Glimmer and the Glimmerman

Hello,

There’s something about dark December nights that lend themselves well to candles. The flickering glimmer of a flame brings something special to a room, doesn’t it?

Glimmer is one of those words whose meaning has changed completely over time. I always find them fascinating. A glimmer has been noun since the late 1500s and it means a faint, wavering light. However it is drawn from glimmer, the verb, which is older. In the early 1500s to glimmer was to shine dimly but in the late 1400s, when it first arrived in English, it meant to shine brightly. I’ve no idea how the meaning became so confused but at least it means you can definitely apply it to a candle’s flame as sometimes they are bright and sometimes they are not.

Glimmer arrived in English with thanks to either the Middle Dutch verb glimmen or the Middle Low German verb glimmern both of which have roots in the the Proto-Germanic term glim. Glim also gives us the roots of gleam and gleaming in English.

Glimmerman is not listed in either Merriam Webster or the Collins dictionary but I did find it in “The Dictionary of Hiberno-English” which I’m enjoying reading at the moment. Hiberno-English, in case you’re curious, is the particular variety of English spoken in Ireland. It has adopted many words and grammatical structures directly from Irish (Gaelic) and merged them with English over the centuries. It also retains a few Old English words which have fallen out of use in British English.

As it turned out I have a faint (glimmering?) personal link to the glimmerman “(colloquial) a Dublin Gas Company inspector during the war years who investigated contraventions of the rationing regulations (the “glimmer” was the minimal flame that could be obtained – illegally and dangerously – from the residual gas in the system when it was turned off)” (with thanks to the dictionary mentioned above). This is a reference to World War II, by the way, when the two or three glimmermen employed to cover Dublin city could enter a premises and disconnect them from the supply if they were cheating the gas supply rationing in this fashion. There’s additional information about them over on Wikipedia if you’re curious.

Several members of my father’s family across three generations worked in the Dublin Gas Company (1824-2006) during the 1900s, although none of them were glimmermen. I’m surprised not to find the word in British dictionaries, but perhaps gas wasn’t rationed in the same way there? If any British readers know more, please let me know in the comments.

Until next time happy reading, writing, wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)