Wed 26 Oct 2005
Left-handed people have been lingually discriminated for some time. Let’s take a short journey and see what we can uncover.
First, the word right means not only “the opposite side of left”, but also “correct.” To be saved, for example, we must find ourselves on the right hand of God (note the usage of both meanings.)
Then we have the word “ambidextrous” which is from Latin ambi- on both sides and Latin dexter, right-handed. Thus, to be ambidextrous means to have two right hands.
Focusing on Latin dexter, we derive “dexterous”, which means skillful or adroit. Left-handed people aren’t so handy.
First, in French, left is “gauche”, which means “the opposite side of right” as well as lacking social polish or tactless or awkward. What about Latin? Well, left in Latin is sinister (with all the English word’s connotations) and means “on the left” as well as unlucky. Hence, in English, to describe as gauche means to attribute backwardness to something.
Famous left-handers include:
Benjamin Franklin
Lewis Carroll
Michelangelo
M.C. Escher
Albert Einstein
Bill Gates
December 7th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
I stumbled upon your blog when I was doing some research on the word, ambidextrous. You seem to have a good grasp of the English language so I’ll ask you this question: Would it make sense to play with the word like this? “I have an ambidextrous technical and creative personality.”
December 8th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Hi Tofan,
All the dictionaries I checked explicitly reference HANDS in ambidextrous’ definition– “having equal ability in both hands.”
That said, there is a slang usage of ambidextrous to mean bisexual. It’s derived from baseball where ambidextrous players are called “switch hitters”; they can hit from either side of the plate. A “switch hitter” is another term for a bisexual, according to urban dictionary.com and thus so is ambidextrous.
What’s interesting here is that the slang usage abstracts the ambidextrous’ meaning away from HANDS to mean equal facility in two different arenas.
So, your usage at least has precedence and to me seems clever.
-r