One Fell Swoop Minicast - 6 May 2009

Martha muses about the language of falconry, and in the process, reveals the origins of several words and phrases in one fell swoop.<br/><br/>Did you know that a falcon's eyeballs are so huge that they take up most of its head -- and that those two eyes are separated only by a thin membrane? <br/><br/>That's just one of the fun facts I learned from a new book called Falconer on the Edge: A Man, His Birds, and the Vanishing Landscape of the American West. <br/><br/>The author, Rachel Dickinson, is married to a falconer. Her book is a glimpse into the world of this centuries-old blood sport. <br/><br/>Now, I'll admit it: The blood part makes me queasy. but the book gave me a whole new appreciation for the vocabulary of falconry.<br/><br/>Take the word haggard. It describes a worn, tired, gaunt appearance. <br/>But did you know that originally haggard applied to birds? Specifically, haggard described an adult female hawk caught in the wild, not raised in captivity.<br/><br/>By the 16th century, the word had came to denote anyone similarly 'wild or intractable.' Later haggard was applied more generally.<br/><br/>In Shakespeare's day, falconry was an aristocratic sport. You see lots of images from it in his plays. There's jealous Othello, fretting that Desdemona may prove to be 'haggard' -- that is, wild and out of his control. <br/><br/>Or in Macbeth, the character MacDuff is aghast when he learns that his family's been murdered in 'one fell swoop.' The image of is the way a falcon swoops down from the sky, and strikes with swift ferocity. The 'fell' in 'one fell swoop' is an adjective. It means 'inhumanly cruel.' This fell is a linguistic relative of 'felon.'<br/><br/>Then there's the term 'pride of place.' Today it means 'the highest or most important location': as in 'High-definition TVs enjoy pride of place in many living rooms.'<br/><br/>Originally, 'pride of place' meant the airy height from which that falcon swoops. You see this phrase in Macbeth, when Shakespeare uses it to suggest that unnatural, ominous thi