Today’s word of the day, courtesy of Merriam-Webster, is obstreperous. It’s an adjective that means “resisting control or restraint in a difficult manner; unruly” or “noisy, clamorous, or boisterous” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/obstreperous). M-W says, “Obstreperous is a formal word that describes people or things that stubbornly resist control; in this use it’s a synonym of unruly. A person or thing described as obstreperous may also be defiantly or aggressively noisy” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day).

M-W explains, “Imagine walking a dog down a sidewalk in a neighborhood full of delicious smells and other temptations—it’s easy to picture your pooch barking and straining at the leash to chase a squirrel, or dragging you toward something enticingly (to them) stinky, right? But can you imagine saying to your doggo in response, “Quit being so obstreperous!” Probably not. Obstreperous has a much more formal flair than words, such as stubborn or unruly, used to describe similar behavior. As such it’s unlikely to be used in casual speech or contexts like the one above. The word comes from a combination of the handy Latin prefix ob- (meaning ‘against’) and strepere, a verb meaning ‘to make a noise’; someone who is obstreperous can be thought of as literally making noise to rebel against something, much like a protesting crowd or an unruly child. Strepere has made little noise in the English lexicon, however; in addition to obstreperous it seems only to have contributed to the rarely encountered strepitous and its synonym strepitant, which mean ‘characterized or accompanied by much noise’—that is, ‘noisy’” (ibid.). Now, I have never heard of the words strepitous or strepitant in my life, so perhaps it has made even less noise than M-W suggests.

The word entered the English language “c. 1600, from Latin obstreperous ‘clamorous,’ from obstrepere ‘drown with noise, make a noise against, oppose noisily,’ from ob ‘against’ (see ob-) + strepere ‘make a noise,’ from PIE *strep-, said to be imitative (compare Latin stertare ‘to snore,’ Old Norse þrefa ‘to quarrel,’ þrapt  ‘chattering, gossip,’ Old English þræft ‘quarrel’). But de Vaan writes, ‘It is uncertain that *strep- goes back to PIE, since it is only found in Latin and Germanic.’ Extended sense of ‘resisting control, management, or advice’ is by 1650s” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=+obstreperous).

By the way, the þ in those Germanic words is a letter called thorn. “The letter originated from the rune ᚦ in the Elder Fuþark and was called thorn in the Anglo-Saxon and thorn or thurs in the Scandinavian rune poems. It is similar in appearance to the archaic Greek letter sho (ϸ), although the two are historically unrelated. The only language in which þ is currently in use is Icelandic. It is pronounced as either a voiceless dental fricative [θ] or its voiced counterpart [ð]” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)). In other words, it can be pronounced like the th in thin or the th in then.

I’ve taken up pickleball. I would blame it on retirement, but I actually took it up before I retired. For years, when I was playing racquetball several times per week, I thought that pickleball was this sport for people who were no longer physically capable of playing other sports. But then we did a family vacation at the Club Med in Florida (the one that has since closed down), and they offered pickleball lessons. Figuring that I needed the exercise, and lacking any other options, I gave it a try. I liked it. At the end of the week, they held a pickleball tournament, and I won. Of course, I was the only entry. It was mid-September, after all.

Pickleball was invented in 1965, making it much older than I thought it was. Joel Pritchard, Barney McCallum, and Bill Bell are given credit for inventing the game, though I think their kids deserve a little of the credit. The story is that Pritchard and Bell came back to Pritchard’s summer home on Bainbridge Island, Washington, from playing golf, and found their kids sitting around bored. They set up a court for badminton, but they couldn’t find the birdie. So they set about figuring out what game they could invent. So they tried using ping pong paddles, lowering the net, and using different balls, like wiffle balls (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickleball#).

I would say that they eventually worked out the rules—larger paddles, thicker balls (and different for indoor and outdoor play), the non-volley zone, etc. But they are actually still fine tuning the rules even after all these years. Still, the game is well developed at this point, including massively growing numbers of players and courts as well as an increasingly present professional game.

I like to play in different venues. This morning I played at the Brevard Health and Racquet Club. We were visiting my 96-year-old mother-in-law in Brevard. Tomorrow I’ll play at the Anderson Civic Center. Friday morning I hope to play in Bluffton, where my oldest lives. It’s fun to meet and play with and against different people. My son and my son-in-law have both taken up the game. It’s something that people of any age can play.

The one thing that is problematic about pickleball is the noise. The plastic ball makes a significant pop when struck by a wooden or carbon-fiber paddle. Some companies are now marketing paddles that are supposed to be quieter, and some companies have recently been trying to market sponge rubber balls, but nobody I know wants to play with them. I have heard of some neighborhoods that have actually filed suit against their POA because they object to the noise of pickleball. However, the noise doesn’t bother me. I don’t find it obstreperous at all.

Today’s image is a large group of friends playing pickleball at my former employer, Southern Wesleyan University.