KEMPY

Wild Word Friday!

I’m a weaver. I’m not a great weaver, just a hobbyist, but I’m always amazed when the magic of a warped loom coaxes weft threads and yarns into lovely fabrics, and I’m always amazed when I think of those first weavers who came up with the idea of cloth. Wow.

When I began to weave, I did what I often do when I’m learning something new. I read – books, magazines, articles – both how-to and history. As a result, I learned new words, including the word KEMPY.

KEMPY is such a rarely used word in the English language that you won’t find it in the average run-of-the-mill dictionary. You have to break out the big tomes, which will tell you that KEMPY has quite a few meanings, the most common relating to a dialectical use in Great Britain as kemp, which means champion,  warrior, or an impetuous rogue.  As a verb – used most often in Scotland – kemp means to compete for a championship.

All these words trace their beginnings to a prehistoric (pre-writing) word of Germanic origin that means combat.

Middle English (and the Scandinavian languages) turned the ancient word kemp into a modifier – KEMPY – to refer to coarse hair, like a mustache. As a weaver, I first heard KEMPY used to describe natural fibers that don’t spin well. Goat hair is KEMPY. It’s very difficult to get goat hair to cling together.  It fights or “combats” any unifying bond. On the other hand, sheep’s wool is wonderfully un-KEMPY.

I once gave a talk at my church and brought in goat hair and raw wool to demonstrate the property of KEMPY-ness – something that certainly has its place in life, but that isn’t useful when it comes to trying to create a cooperative team that can work together to accomplish good things.

Over all I’m not a KEMPY person, except when it comes to long committee meetings. After an hour or so, I find myself becoming very KEMPY indeed!

Q4U: How about you? What makes you feel KEMPY?

Blessings!

Sue

(Some information from Webster’s Third New International Dictionary Unabridged. Photos from Wikipedia.)