14MayCaliginous and thestral.

Another pair for the Weirds: caliginous means “misty, dim, murky, obscure, dark,” according to the Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Words. It goes on to say “Compare Tenebrous, Thestral” which caught my eye (“Thestral: adj. dark and dim”).  As a Harry Potter fan, I thought Thestrals were an invention of J.K. Rowling’s.  As beasts they are, of course, but it never occurred to me that she got the name from a real word. 

Why that should be I don’t know, as most of the names in those books are very cleverly chosen, often from Latin and classical Greek.  I thought that was because she studied Classics at University (I’m sure I read that somewhere), but I’ve just checked the biography on her own site and she studied French.  Another myth blown out of the water! 

I love both those words, though thestral is more onomatopoeic than caliginous, which sounds as though it should have something to do with body parts, as in cartilaginous.  And because thestral has connotations of death (the illustration given in the PDofCandIW is from Gardner’s Jason and Medeia, “… the mightiest mortal who’d ever reached that thestral shore …”) it applies very well to what I was doing last Sunday morning: diving my first wreck, the Breda, sunk near Oban in 1943.

It truly was thestral.  The water was slightly murky at 18 metres, there was all sorts of stuff lying around on deck that had once been trucks and other cargo, and there were great gaping holes in the deck.  Very spooky.  But very beautiful, too, with all the anemones, soft corals (graphically called “dead men’s fingers”) and other flora and fauna that had colonised every available surface.  Occasionally there was a sort of low booming roar which at first I thought was the sound of the sea against the hull.  I heard it later that day in open water with not a wreck in sight so I think it was just the noise of the support-boat’s engine, but it certainly added to the atmosphere.

I can see myself using thestral, in the right circumstances.  Caliginous?  Probably not – but it’s good to know it’s there, another of the nearly-forgotten riches of the English language.

Thanks to Oxford BSAC branch 0034′s Brian for the photo which I borrowed from their blog post “Mull 2008″.  It gives a good idea of the thestral qualities of the wreck.