Word of the week: Snivel

Plus a few words about some other words

I’ll get to this week’s word in a minute. First, though, here are a couple of other things I’ve written recently:

• For Medium, where I’ve been publishing for more than five years, I wrote about my choice for prefix of the year for 2023: -un. You can read the story gratis via the friend link I’ve provided, but if you join Medium ($50 a year for all you can read!) I’ll earn a dollar or two and you’ll earn my gratitude.

• For Strong Language, the sweary blog about swearing, I covered last week’s American Dialect Society 34th annual word-of-the-year vote, which featured six (6!) sweary words, one of which won top honors. If you’re wondering how WotYs are chosen, here’s a behind-the-scenes story I wrote last year for Medium. (Another friend link. You’re welcome.)

As for snivel, here’s the what and the why.

I’ve been thinking about snivel ever since last week, when I saw an email from the South End Rowing Club, neighbor to the bay-swimming club I belong to, the Dolphin Swimming and Boating Club. Turns out SERC is organizing something called the 6th Annual Great Big Snivel, and everyone’s welcome. Here’s an excerpt from the email:

It’s January, and the water is a little chilly, and that means it’s perfect for sniveling! We'll gather on the beach and in shallow water to snivel, socialize and shiver.  Back from prior snivels is the silly hat competition.  Wear any silly hat that you wouldn't mind potentially getting wet.  And please bring some food to share after the snivel.

The fun starts at 10 a.m. on Saturday, January 13, and you’ll be pleased to know the water in San Francisco Bay is actually much warmer than in previous winters: a balmy 55°-56°F. (In March 2023 the water temp dipped to 49.5°F.) Global weirding? El Niño? No one can say for sure.

“Whining, sniveling malcontents: Spotting them in your organization,” via Justice Clearinghouse. I’ve edited out the superfluous comma. No charge!

So what exactly does sniveling entail?

The verb to snivel comes from an Old English source, snyflan, which meant “to run at the nose.” If that sounds suspiciously close to sniffle, that’s because the words are closely related. (Keep reading for more on the sn- connection.)

But snivel involves more than nasal mucus. As early as 1398, people were referring contemptuously to snivelards: people who “spoke in a nasal tone” — i.e., who sniveled or whined. By the 1680s, snivel had taken on te non-specifically-nasal sense of “to be in an (affected) tearful state, utter hypocritical expressions of contrition or regret” (Etymonoline). In 1849, Herman Melville coined the wonderful word snivelization: “civilization considered derisively as a cause of anxiety or plaintiveness.” Mark Twain revived snivelization in 1898 in his Stories & Burlesques, and the historian and critic Lewis Mumford used it in his City Development (c. 1936): “The restrictions and burdens imposed by what one of Herman Melville's characters derisively called ‘snivelization’.“ I can see plenty of opportunities to bring snivelization back, so let’s do our best, OK?

Back to sniffle and snivel. It turns out there are lots of words in English and other Germanic languages that start with sn- and have something to do with noses. Here’s how Etymonline explains it:

Throughout the Germanic languages a group of words in sn- (Modern German and Yiddish schn-) relate to the human nose or the animal snout. Probably the root is imitative. The senses can extend to the snap of a dog's snout; the snort a horse can make, and the rough or obstructed breathing of a human snore. Also compare snarl, sneeze, snooze, snuff, snoop, snot, etc. Their relation to another Germanic group having to do with "to cut; a detached part" (snip, snick, etc.) is uncertain, but the senses tend to overlap

There’s also snub (to turn up one’s nose), sneer (to curl one’s lip toward the nose), and the nose-in-the-air snob (which despite what you may have heard is neither an acronym nor an abbreviation). The unifying theory behind these similarities is something called sound symbolism, which is very useful to keep in mind when you’re creating brand names (as I do), and which I wrote about for Medium a few years ago.

Back to the Great Big Snivel. I’m thinking about silly headgear and wondering whether a cap from the Green Parrot bar in Key West, Florida, would be in the wrong spirit.

“No sniveling” is the Green Parrot Bar’s slogan

Here’s how owner John Vagnoni explains the slogan:

I was in a dive bar in Pagosa Springs, Colorado in the 80’s and it was kind of scrawled on a wall behind the bar so I co-opted it.

Misspelled by me when I commissioned the hand-painted sign from a local artist when I got back. That original misspelled sign still hangs behind the bar.

It’s not misspelled, just differently spelled: the double-L version is preferred in British English.