The other night I wrote a paragraph that went like so:
I don’t think we said a word the whole ride; we both just stared out our respective windows smiling glibly. If I could only have filled the car with amber and kept us preserved like that, I would have been content. If Sartre said that hell is other people, then heaven is something like silence with someone you love.
But I wondered afterward if one can smile glibly or not, and whether glib is the antonym of earnest, or circumspect, or studied, or some other word entirely.
So I looked it up, and found this at dictionary.com
1. readily fluent, often thoughtlessly, superficially, or insincerely so: a glib talker; glib answers.
2. easy or unconstrained, as actions or manners.
and hoped that when I’ve accused of being glib, it was more the latter I was being accused of then the former.
But then I found this obsolete definition, which I thought my be useful to the emo kids:
Glib\, n. [Ir. & Gael. glib a lock of hair.] A thick lock of hair, hanging over the eyes. [Obs.]
and then, still yet, this last one:
Glib\, v. t. [Cf. O. & Prov. E. lib to castrate, geld, Prov. Dan. live, LG. & OD. lubben.] To castrate; to geld; to emasculate. [Obs.] –Shak.
which once again goes to show that I cannot ever, it seems, escape the transness of things.
Ha! Interesting glib stuf.
PS–Wasn’t it Sartre who said that hell were other people?
Might it be suggested that the correct grammar would be,
“glibly smiling” instead of “smiling glibly”.
“Gliby” influences “smiling” (its an adverb). One never ever ever ends a sentence with an adverb or an adjective.
Helen dear didn’t you go to parochial school? Can’t you feel the pain of the ruler smacking your knuckles for making such a mistake? Or perhaps you went to school after they banned corporal punishment…. 🙂
Now, that’s odd. When I check the ‘An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language’, I find the following:
GLIB (i), smooth, slippery, voluble. (Dutch.) The orig. sense is ‘slippery;’ Shak. has ‘glib and oily;’ K. Lear.i. 1.227; ‘gVii and slip pery;’ Timon, i. i. 53. We also find glibbery. ‘What, shall thy lubrical and glibbery muse,’
As well as a fascinating take on the Gaelic:
GLIB (2), a lock of hair. (C.) ‘Long glibbes, which is a thick curled bush of heare, hanging downe over their eyes;’ Spenser, View of State of Ireland; Globe cd. p. 630, col. 2. — Irish and Gael, glib, a lock of hair ; also, a slut.
So, you were sitting in the car, a couple of smooth, slipery sluts staring out your respective windows. Wait, that just doesn’t capture the moment…
By the way, I think it’s lubben -> lybban -> glybban -> glib, so that’s what, three, four generations removed?
SO, in other words, you ARE writing another trans book. I KNEW IT!
=p