www.alphadictionary.com

• ambisinistrous •

Pronunciation: æm-bê-sin-is-três • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: 1. Equally clumsy with either hand, ambilevous. 2. Clumsy.

Notes: Since we have already discussed the more popular adjective, ambidextrous, it seems only fair that we discuss its ambisinistrous antonym, ambisinistrous. If you dislike the suffix -ous, simply ignore it and add an E between the final T and R: ambisinister is all you need. Today's word has been around since 1863 but rarely occurs in dictionaries other than medical dictionaries.

In Play: The basic meaning of today's Good Word is a clumsiness of the hands: "Unfortunately, I would have to say that Amanda Lynn is at best an ambisinistrous pianist." The metaphorical sense of this word opens the way to any kind of clumsiness: "Dexter's ambisinistrous interpersonal skills keep him off the guest list of most the social events in the area."

Word History: Today's Good Word came from Latin sinister "left". If right means "correct, normal", then its antonym, left, must mean "incorrect, abnormal", right? This thinking by the ancients left the Latin word for "left" with its current bad reputation as seen in the English word sinister. The prefix ambi- was the equivalent of Greek amphi-, as in amphibian, a creature at home both in water and on land. The original meaning of this word was apparently "from both sides" but later came to mean "from all sides, all around" in words like amphitheater.

Ambidextrous, ambisinstrous, what does it matter. The main thing is to be well rounded.

I am ambilevous about the derivation of this word.

Why all this denigration of left handedness throughout history? My father, father-in-law, wife and one son are left handed. My late father wrote with his right hand, because, back in the day, elementary schools forced lefties to do that.

Paul Simon, though he writes and plays guitar right handed, is left handed and gave us these wry lyrics in 1965 in the song "A Simple Desultory Philippic":

<<I been Ayn Randed, nearly branded
A Communist, 'cause I'm left-handed
That's the hand I use, well, never mind>>

But my favorite exasperation with the pejorative uses of words for "left" is this apocryphal quote attributed to Elliot Trudeau:
Trudeau, then the prime minister of Canada, listened patiently to a socialist delegate expounding interminably and gracelessly. At the end, Trudeau said simply, “How fortunate we are in this country, Mr. Speaker, that our left is more gauche than sinister.”

Perfectly marvelous quote!

My understanding of the co-opting of left to mean malific is that, in times of yore, to show no evil intentions, men armed with swords, knives, etc. would greet by clasping right hands. This would of course, disarm most people as the majority were and are right handed. However, those who were left handed could clasp right and stab left at the same time.

Sinister behavior, that.

I am not sure how we got so far left. The trail is, I suspect, highly speculative, buried in the unwritten history of culture and language.

Shaking the "right hand" may indeed be an outgrowth of sword disarmament. But I think it is too great a leap to say that is how "left" came to mean sinister, clumsy, gauche and other things negative.

The general notion of giving pride of place of to the "right hand" is ancient: see Psalm 110:1. So I'm guessing that if sitting at the right hand of the top guy was the favored position in antiquity, then, by default, the left was the unfavored position and thus left = bad...but still that is not an entirely satisfactory explanation: why didn't left come to connote merely "second best" rather than affirmatively "bad"? In the liturgy of the Catholic mass, traditionally the gospel is read from the right side of the altar (as seen by the priest when facing the congregation) and the epistles from the left side. No negative connotation there to the scripture on the left; just a symbolic gesture that the gospels are afforded greater dignity than the epistles, i.e., were good, but second best.

Our metaphors do get messed up over time, and maybe that is what happened to leftedness. I cannot solve the mystery of the left, but here are two examples of other words whose meanings jumped the rails at some point:

Consider this misplaced metaphor: When we say "the lion's share" we think of "the biggest portion" as in "the lion's share of the bonus pool went to the executives, with staff getting only modest packets." But read the Aesop's fable: the lion, after due consultation with himself, decided his share was ALL of it, not just the largest portion.

Or consider "decimate," whose modern usage is wholly detached from its quantitative origins. Most of us think off decimation as describing nearly total ruin: as in a trailer park decimated by a tornado, or a warehouse decimated by a fire. The word technically (and originally) means "to reduce by a tenth." But in those examples, we'd be relieved if the damage was limited to 10%. On the other hand, we would be afraid to use "decimate" when we do mean only 10%, as this example shows: A stock market "correction" or a "correction" of a particular stock is defined as a negative movement of at least 10% to adjust for an overvaluation. Corrections are generally temporary price declines interrupting an uptrend in the market. We are uneasy, but not panicked, by corrections in stocks, which in fact occur fairly routinely. Although it would be accurate, few analysts would use the headline "Stock market decimated!" to describe a 10% correction.

And so I am left with no satisfactory explanation of how we got to ambisinistrosity.

I saw this word in my Gmail index page and thought, "two left hands?" Then I read the definition and saw I was more or less correct.