In form with unusual words: glabella, philtrum & natiform

Harvinder Khetal

Bet you didn’t know that there are words for these parts of our anatomy. For example, if a woman were to tell her beautician who is threading her eyebrows for that clean look and shape to take particular care of the glabella, the cosmetician would be foxed and look at her quizzically. Well, glabella is the smooth part of the forehead above and between the eyebrows. Yes, that place where the quizzical look, over time, can cause deep vertical wrinkles, also called the frown line. Glabella derives from the Latin glaber, meaning bald or smooth. 

So, the next time you come across a dermatologist advertising laser hair removal from the glabella, you know exactly what spot is being referred to. And, those who are thinking it’s the spot where the dot (bindi) is put on are spot-on. 

But if the doctor’s list also includes laser hair removal from the philtrum, would you be in a spot? Your frown line would deepen further? Yes? Well, it’s related to the facial area that we women usually couple with eyebrow threading, generally called upper lip threading (By the way, men too can be increasingly seen these days with well-groomed glabellae and philtrums). So, philtrum is the groove in the median above your lip and below your nostril. A well-chiselled philtrum is supposed to have seductive powers. This quality derives from the primary meaning of the word in Greek, which is ‘love potion’ or ‘love charm’. 

Incidentally, cleft lip is a split in the upper lip that some people are born with. And, while those with the philtrum are also born with it, there are interesting social and cultural beliefs attached to how we got it. 

As per Jewish mythology, every embryo in the uterus is taught all the wisdom, called Torah, of the world by an angel. And, when the embryo grows into a baby and is just about to be born, the angel taps the infant’s upper lip lightly to silence it from revealing all the secrets in the world outside. The tap causes the dent called philtrum. Thus, the newborn baby partially forgets the Torah (Hebrew for teach).

This myth has been made popular by some movies too. There is ‘Mr Nobody’, a cult science fiction film of 2009 that follows the life of an infant, whose lip hadn't been tapped. The film was critically acclaimed for its portrayal of Nemo Nobody, a 118-year-old man with a fading memory. Nemo (a Latin word meaning nobody) is the last mortal on Earth, who recalls three critical junctions at ages nine, 15, and 34. The film depicts that unborn infants have knowledge of all past and future events. As an infant is about to be sent to its mother, the "Angels of Oblivion" lightly pat its upper lip, leading the child to forget everything it knows. 

In the 1948 gangster film, Key Largo, a child is told a tale: that before birth, the soul knows all the secrets of heaven, but at birth, an angel presses a fingertip just above the baby’s lip, sealing him to silence.

Now, if we move from the face to the bottom, I mean the buttocks, we will get another unusual word: natiform. Natiform is something resembling a butt. It is formed from the Latin natis (rump, buttocks) and the English form.  Its plural, nates, is also a word in English for buttocks and haunches. So, besides the derriere itself, what resembles a man’s posterior? Think of misshaped pumpkins, peaches and oranges, or tow boxing gloves together.

But, it does have a strong chance of becoming a butt of jokes. It reminds me of my little niece’s giggles whenever she comes across an unclad mannequin, and is highly amused specially by its bums. Or, that time when the cleavage of her friend’s nates was peeping through his low-slung trousers. 

And, what would definitely amuse you is the story of Ammon Shea. Shea is a former furniture mover from New York and logophile (lover of words). He has dedicated a year of his life, nose buried in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).  At the end of the voluminous 20 volumes of the tome, he had absorbed 59 million words, having devoted up to 10 hours a day to the arduous task of reading what, he says, is the “Mt Everest of dictionaries.”

And, guess what! Natiform forms one of his favourite discoveries! In his book, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages, Shea’s views on the word are: “Natiform: An obsolete medical term, and one I was surprised to find had never been recorded as having been used as an insult.”

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