maxiewawa

I have an app on my iPad that gives me words of the day. It’s utterly ridiculous. The only words that it gives are in English, and are so obscure that they are never used in daily conversation. I’ve never even heard of most of them. To illustrate my point, here’s today’s word: pullulate. ‘Nuff said. As I type, I can see that my automatic spell checker has a little red line under ‘pullulate’, indicating it hasn’t heard of it either.

As you might be able to see, my blog has been a bit sparse of late, so I’ve resolved to publish a post a day (a little optimistic?) outlining my word of the day. Most will probably be English words, all will be accompanied by some explanation (always in English).

Today’s word is scalp.

It’s both a noun and a verb.

As a noun, it refers to the part of your skin on top of your head that hair grows out of.

Some Native American tribes used to remove the scalp of their enemies, sometimes while they were still alive, and keep them. Often warriors would keep scalps with them, to show others how many enemies they had defeated. I think that this was when “scalp” became a verb, meaning “to remove the scalp off an enemy”. Wikipedia has quite a gruesome (black and white) photo of someone without their scalp. Nowadays, when you defeat someone in a way that makes you proud, or is particularly symbolic, you are often said to have their “scalp”.

I came across “scalp” the other day, with regard to Abu Bakar Bashir, an Indonesian muslim and convicted terrorist leader.

The guilty verdict for Abu Bakar Bashir this week is the latest in a series of scalps for Indonesian counter-terrorism authorities…

The Indonesian government didn’t remove his scalp, the word is still used figuratively.

When someone defeats someone else, particularly if the winner feels very proud about it, they are often said to have the “scalp” of the other person.

A quick Google search gives us a few examples:

Bashir Is Another Scalp for Indonesian Authorities (I’ve just mentioned this article).

Australians Claim Ivorian Scalp (The Australian football team defeated the Cote d’Ivorian football team. If you didn’t know, the Australian team isn’t very good.)

Carlton v West Coast Another sporting article. It mentions “top-four scalps”. If a team has a “top-four scalp” it means that it has already defeated one of the four best teams.