• steeplejack •
Pronunciation: stee-pêl-jæk • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: Someone who works on spires, steeples, smokestacks, and other tall structures.
Notes: Today we have a word that reached the height of its popularity in 1940 according to Google Books Ngrams. It is a lovely lexical orphan, that has not moved away from its original usage.
In Play: Steeplejacks, of course, are known for working on steeples: "The deacons hired a steeplejack to repair the weathercock at the peak of the church spire." But they also work in high places on other things: "The BBC should have made a documentary of steeplejacks working on the chimneys of the biggest power plant in the UK."
Word History: Today's Good Word is a compound noun comprising steeple and jack. Since most steeples are steep, we aren't surprised to find steep in it. The best guess is that it derives from PIE (s)teup-, an extension of (s)teu- to push, knock, beat", source also of Sanskrit tup- "harm" and tundate "pushes", and Greek typtein "to strike". The common noun jack is a British colloquialism meaning "man", as in 'every man jack of them', lumberjack, and jack o' lantern. It has a holy origin, borrowed from French Jacques, a term used pejoratively to refer to peasants. French inherited this name from Latin Iacobus, which it borrowed from Greek Iakob, a modification of Hebrew ya'akob "(God) protected". (Now a thank-you note to Luciano Eduardo de Oliveira, an active Agoran since 2005 and now senior editor of the GW series, for his continuing contributions of fascinating Good Words like today's.)
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