wordaday

My colleague Emily Veinglory wrote an interesting entry on the gesture described by the adjective “steepled” here, wherein she notes:

The word I am thinking of today is ’steepled’, specifically as it relates to hands. Spellchecker assures me that the word ’steepled’ is a non-word, it fails to be, it is without existence in reality as defined by our friends at Microsoft.

Emily Veinglory points out that she can find steepled used, with specific reference to the gesture, in a variety of print sources, fictive and non, and asks:

So, what do you think? “Steepled” hands: corrupted and incorrect language, weird post-Doyle Sherlockian jargon, or a correct but modern usage

I note that while the AHD does contain steepled, the lemma is used entirely in terms of architecture, not in reference to hands:

1. Having steeples or a steeple: picturesque, steepled villages; a tiny, steepled church.
2. Steeply inclined: steepled roofs.

The OED, however, is quite helpful:

5. Of the fingers or hands: brought together in the form of a steeple. 1971 P. O’DONNELL Impossible Virgin x. 212 Tapping the tips of his steepled fingers together. 1981 ‘L. EGAN’ Miser (1982) ii. 26 ‘Not much criminal practice,’ said Jesse, brooding over his steepled hands.

My private theory, that the reference to “steepled” fingers is derived from the children’s game of “This is the church, this is the steeple, open the doors and here are all the people,” played with one’s fingers interwined, with the exception of the forefingers, which form the “steeple,” while the thumbs make the “doors,” which, when opened reveal the remaining, intertwined, wriggling fingers as the “people,” is in part supported the often unsatisfactory Urban Dictionary, which gives us:

The act of putting your fingertips together, most likely to indicate thoughtfulness.

So named because this action makes one’s hands look vaguely like a steeple.
The following children’s hand game shows an example of steepling:
This is the church; this is the steeple; open the doors, and there’s all the people.

It’s that time of year when most particularly I think of the nativity story in Matthew. I was always fascinated, as a child, by the passage that describes the gifts brought to the infant Jesus by the Magi, the wise men from the east. Matthew 2:11 in the King James 1611 version says:

And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh.

Here’s the same passage from the Latin Vulgate:

et intrantes domum invenerunt puerum cum Maria matre eius et procidentes adoraverunt eum et apertis thesauris suis obtulerunt ei munera aurum tus et murram

You will note that there is no mention of how many wise men there were; tradition has supplied three, based on the three gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Gold we know; frankincense is “An aromatic gum resin obtained from African and Asian trees of the genus Boswellia and used chiefly as incense and in perfumes.” (AHD).

Etymologically, Frankincense is from Middle English frank with the word encens, from Old French franc and encens. Franc means “free, pure”— it’s the same word as Modern English “frank,” as in “to speak frankly.” Encens is the French word that spawned Modern English incense.

Frankincense is a resin from a particular kind of tree, that, when burned or rendered into perfume, has a pleasant scent. The tree is deliberately scored, to produce sap, which then dries and is collected in the form of hard resinous nodules. Today Frankincense is more commonly rendered into an oil, but all over the Middle East, historically, it was burned, used as a perservative, and as a particularly rich gift.

Myrrh is

An aromatic gum resin obtained from several trees and shrubs of the genus Commiphora of India, Arabia, and eastern Africa, used in perfume and incense. Also called balm of Gilead (AHD).

Myrrh is derived from Middle English mirre, by way of Old English myrrha, from Latin, from Greek murrha, but it’s ultimately of Semitic origin; the Greeks borrowed the Semitic root mrr, “To be(come) bitter.” Like Frankincense, Myrrh is collected from injured trees, in the form of gummy, or dried, nodules of resin. Myrrh and Frankincense resemble either other visually, but the scents are completely different.

One of the interesting aspects of this passage, from an historical point of view, is that of the three gifts, the Frankincense and Myrrh were worth far more than the gold.