The History of Griffonage and Bad Handwriting
Hello,
This week’s word is griffonage, perhaps one you haven’t stumbled across before. The Merriam Webster dictionary informs me that griffonage is careless handwriting, a crude or illegible scrawl. Those who know me well are smiling at this definition as I have famously poor penmanship (penwomanship?). My school-teachers despaired. One poor woman spent nearly two years trying to get me to improve my r (looks like v), h (looks like r), and e (looks like i). I hope she has recovered from the experience in the years since.
Wordfoolery’s writing
At university it deteriorated further thanks to taking notes at top-speed during lectures (no, laptaps hadn’t been invented yet, I’m that old). Now probably only my oldest friends can decipher my scrawl, my children and husband certainly can’t. Luckily I taught myself to type when I was eleven and handwriting is rarely needed now. My former teacher would laugh, bitterly, if she knew I sometimes now play with calligraphy.
Griffonage isn’t popular enough to merit an entry in all the dictionaries, but Merriam Webster helps out again with the etymology and yes it does have a link to the mythical beast, the griphon. A griphon was a mythical creature from Greek legends which had the head and wings of an eagle paired with the body and hind quarters of a lion. It was believed to live at Scythia and guard a horde of gold. The word gives us Old French grifon (bird of prey) and it entered English around 1200. The griphon was named for its hooked beak in Greek.
Griffonage entered English from French griffonner (to scribble or scrawl). It had evolved from Middle French grifouner (to scribble) from griffon (stylus) and -age (act of, e.g. sabotage). Griffon itself has roots in griffe (claw) which links the word to the clawed griphon of mythology, who clearly had worse handwriting than I have, but with better excuse. Holding a pen with a claw cannot be easy.
Another word for griffonage is cacography – a word I explored back in 2016.
Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,Grace (@wordfoolery)
