Friends now pass along unusual words to me for these articles, some familiar and some whose meanings I can only guess at. This week’s words are just that, one familiar and one unfamiliar. Pardon the quip, but one term is carved in stone, and the other floats away like packing foam at the local dump. Together, they remind us that throughout history, craftsmanship and excess have always lived side by side.
The mystery word for me this week is dactylioglyph. A dactylioglyph is a carver or engraver of gems, someone who inscribes miniature images, words, or symbols into precious stones. The word comes from the Greek for “ring” and “to carve,” and it signifies a profession in which patience was a virtue and magnification a luxury.
The museum’s curator spoke of the ancient dactylioglyph as if he were an old friend, not just a craftsman who had been dead for two millennia.
Each seal displayed the unmistakable precision of a master dactylioglyph, a man who recognized that a single mistake could ruin a month’s work.
She joked that her jeweler was a modern dactylioglyph, though his tools were digital and his deadlines were clearly old-fashioned.
When something is superfluous, it is unnecessary, excessive, or more than needed. The word comes from Latin, meaning “overflowing,” and it carries that polite yet pointed tone you use when you want to say, “you didn’t need to do that, and yet here we are.” When I think about the English or French aristocracy, I believe they led superfluous lives, lacking purpose.
His report included unnecessary charts and graphs, each one more superfluous than informative.
“Long after the damage had been done to the relationship, he offered a superfluous apology.”
“Her teacher trimmed every superfluous phrase from her essay until there was little of the original left.”
Putting these two together was not so hard since dactylioglyphs often made objects that, for many of us, were superfluous.
“The engagement ring had a dactylioglyph’s careful touch, unmarred by the superfluous flourishes modern designers cannot resist.”
“She appreciated how the dactylioglyph captured the essence of an entire myth in a space no larger than a thumbnail, proving that nothing superfluous was needed.”
“In a world drowning in superfluous social media detail, the work of a true dactylioglyph feels like a reminder of simpler and better times.”
