• funambulism •
Pronunciation: fê-næm-byê-li-zêm • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. Rope or wire walking, tightrope or slack-rope, highwire, or skywalk. 2. A delicate complicated maneuver requiring a balancing act between two opposing forces.
Notes: I love words that lead us down the garden path. No, this word has nothing to do with enjoyable hikes or walks, but tightrope walking, as we will see in the Word History. A tightrope walker is a funambulist or a funambule and the adjective is funambulatory—from the verb funambulate.
In Play: You might hear the literal sense of this word in expressions like this: "Hershey spent the early years of his life involved in funambulism in the circus." It substitutes for 'walking a tightrope' like this: "You have to wonder about the funambulism of a new Republican between the Old School Republicans and new Trump supporters."
Word History: Today's Good Word was coined in the late 18th century from Latin fun(is) "rope, cord" + ambul(are) "to walk (about)", source of English amble. Little is known about funis other than it can also be found in funicular, but we do know something about ambulare. It was based on PIE ambhi- "around, both sides", underlying Sanskrit abhitah "on both sides", Greek ampho "both" and amphi 'around, about", as in the English borrowing amphitheater, Latin ambi- "around", Russian, Czech and Polish oba "both", Lithuanian abu "both, either", Latvian abi "both, either", German um "around, about", Dutch and Norwegian om "about", and, possibly, German beide "both" and English both. (Let's all now thank our old South African friend Chris Stewart for leading us down a flowery garden path to today's funny Good Word.)
