#162 Divan Intelligence

We were planning our dinner menus the other day. Normally we’re one of those families that plan what we’re going to eat the next week before we go shopping so we shop only once a week. Too easy, with our weak wills, ito go the store to just pick up one item during the week and end up buying six or seven impulse items as well. Hey, someone has to read the National Enquirer.
In any event, my wife said she’d like to make chicken divan. “Chicken on a couch?” I blurted out. And you know, that’s kind of what it is, chicken on a couch of broccoli, or at least a bed of same. My lovely and intelligent wife didn’t remember ever hearing the word “divan” to describe a couch. My sister chimed in, “Oh yeah, like a davenport.” Davenport was what my grandma used to call her couch.
Well, we began to talk and the ultimate end of our conversation was that my theory of uncomfortable words flew out the window. See I have this theory. The more uncomfortable a concept is to us, as in, say, something that is not a topic for polite conversation, the more words we have for it. That comes about because often a word first emerges as a euphemism for the uncomfortable concept or bodily function. Then it becomes associated with the function so intimately that it itself becomes too uncomfortable to say in front of the preacher, and so another word is invented, and so on. I don’t have to spell it out, but run through your mind all the words you know for the sex act, or going to the bathroom, or even your own posterior. Conversely, list the number of words you know for the act of sitting. Occasionally, a word migrates back into acceptability. Like, say, the word butt, with two Ts. For years, butt was banned on the airwaves, now every TV show, broadcast and cable, can’t get enough of it.
So, the theory-dashing result of the chicken divan conversation ended up thusly. There are at last count 15 words for the completely comfortable concept of couch. They are: lounge, couch, daybed, love seat, the afore-mentioned divan; davenport, sofa, hide-a-bed, chesterfield (not a couch to fall asleep on while smoking, by the way); then the really obscure ones, ottoman (I know, I thought it was just for your feet too,) settee, settle, dais; and then the really, really obscure ones, spoonholder (I kid you not) and squab. It makes you wonder. In what strange person’s mind did the equivalency of a place to sit and a small game bird first arise?
Great chicken divan, Hon, I’m just going to flake out on the squab and take a cat-nap...
America ya gotta love it.