Armour and Wine – the History of Agraffe

Hello,

This week’s word is agraffe – a term you may not know but once I describe it I suspect you know the item. It has a few definitions – 1) a small cramp iron (don’t ask, I have no idea what this is!), 2) a richly ornamented clasp for clothing or armour, 3) part of a piano designed to stop vibration between the pin and the bridge, 4) relief sculpture on the face of a keystone in classic architecture, and 5) the wire cage used to hold the cork in a bottle of sparkling wine.

It’s the last one I’m talking about this time although all those definitions sound intriguing, don’t they?

an agraffe

I’ve always been fascinated with these tiny metal objects since watching “The Fisherking” movie directed by Terry Gilliam where a character takes one and fashions it into a tiny chair in a moment of pure wonder. I’ve gathered of few of them in my craft supplies but have yet to learn how to do this myself. However, if you’re interested, there’s a pinterest board about using them, and the corks, to create tiny items.

Anyhow, back to etymology.

The word agraffe was borrowed into English c. 1660 from French agrafe, but it had the double ff in Middle French. The noun was derived from the verb agrafer (to seize with a grappling hook or to attach with a clasp) so the military link was in there from the start, not to mention the French wine link.

The word was formed by joining a (used for transitive verbs) and grafer/graffer (to clamp on). This in turn was formed from the word grafe/graffe (hook) which was borrowed from Old High German khrapfo (hook) which also underlies the word grape. In fact the idea of hooking and grapes may be connected because of the small hook tool used to cut bunches of grapes from the vines. I was fascinated to discover this because when I went grape picking in Beaujolais (more years ago than I care to admit) we did indeed use small, sharp, hooks (like a sickle but smaller and wickedly sharp) to cut the bunches from the vines. How wonderful that these graffes end up giving us the word for another wine accessory, the agraffe.

I also love the connection of wine to grappling hooks because it creates a mental image of pirates (or perhaps knights in clasped armour) swinging into attack using grappling hooks – imagine the confusion if you mixed up a grappling hook with the clasp on your armour because you drank a little too much wine before the battle, ouch.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery) – who reached her target of 32,000 words written this November!

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