Your relentless scribe was seeking the etymology of the word, “baffle.” As in, “I am baffled by that commercial where Matthew MaConaughey is coming down from airless space in a hot air balloon and yelling at everybody and wow, what a case of hat head he has.” (Seriously, Go back and look at it.)

And really, you could point to half a dozen commercials from yesterday’s Big Game and say, “What was THAT? I’m baffled!” However, I’m finding myself baffled by the etymology of the word “baffle” vis-à-vis, “to perplex.” Yes, one can draw inferences about how we got from the technical idea of bafflement to perplexity.

But we want a concrete and definitive answer here. So, as I’m scratching my head and perplexing over baffle and finding sudden joy in the word being an obsolete seaman’s term for "winds that blow variously, making headway difficult" (and boy have I been there, literally as well as metaphorically), I’ve stumbled upon another word that has often forced me to wonder, “Where does that come from?”

Hello, “Hoodwinked”! As in, “I’m feeling hoodwinked that my tax dollars were used to buy a spot in The Big Game to tell me to get fake vaccinated!” (No, I’m not an anti-vaxxer or a fake-newser, but someone out there is one or both, so it just seems fair to provide equal time as the federal government used to mandate that broadcasters do when delivering political messages. But I digress.)

Hoodwink! The meaning? To deceive! How topical that is in our culture of fake news during the Big Game in The Violent Hell That Is Now Los Angeles. I mean, who’s even sure the Tampa Bay Buccaneers actually won the game last night? No, you didn’t see them on the field. But people are talking about it. The alternate universe in which the Bengals won the game is a place rife with advocacy sports journalism and deadly blunt blather.

Blather! There’s a word we have to research. Well, no we don’t. It’s easy. It comes from the Old Norse, “blathara,” meaning to talk nonsense. Sometimes those Scandinavians get it right, the Saab 9-7X SUV built in Ohio notwithstanding. But all that and other nonsense aside, including those half a dozen head scratching “messages” from the Big Game Advertising Abyss of last night, where advertisers left you baffled if not feeling hoodwinked, you need (need!) to know that the word “hoodwink” hails from a different time altogether. Today, "hoodwink" is a laughable way of talking about a scam as if one is a Dead End Kid from a 1940s black & white movie.

Hoodwinking actually comes to us from the age of the highwaymen. And no, not the Scarlet Pimpernel kind of Hollywood movie highwaymen where there’s a guy who isn’t really a fop and isn’t really a bandit and a woman who’s disgusted by his foppish fake side yet lusts after his fake alter ego. No, you bet your bloomers not. We’re talking real, dangerous, rob you and possibly kill you as opposed to romancing you highwaymen.

And imagine my surprise! The word “Hoodwink” is a mashup (though they didn’t have that mashed-up term in the days of the highwaymen) of the words “hood” and “wink.” Insert GASP here!

The "hood" part is The Bag. The highwayman would put The Bag over your head so you could see neither his face nor what he was doing nor what advertiser he was doing it for. (For some reason, back then they always stitched the corporate logo over the left breast of the highwayman's dashing if impractical cape. Why?!)

The "wink" part is another headscratcher. That’s until you realize that back in the days of the highwaymen, when the highways were merely dirt doubletrack instead of the paved and crumbling coast-to-coast infrastructure dangerway networks we have now, the word “wink” meant something different.

Today, we see a wink as a closing of one eye to demonstrate complicity or a mutual secret. However, the obsolete meaning of “wink” is to literally close one’s eyes. Yes, both of 'em. So being hoodwinked means having one’s eyes effectively closed involuntarily by a bag over the head. (I’m hoping that bag was made of a coarse-weave fabric so as to facilitate breathing. Today, it could easily be a plastic bag from a big-box Big Game advertiser store and would kill you as soon as blow away and mercilessly pollute your fisheries. But again: I digress.)

So, the hoodwink, while today being seen as a somewhat dated word meaning to run a scam on someone, actually stems from a literal obstruction of one's vision via a hood. So if your bafflement over the blather of the adversphere of the Big Game was more than you bargained for, take solace in knowing that at least some things really are as simple as they seem and don’t require deep investigation, especially when they weren’t keeping you up at night to begin with. Now baffle my blather, baby!
Cheers,

Blaine Parker
Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City
 
LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON
The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the REDUCED bargain price of $9.95
 
For details about our new Lightning Branding courses, both do-it-yourself and we-do-it-with-you editions, click here. (There's even a video of us!)

Snark abounds. Is there a medical treatment for that?

A friend of mine has landed in the hospital. I’m feeling for him, and I’m also feeling remiss. For many weeks, I’ve been thinking I owe him a phone call to banter about life, the universe and everything.

Then, this happened. Among other things, he’s having trouble with his speech. And I’m sitting here, thinking, Wow. These are the moments where one castigates oneself for not being a better friend.

Come to find out, one of the things my buddy enjoys about our calls is the snarky tenor of the conversation. I’m humbled, as he is easily more skilled at snark than I. But that tidbit got me thinking about the word, “snarky.” What does it really mean? Is it a good thing? What is the etymology?

The first time I recall hearing the word in regard to myself was during my foray into standup comedy during the 1990s. I was alternately referred to as “snarky” and as a “poor man’s Dennis Miller.” The latter might be a snarky compliment, but I’m not sure. But I do know that my ailing friend’s hair is more like Dennis Miler’s 1990’s hair than my own ever was. Mine lacks the ability to bounce and behave like a 1960’s TV shampoo model. That notwithstanding, our respective levels of snark seem to be about even.

But anyway, the etymology of “snarky.” First, the word means “critical or mocking in an indirect or sarcastic way.” OK. Flattering. But it gets less so. “Bad tempered or irritable.”  Eegad. I don’t want to be that person. So, where does this all come from?

Root words for snarky date from the 1800s, including “nag,” and literally, “to snort.” Pht. But most interesting is the British slang word “narky,” from the earlier word “nark,” which means an “annoying, unpleasant or quarrelsome person.” And then, it gets even more unflattering.

“Nark” is a verb dating to 1859, meaning “to act as a police informer.” All of this probably comes from the Romany word “nak” for “nose.” Now, I’m no nark, a word I always assumed was a product of the 1960s hippie culture and was spelled “narc.” It’s not. I’m also pretty sure my friend is no nark, either. And the word is more likely related to the idea of sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong.

And to become even more twisted, it may also have a similar root word in Sanskrit. That’s the language we usually associate with Nirvana (the state of being, not the grunge band) and attempting to attain true enlightenment. And the latter desire often has something to do with misguided Nirvana seekers and their controlled substances about whom one narks to the narcs, eh?

This is so complicated and unseemly. And all I know is I’m now questioning how much snarking I want to be known for, as it comes at a price. Sarcasm and its cousin, satire, are often misunderstood. But as an often misunderstood lawyer to whom I was recently speaking said, “Dude!” (Yes, he said “Dude!”) “Dude! We all grew up reading Mark Twain and Mad Magazine! This us what you get from us!”

There’s a reason The Fabulous Honey Parker and I have enjoyed working with lawyers at Slow Burn Marketing. They’re often smart people for whom snark abounds. But anyway, my being snarky is something my medically inconvenienced friend enjoys. So perhaps he’ll appreciate this snarky madness from his hospital bed.

And if you, faithful reader, have a new and useful perspective on things snarky that you find helpful in any way, well, that’s a bonus for me. Proud to serve. I look forward to seeing you further in the snarky ether, seeking true ill-tempered enlightenment at the ends of our Romany noses. 
Cheers,

Blaine Parker
Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City
 
LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON
The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the REDUCED bargain price of $9.95
 
For details about our new Lightning Branding courses, both do-it-yourself and we-do-it-with-you editions, click here. (There's even a video of us!)