I have fun with words. I guess that’s the writer in me, wanting to learn new words both to increase my own vocabulary, and to make my writing more interesting. Periodically I slip in a slightly obscure word or two into my column—sometimes as a tool for a better description and other times just for fun. English is interesting enough, what with lots of homonyms, homophones, and homographs (see, I slipped a couple in right there), a seeming dearth of spelling rules, and often peculiar grammar. But even with a minimum of 171,000 words in the English language (just what’s in the dictionary) there are gaps: concepts where no single English word works. I previously wrote about a whole series of such words, including the one most familiar to us car folks: schadenfreude—taking pleasure in another’s misfortune: the guy who passed you doing double the speed limit, now pulled over a mile down the road, speaking earnestly to a minion of the law. I found more fun words from several other languages that directly relate to our automotive proclivities. Since that column some five years ago, I’ve found even more appropriate words.
Japanese has a compound word: wabi-sabi. You folks with perfect, concours cars that travel to and from shows in an enclosed trailer can skip this paragraph. Wabi-sabi doesn’t apply to you, because it refers to appreciating beauty in natural flaws and imperfection, and accepting transience as part of life. The wabi refers to rustic simplicity; think of a car from the early years of the 20th century, when inventors and tinkerers were trying to see just how to make that cantankerous internal combustion engine work—and then adapt it to a horse-drawn carriage, less the horse. The sabi refers finding beauty that comes with age and wear. Those of us who have no qualms about jumping into our now at least 50-year-old 2002s and driving eight hundred or a thousand miles to an event without worrying about chips on the paint, another thousands digit rollover on the odometer, or the possibility that some yahoo in a giant SUV might total your car—you’re in the wabi-sabi zone. And good for you.
Now for all my fellow wrench-twisters: those who followed—and applauded—every one of Rob Siegel’s hack mechanic tricks. Do I have some words for you…
There’s a Finnish word—sisu—that in four letters describes facing the challenge of an impossibly stuck stud that first breaks off, then when you try to extract it, your Easy-Out breaks. But you push through regardless, meet the challenge, and not only manage to remove that broken, hardened Easy-Out, but the broken stud’s remains—without damaging the threads. You, my fellow wrench twister, have sisu.
Sisu meshes perfectly with another Scandinavian word—this time from Sweden: lagom. It translates to “just the right amount” and while that most likely refers to balance and moderation in life, it can refer to—in the case of our broken stud—employing a bit more lagom when using that Easy-Out; that might have saved you from experiencing sisu first-hand…
Desenrascanço translates literally to “disentanglement” but that’s not how we would use the word: freeing one’s self from the fishing line that’s hopelessly entangled you after a cast gone wrong. In Portuguese, it means figuring out an unusual, clever or elegant solution to a problem: cleverly using a bolt as the positive electrode and arc welding it to that broken Easy-Out, then using it to back both it and the broken stud out of that irreplaceable engine block. A Mac Gyver solution.
What about worrying? That essential part you need to make your car operational in time for that upcoming road trip. You ordered it in time, were assured it was in stock and would be shipped “immediately.” Days go by: no part. You call. “We shipped it last week.” You worry the whole trip will be in the dumper, and it isn’t even your fault. There’s a Japanese word we all need to remember for just that situation: shouganai. It literally means “it has happened;” you can’t worry over things where you have no control. You did your part; now it’s shouganai.
You can also go with the attitude of sprezzatura. That’s a practiced carelessness attitude—at least on the surface—and so Italian. It’s arriving at a cruise-in full of Ferraris and Porsches—in your grandmother’s Ford Pinto—and pulling it off with panache. I practiced sprezzatura for the five or so years my ’69 2002 was in five shades of primer, faded original Nevada paint, and rust. Sometimes missing a fender or two, often missing trim. I just didn’t care what anyone else might have thought, because I had sprezzatura, and that went right along with a Greek word that perfectly described how I was slowly accomplishing a general refurbishment: meraki. That means throwing yourself wholeheartedly into a project, and leaving a bit of yourself behind. In my case, at least some of what I left behind was skin; I was careful to keep my tetanus shots up-to-date.
