Eolian Gumption
Eolian Gumption
Words in the Wind
June 3, 2020
Eolian
Today’s word is eolian. It means eroded by the wind.
Gone With the Wind is a classic American movie. Some would say it is the defining American movie about the defining American event, the Civil War. Would Gone With the Wind have been as popular and enduring if its title was Eolian?
Gone With the Wind is a great movie, an epic. Its protagonist owned human beings. But still, it’s a great flick. It’s two movies, really, one is a war movie and one is a love story and some say it’s really not about war or love or slavery or freedom, it’s about gumption, which is another great word.
Gumption might have been a good name for the movie but it probably would have had to have been a musical. Eolian Gumption sounds like the name of a southern lawmaker, or maybe a place you go to pick flowers.
When Gone With the Wind was released in 1939 slavery in the United States was a distant memory but when Hattie McDaniel won her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress she had to sit way in the back of the auditorium at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles because the hotel didn’t even allow black people inside.
Eroded and gone don’t really mean the same thing. Eroded means something disappears over time, a slow destruction. Gone just means it’s not there and we don’t know how it disappeared. Oh that’s right, the wind took it. But it’s not coming back.
Eolian Winds would be a cool name for a racehorse. Or a sailboat. Or a book about someone who marches through empty streets of an American city looking for something that’s gone but they’re not sure what. And nor do they know if it was ever there to begin with. --TK
Wednesday, June 3, 2020