Did you know that thole is a word?
Me neither until this morning, when my sweetheart, Lisa, who is a self-proclaimed word nerd, emailed me Merriam-Webster’s “Word of the Day.”
There it was: thole. “Well, that’s interesting,” I thought, but I overstated the matter. Thole is interesting the way that farina is interesting, possessing much the same personality.
Thole begins well as a pronunciation, but it falls flat at its definition. With its high-sounding Medieval lilt, thole is the kind of word you’d expect to perhaps refer to a Celtic bard, or some vital part of a knight’s armor, or a high-ranking official in a king’s court: “Lords and ladies, presenting his worship, Sir Edward Lockshire, Thole of Camelot.”
Thole means none of those things. In fact, thole isn’t a thing at all. Thole is a verb, not a noun.* You don’t see a thole, admire a thole, wish you had a thole, or even feel indifferent about a thole. You simply thole. Or maybe you don’t thole, depending. If you’ve made it this far into this article, I’d say that you thole quite splendidly.
Shall I tell you the definition of thole? Yes, if I wish you to refrain from wringing my neck. Thole means endure. Got that? When you thole adverse circumstances, you endure them.
Now, doesn’t that just suck in every way possible. Seriously. See for yourself. Go ahead and try substituting thole for endure in any sentence you please, and then you tell me whether the result satisfies.
“Come, let us thole.”
“The journey is long and hard, but I shall thole.”
“I thought you would thole, but you didn’t thole at all–wimp!”
Past tense is worse yet. Slapping an -ed on the end of the word sounds just plain weird:
“I thought you tholed, but now I think that thole ithn’t in your vocabulary. I mean, isn’t. Thole isn’t in your vocabulary.”
Good thing it’s not, that’s what I say. If we must endure, we’d prefer to do so without lisping.
When you need to convey a concept that smacks of character, such as endurance, you need a word with enough personality to do the job right, and thole isn’t it. Nothing about it fits, not even the noun you could extrapolate from it. From endure you get endurance; does it follow, then, that thole gives you tholance?
Fortunately, no. Looking in the dictionary, I find one small ray of sunshine in whose warmth we can bask: there is no tholance. Those of you who fancy yourselves tholant, put it away. There’s no such word.
But getting back to the need for a word’s personality to match its character, open your thesaurus and you’ll find a whole list of colorful and useful synonyms for endure: Survive. Gut it out. Persist. Brave. Push through. Bear. Undergo. Withstand. Sustain. All good words, very good–words with grit and muscle, and there are more where they came from. In contrast, switching out endure for thole is like replacing Mike Tyson with Woody Allen: neither substitute packs the punch it needs.
For all of the above reasons and others besides, you will not catch me using the word thole in my writing. It simply fails to convince.
So what do you think of all this?
That’s what you think? Well, in fact, no, I really do not have way too much time on my hands. I just felt compelled to write. In this life, some matters are of such grave importance that they require comment. This is not one of them, but I have commented anyway. Now I’m finished, and you can get on with the rest of your day. Thank you for tholing this post to the very end.
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* Okay, I have to recant. A second look in the dictionary reveals that thole is also a noun. According to Webster’s, the noun form of thole refers to “either of a pair of pins set in the gunwale of a boat to hold an oar in place.” This definition of thole I can handle, though its usefulness is limited. Among the world’s least-asked questions, “Who’s bringing the tholes?” has got to be near the top of the list.
