Whet (pronounced hwet or wet)
(1) To
sharpen (a knife, tool, etc) by grinding or friction.
(2) To
make keen or eager; stimulate:
(3) To
stimulate one’s curiosity (usually in the phrase “to whet the appetite”)
(4) The
act of whetting or a person or device which whets.
(5) Something
that makes more keen or intense; an appetizer or aperitif.
(6) A
spell of work; a short period of time (US slang, south of the Mason-Dixon Line,
such as the phrase “to talk a whet”).
(7) To
preen (obsolete).
Pre 900:
From the Middle English verb whetten
& noun whete, from the Old
English verb hwettan (to whet,
sharpen (and figuratively "to incite or encourage”) and noun hwǣte, a derivative of hwæt (bold) and related to hvæt
(sharp), from the Proto-West Germanic hwattjan,
from the Proto-Germanic hwatjan &
hwatjaną (to incite, sharpen), from the
primitive Indo-European kehid (sharp). It was cognate with Dutch wetten (“to whet, sharpen”), the German wetzen (“to whet, sharpen”), the Icelandic hvetja (“to whet, encourage, catalyze”) and the dialectal Danish hvæde (“to whet”). The Proto Germanic hwatjan & hwatjaną which
was from the primitive Indo-European root kwed-
(to sharpen), source also of the Sanskrit codati
(incites (literally "sharpens")), the Old English hwæt (brave, bold) and the Old Saxon hwat (sharp) was the source also of the Old
Norse hvetja (to sharpen, encourage),
the Middle Low German & Middle Dutch wetten,
the Old High German wezzan, the German
wetzen (to sharpen) and the Gothic ga-hvatjan (to sharpen, incite). Whet is a noun and verb, whetted &
whetting (used with object) are verbs, whetter a noun and whetted an adjective. The noun plural is whets and the homophone
wet (in accents with the wine-whine merger).
The
Modern English words wet and whet are etymologically unrelated but for a number
of reasons are sometimes, understandably, confused. Nor is the whet/wet thing an isolated example
and the reason for much confusion lies in the terminology familiar to
historians, translators and etymologists: the source of most modern English being
conveniently traced back to Ancient Greek and the surprisingly large number of forks
of Latin, through the filter of Old and Middle English. The Greek & Latin is obviously foreign
and for most, words can be recognized only by their similarity to what is now
familiar but Middle English is (at least substantially) readable to a modern
English-speaking audience prepared to guess a little and pick up wherever
possible from the context or sentence structure. Old English (which once was the “Olde
English” which better captures the idea) however really is a misnomer and is
almost wholly unrecognizable and is better thought of as pre-English and
probably only the most structurally oriented etymologists would regard it as a
proto-form. Indeed, many prefer the
alternative “Anglo-Saxon” as a description because it was introduced to the
British Isles by the Germanic peoples who settled in the mid-fifth century, a
timing which meant it was in that language that were written what came to be regarded
as the first works of Literature “in English”.
One
suspects that were an anthropologist now to discover the old texts as a novel
form, it’s unlikely they’d be labeled as any form of “English”, something which
may have happened because of a desire (which long persisted in the study of
“English” history) to make Englishness as ancient as possible, historians long
seduced by their constructions of all that stretched back to the island’s links
with the classical age. Except when
treated as aberrations, uncivilized barbarians and pockets of violent
backwardness, much of the non-English contribution to the history of life on
the British Isles tended until recently to be neglected or devalued by
historians and the attitude to language reflects this but that Modern English
contains both wet and whet, pronounced the same yet meaning different things
hints at the tangle, an additional twist being that some “whets” and
distinguished from others by being used “wet”.
In
English use, this meshing of sound and overlap of meaning does produce the odd
tendency to error. For example, a
Parthian shot (Parthian an Iranian language of the people of ancient and
medieval Parthia) is a metaphor used to describe a barbed insult, delivered as
the speaker departs, the construction based on a military tactic used by
Parthian mounted cavalry. While in real
or feigned retreat on horseback, the archers would turn their bodies back in
full gallop to shoot at the pursuing enemy, quite a trick which demanded fine
equestrian skills given that the riders’ hands were occupied by his bows and
arrows. It was more admirable still
because the Parthian military used neither stirrups nor spurs, riders relying
solely on the pressure from their legs to guide and control their galloping
beasts. However, the literal “Parthian
shot” was literally also something of a “parting shot” given the way it was
delivered and among English speakers is often rendered as “parting shot”, a use
so frequently encountered that many dictionaries now accept it as a legitimate
alternative form as long as the correct meaning is conveyed: Whichever word is
used, the metaphor refers not merely to an effectively made comment, the
essence being that it is delivered at the point of departure.
Part in
this sense was from the Old French departir,
from the Late Latin departiō (to
divide), the construct being dē-
(away from) + partiō (part, divide). Interestingly, “part” (in the sense of “piece
of something) existed in Old English and is an example that the relationship
with the more recent Middle & Modern English is occasionally recognizable. Part was from the Middle English part, from the Old English part (part) and the Old French part (part), both from the Latin partem, accusative of pars (piece, portion, share, side,
party, faction, role, character, lot, fate, task, lesson, part, member), from
the primitive Indo-European par- & per- (to sell, exchange). It displaced the Middle English del & dele
(part), from the Old English dǣl
(part, distribution).
Lindsay Lohan wetting her whistle during a fishing trip with Hofit Golan (b 1985, Israeli media personality), July 2016.
Whet and wet are subject to the same
linguistic clatter. To “whet one’s
appetite” and “wet one’s whistle” can both mean “to imbibe an aperitif”
although there are differences of nuance, the former meaning “to sharpen the
desire for more” while the latter references the usefulness of alcohol as a
social lubricant. The occasional mistake
is thus understandable and those learning English must think such things surely
unnecessary but, as a noun, things don’t improve. The English whet is a word about sharpening
things and a whetstone is a literally a piece of stone, most frequently in the
shape of a rectangular cuboid (although there are specialized shapes optimized
to sharpen different devices with more complex curves) against which the edges
of a blade are worked at an acute angle until sharp. That’s fine but whetstones are often used
with a cutting fluid (water or an oil), both to enhance the sharpening and
carry away swarf (the tiny fragments of metal lost from a blade). A whetstone may thus be used wet or dry but
fortunately, the term “wet whetstone” has always been avoided and the
variations are instead styled water stones (also waterstones) or oil stones (also
oilstones).
Japanese Natural Whetstone.
Whetstones
may be cut wholly from natural stone or modern composites. The natural product (an there are cults among
the advocates of the various types), is formed usually of some form of quartz, and
documented since antiquity are the locations of the quarries which produce the
whetstones able to provide a blade with the sharpest edge although recent
research seems to indicate there’s little difference in the results it’s
possible to achieve but a huge gulf in the efficiency with which one does the
job compared with another and it’s thought the ease of operation was as much a
factor in historic preferences as the fineness of the edge. The classical whetstones, being a natural
product were subject also to much variation in appearance and the more pleasing
or rare have always been prized, some now collector items, bought to be
displayed rather than used for their historic purpose.
The synthetic
composites are made usually with a type of ceramic such as silicon carbide
(carborundum) or aluminum oxide (corundum), held together with a bonded
abrasive. Popular in industry and
commerce because they offer a faster cutting action than natural stone, they
have the advantage of being able to be fabricated as a double-block, coarse
grit on one side, fine on the other, thus enabling the one reversible piece to
be used instead of two. Unlike a natural
stone, the consistency of particle size, distribution and density can be almost
perfectly replicated throughout and although artisans may still hanker for the
look and feel of real stone, it’s admitted the modern synthetics are usually
now superior; the ability to integrate nano-sized particles meaning the
construction of composites is now almost infinitely variable.
Dalstrong’s summary of sharpening techniques when using their synthetic composite whetstones.
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