Crotchety, Brat, Curmudeon

A friend recently asked me to explain the roots of the word crotchety.  I am not sure why she wants to know the history of the word.  I hope it is not so that she can use it with more vigor as a descriptor of her husband or her boss.  Perhaps she, herself, feels crotchety.

The word crotchet means “forked or hooked or bent or curved,” and it comes from the same root as crook, the hooked staff of a shepherd.  Those of us who remember grandmothers or aunts who crocheted (pronounced cro-shayed) know what the crochet hook (a redundancy) looks like.  We can also understand that the robber we call a crook is someone with a bent moral sense.  And if we call our husband or wife or boss crotchety, what we are really saying is that he or she has a personality full of little hooks and forks.

I know we usually think of crotchety as an adjective with negative connotations.  But think for a moment how boring life would be if people were not crotchety, if they were all as smooth and translucent as eggs.  So complain, if you like, that your husband demands sweet pickles on his peanut butter sandwich or your wife insists that it is a sin to let a dirty dish sit in the sink overnight, but be just a little thankful for the hooks and curves in our personalities that make us interesting.

Another C word of similar meaning is curmudgeon.  I have always liked the oxymoron "lovable curmudgeon" but upon closer examination of the word have come to wonder if such a thing as a lovable curmudgeon is possible.  The dictionary defines curmudgeon as “a surly, ill-mannered, bad-tempered person.”  In contrast to the crotchety person, nothing is endearing about a curmudgeon.

And little is known about the origin of the word.  Dr. Samuel Johnson in his great but idiosyncratic dictionary of the 18th century speculated that the word came from the word for heart (cour, from which we get cardiac and courage) and the word merchent meaning “evil.”  But later etymologists, while praising Johnson's inventiveness, disproved his theory.

Another theory is that curmudgeon comes from the word corn and from a Middle English word, much-on or mich-on meaning “to pilfer or steal,” giving us corn-stealer.  But that too has been disproved.  The actual origin of the word is unknown.

And now, lest it seem I have been too hard on the crotchety, curmudgeonly older generation, let me conclude with a note on the word brat.  This word, which originally meant a covering for the body, a cloak or mantle, was later applied in the Old Welsh to the swaddling clothes of infants. Eventually it came to mean “a child.”

           

Today we think of brats as rude, ill-mannered children—young curmudgeons, if you wish.  But in the 16th and 17th centuries, brat was a neutral word; it carried no more negative connotation than the word child or youth.  The 16^th Century poet Gascoigne writes:  "O Israel, O household of the Lord,/O Abraham's brats, O brood of blessed seed."

Bratty kids, crotchety old folks and curmudgeons, all may be Abraham's brats.  There's a comfort