But it was while I was watching The Amazing Race the other night that I got to thinking about the word again. I guess it was when the show visited Indonesia, where the teams had to descend 160 feet into a dark cave to search for a mask and dagger. (Frankly, it would have been climbing the bamboo ladder back up again that would have been my undoing.)
Why is it called spelunking? It's got to be either a foreign word or a made up word and I'm wondering why people were so attracted to it that it's common to use it rather than the more familiar 'cave exploring'. I'm going to guess that it's a real word from somewhere else. Germany?
How about you?
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Not made up, though it does have an obsolete source, namely spelunk, which was Middle English for cave. That comes as so often, from the Old French (spelunque or spelonque), back to Latin spelunca and finally to the Greek spelynx.
Here's what's interesting though. Spelunking is kind of a revived word. Apparently a guy named Clay Perry coined the word while on assignment for the Federal Writers Project to describe the activity of a group of men and boys who were exploring the caves of New England in the late thirties and forties. But 'spelunker' soon became associated with cave 'enthusiasts' as opposed to the more serious 'cavers', and a bumper sticker was eventually circulated maintaining that 'Cavers Rescue Spelunkers'.
Typically, this distinction seem to have been lost on Santa Cruz. And I mean that in a good way.
There is another slang meaning of spelunking, but you are going to have to go over to the Urban Dictionary and research that one for yourselves...
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Linked, I suppose, to "speleologue"... the French word for a cave explorer.
ReplyDeleteA very interesting new word to add to conversation.
As ever, many thanks.
I've always wanted to go spelunking. Probably at this point, the closest I'll get is taking a paid tour of the caves in San Antonio on a family trip though, does that count?
ReplyDeleteMaria, yes, there are speliologists here too, though the interest in caves as sites of serious study apparently was started with one man in France, Édouard-Alfred Martel. The guys who get to look down on both the spelunkers and the cavers are the speliologists.
ReplyDeleteGlenna, yes it does.
ReplyDeleteThe student film could do witha bit of editing but about midway through you will see a member of the supporting cast--a Santa Cruz banana slug, mascot of UCSC. It's that big yellow thing on the ground.
ReplyDeleteI have long loved the word spelunking. and I have even spelunked once!
ReplyDelete======================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
I went back to the post to check the box that will let me be notified by e-mail when a new comment is posted, and I have to tell you about the appropriate v-word that turned up: mines
ReplyDeleteMines. Excellent.
ReplyDeleteSo where did you spelunk?
I don't know if anyone is actually going to watch the little film I've provided, but although I don't have a big fear of caves, I amn not crazy about tight little entrances to places that you then have to get back out of somehow.
I went on a few old gold mine trips when we we lived in Colorado, and I remember taking people to some place called Cave of the Winds. For some reason there was a part of the tour where they turn out all of the lights and that did not go down well with the youngest member of my family, who shall remain otherwise unidentified.
I'd have spelunked somewhere in the Laurentian Mountains of Gatineau Hills of Quebec. The underground venture happened when when I was either a counselor or a camper in summer camp. The cave was not large, but I was nonehteless elated to have conquered my fear by going down the damn thing.
ReplyDeleteI have also visited the replica of the Lascaux cave in France. Maybe I should thinking of that as simulated or pseudo-spelunking.
======================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Checked out the Urban Dictionary. When I had first heard 'spelunking' I had thought it would be about some frenetic activity like 'slamdunking'. So, maybe the Urban Dict meaning was closer to what I expected than the more patient and assiduous activity of cave-exploring.
ReplyDeletePeter, psuedospelunking sounds like it could open up a whole new field of academic study.
ReplyDeleteOne of my friends and coworkers read this blog and told me she had actually spelunked the Porter caves here on campus. She thought "I could show Seana where the Porter caves are!"
Then she thought about it a bit longer. "Uh, no," she amended.
I have to say I entirely concur.
Sucharita, yes, though I actually came across the Urban Dictionary definition in my initial research, I have had reason to look things up in the Urban Ditionary before, so I wasn't entirely what you might call surprised.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see you had a blog post up again recently, though I don't think I commented there.
Then someone could debunk the (pseudo)spelunkers.
ReplyDeleteSeana
ReplyDeleteIts also an American word. In Britain people just say "caving".
Yes, it's one of those rare instances where we've apparently aligned with the French against the British.
ReplyDelete"Cavers rescue spelunkers" could be read as just another sign of British condescension toward the Yanks.
"Caving." That sounds so weak, so unmanly, so un-American.
ReplyDeleteRight, Peter. Americans never cave.
ReplyDeleteThat should be the spelunker's bumper sticker.
Copyright that!
ReplyDeleteToo lazy. Story of my life, really.
ReplyDeleteStart small. MArket your idea at spelunkers' convention. Where is Spelunkcon 2012 being held, anyhow?
ReplyDeleteI regret to say that they are apparently keeping that information from me.
ReplyDeleteYou could offer to host the convention, given where you live.
ReplyDeleteOddly, it has been a bitterly contested issue that there is no real convention center here.
ReplyDeleteAs it would undoubtedly be immensely popular, I really could do it with no less.
Also, I would probably have to go in a cave.
Ah, go crawl in a hole. You'll feel better
ReplyDeleteI think not.
ReplyDelete