This week’s Lunchbox serves up a trio of words for exotic sounds.
That growling in your stomach is borborygmus. Borborygmi are a harmless part of the digestive process, but they do have an annoying tendency to occur during the quietest parts of board meetings.
A plangent sound is deep and usually mournful, like the solemn tolling of a bell.
A shivari (or shivaree, or chivaree, or charivari) is a French folk tradition in which the community would bang pots and pans and noisily serenade newlyweds. The custom of shivari took on darker connotations in 17th Century Europe when it became a way to publicly humiliate culturally taboo marriages, but remained a joyous celebration throughout the rest of the world.
The word is descended from the Latin caribaria, meaning “headache”.
