west, westerly, vespertine, crepescular, wettability, whoops, windhover, kestrel

west: [Latin vesper evening, evening star]  the direction of the sunset

     Although the word 'west' doesn't seem that unique, it is actually romantic in its definition: the direction of the setting sun.  My main reason to mention it here is that now I see the relationship to one of my favorite two words (in the "V's" and the "C's"):  vespertine and the synonym crepuscular, both meaning dusk.  I hadn’t previously made the connection of vespertine to 'the west' (i.e. vesper).   

     Ironically, I also grew up (I may have also grown up ironically) in Westerly, Rhode Island.  Little did I know that my youth was spent in a poetic town…facing the setting sun.   Being on the coast of Rhode Island, my childhood there is inimitably connected to memories of this westerly wind from the sea, the smell of salt water, the feel of the sand on the beach blown gently into dunes, the clouds running across the horizon in this breeze, the lulling sound of the wind, ever-present, at the edge of the ocean.   A westerly wind permeated my being, caressed my face daily, was in my sinews and dreams.  

     Also, there is the concept of “the west”…one sets out for the West (go West, young man) in hopes of finding a new life, a new start, a place of hope and rebirth.  Yet this ‘west’ is the setting sun, dusk, an ending, a denouement.  Shouldn’t we be going ‘east’ towards the sunrise as we seek new life?  (The answer is no…)  

     Folwer’s Modern English Usage has a section of ‘westerly,’ ‘easterly’ etc.                                   The initial definition was…westerly: see easterly.  The main concept is that westerly refers to the wind or to words implying motion.  The wind is westerly, but one refers to the western (not westerly) part of a building. 

  

wettability: the quality of being wettable

whoops: oops 

windhover: a kestrel

kestrel: a small European falcon that is known for its habit of hovering in the air against a wind; its length is one foot.

    This word reminds me of the beautiful poem The Windover by the Jesuit poet, Gerald Manley Hopkins.  Dylanesque in it’s images and words.

"The Windover"

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,

As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding

Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding

Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here

Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion

Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion

Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,

Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.