1416 I Lac It

I was doing a crossword puzzle recently and came across a clue that said, “varnish ingredient.” The only letters possible for the answer were l-a-c. Huh, I thought, Lac, what the heck is that?
See, I’m never amazed at the depth of my own ignorance. Primarily because ignorance is the first step to knowledge. So I went to the dictionary to see if, in fact, there was such a thing as l-a-c lac. Yep. It is indeed a varnish ingredient. It’s also a component in lacquer, the word that starts with l-a-c- and shellac, the word that ends in l-a-c-. I never paid attention to the similarity before.
Certainly a lack of curiosity on my part.
But here’s what’s interesting, to me at least, you’ve probably known this for along time. Lac comes from the lac insect, laccifer lacca, the female of which secretes a resinous substance known as lac.
The word goes back to the Hindi lakh l-a-k-h-. It is a word as ancient as the process of harvesting secretions from insects.
We are a resourceful species. I always wonder about the first person who tried an oyster for edibility. Or the folks who invented things like the loofa. Really, raising insects that secrete resin in order to invent the shellac industry? No worse than growing silkworms, I suppose, or the recent movement by some eato-environmentalists to add low carbon footprint insects to the menu of green-thinking folks.
Still, I can’t shake the icky factor. Somewhere around the itsy bitsy spider social growth window, we all had a little negative conditioning about the creepy crawlies in our life.
Hmm. Speaking of negative conditioning, I wonder if giving elected officials a good shellacking has anything to do with insect excretions.
It sure would bug me.
America, ya gotta love it.