frozen dew.
We had sun eventually from about 12md, then the light was absolutely brilliant. I took the ‘beach camera’ with me int he car, but work was too busy to stop and snap, sadly. All those frost rimmed things… or rimed as it is known….
may be that’s more of a pogonip?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_rime
I wanted to snap too, but not a chance, Pseu. 🙂 Something tells me we will get plenty more chances before this winter is through. Thanks for the link!
Hi Kate.
We always called it a freezing fog. not so inspiring, I’m afraid.
I can remember a certain director getting into his car, and, to give us a last minute instruction, winding down his window. Only a new window was in place – made of ice, through which, with directorial impatience, he put his fist.
I can imagine his attitude if we had called it a Pogonip.
It is nearly as good a word as “bunklacter”.
Love Dad
Yes it is – but not quite, dad. that’s another story, for another day…thanks for that story which I will add to my list of colourful tales to tell. I like that director already.
Your Cities of London etching is beautiful indeed- such detail. Makes it easy to imagine walking through the streets as they were so very long ago.
Doesn’t it, Zoe? Now to make it life-size 😀
Fabulous writing as always Kate. Pogonip? I have seen this at Niagara Falls – if only I’d called it by it’s real name. AND, I forgot entirely about the word of the day through dictionary.com. Thank you.
Always a pleasure, Tammy 🙂 Nice to have another sighting of the pogonip :-)Incidentally, while you’re here, what an inspired young blogger you invited along to guest for you! Filled with the wonder of the world!
Have a lovely weekend.