Word of the Weekend: Vagitus
Oxford American: Writer's Thesaurus
Vagitus, meaning the cry of a newborn baby, would have been the perfect word for Mother's Day. In fact, while I was enjoying brunch at Filoli Gardens, I happened to hear a vagitus. There is such a distinctive sound to a newborn's cry -- almost like the mewing of a kitten, but not quite. And it certainly gives me a jolt back in time to those early, sleep-deprived days of motherhood. The reaction is visceral, almost primal in the instinct to nurse that it brings on. (Or maybe I'm just wired differently?) I do find it interesting that this word shares a common root with a part of the female anatomy that the baby must pass through to enter the world. Perhaps the creator of this word could have come up with something more akin to the actual sound instead of the anatomy -- infantilmewl? babywail? Yikes! Any wordsmiths out there have a suggestion?
Zadie Smith's "word note' in the Writer's Thesaurus for vagitus (found just below the word cry) has a nice touch of humor:
"VAGITUS: The cry of a newborn baby. Something to add, possibly to that very short list questions that must be asked of someone who has just given birth. There is never anything much to say, but you can at least lengthen the period of questions before the awkward silence. Boy or girl? How much did he weigh? What color are his eyes? How loud was his vagitus?"