Syrup Alone: Sticks Together

Syrup Alone: Sticks Together

Feeling better, I use the phone to call my little brother and thank him. I have it memorized, but Kyle explains his maple tea into the phone to ensure my recipe’s correct: a sweet concoction of pure maple syrup, cumin, and lemon juice stirred into boiled water. This natural medicine surfaced while studying his healing arts and now, whenever a family member gets sick, we all remind each other of Kyle’s maple syrup tea. First sneeze? Energy depleted? Kyle prescribes his remedy. Over the years, I’ve added honey and cinnamon to my mix. Kyle cautiously approves that the key is the maple syrup. Adding lemon juice and cumin as antibacterial and digestive support is essential to the recipe but it’s all about the maple syrup. He then digresses on maple syrup’s basics: the ease for stomach digestion, countless nutrients, and then concludes in an elevated tone “...but it has to be pure maple syrup, not high fructose corn syrup!”

Kyle believes one should balance health & wellness, as a whole, maintaining it by addressing small irregularities in our lives by taking preventative measures. Learning the art of healing under the influence of Eastern philosophies, Kyle shows compassion to everything and his maple syrup based remedy tea is the catalyst for these thoughts on syrup.

I have been off-balance all winter as I sip from a cup of maple syrup tea. Almost instantly, I feel my cheeks warm and my feet fill with blood.   

“When you feel the energy, don’t use it! You’re going to want to but don’t,” Kyle says to me.

“I’m not planning on leaving the comfort of my blanket bro but it’s thanks to your maple syrup tea that I have a voice again,” I say back into the phone and as healthy as I can pretend to sound. I then mention how much more maple syrup I’ve consumed in battling this winter’s cold and flu season than in years’ past.

We finish our chat. In this conversation with Kyle, I had not heard the word syrup spoken so many times in such a short period. Equally, I had not thought about maple syrup on a level beyond a topping for Eggo waffles. Yet, thanks to my bro, syrup was covering my conscious and slowly working its way around my head. It is also in this moment I first realized syrup’s sonics and started thinking of other English words that start, sound like, or look like this word: S-Y-R-U-P.

All the while, any synonyms for syrup continued to elude my memory. Finding me stumped in a sticky tar pit, I consult the Oxford English Dictionary online (OED) and find syrup in noun and verb form. First, I read the noun’s definitions:  

Noun:

1.      A thick sweet liquid; esp. one consisting of a concentrated solution of sugar in water (or other medium, e.g. the juices of fruits).

a.       Such a liquid medicated, or used as a vehicle for medicines.

b.      As used in cookery, confectionery, etc. as a sweetner, preservative, or article of food; also gen. (often in reference to its thick or viscid consistence).

2.      With qualifying words, indicating the source, or the flavoring or medicinal ingredient, as syrup of almonds, syrup of diacodium, syrup of poppies, syrup of rhubarb, syrup of roses, syrup of squills, syrup of vinegar, syrup of of violets, etc; syrup of soot n. Obs. Humorously for coffee.

3.      fig.

With the OED testifying to a lack of synonyms, there’s nothing like syrup. The OED also implies there is a figurative use for syrup in its third definition without elaborating. A vague, figurative implication does not suffice this imagination and given all my lessons from grade school about word definitions, I remain unsure of how to feel seeing syrup used to define itself within its own definitions. With that, a decision is made to change gears.

I search: S-Y-R-U. Enter.

The OED mentions three similar words: syrtic, adj., “…Of, pertaining to, or the nature of quicksand” noting also, Syrtis, n., “…Proper name of two large quicksands (Syrtis major and minor) off the northern coast of Africa” and finally, Syrtos, n., “…In classic and modern Greece: a folk dance in which the dancers link hands to form a circle…” (OED). The Greek dancing Syrtos, when defined plus a little imagination, I see a possible relationship to quicksand and syrup in the way hands link together, forming a natural circle. Rain falls and when it forms puddles, it takes the shape of a circle. Quicksand takes a round shape naturally because of the damp sand pit. Syrup, dripped or spilled is circular. Even in the way one orbits a pancake or waffle.

In order to syrup one’s breakfast and form a sweet-linked circle, one would use the verb form for syrup. The OED states:

            Verb:

1.      Trans. To cover with or immerse in syrup. Also, in bottling fruit, etc., to fill the bottle with syrup.

2.      To treat with medicinal syrup.

3.      To make into or bring to the consistence of syrup.

Derivatives: syruped adj. and n.; syruping adj. syrup, n.

Why, hello, you must be, Syruped, a derivative of the verb. I dare say we haven’t met, yet. I follow a link for a quotation offered under: syruped.

The example comes from 1859, written in a children’s poem by Christina Rossetti. In her piece titled, “Goblin Market,” the Goblins have just pinned down the main character, Lizzie. She and her sister want to buy the Goblin’s tempting fruit but the goblins don’t accept Lizzie’s shiny penny. They want her to stay. Futile, Lizzie resists and Goblins attack, forcing themselves on her and squeezing their fruits to haze. Rossetti writes, “But laugh’d in heart to feel the drip / Of juice that syrupp’d all her face,/ And lodged in dimples of her chin,” (Goblin Market, 1859). Surprisingly, syrup the verb is used to describe squirting fruit juices that aren’t concentrate, but natural, hardly constituting thick sweet liquid, molasses or viscid consistence. If Rossetti’s sour scene suggests when one is syrupped, that there is neither the OED’s connection to the application of medicine nor any to the consistency of liquid, unless implied figuratively, then Rossetti must be making figurative implications. Another click and I read about a living controversy of whether or not this is a suitable children’s poem, as the author contends. Perhaps a sticky debate best discussed over tea.  

Alas, figurative use of syrup has my interest, albeit not for Rossetti’s denied sexual innuendos but rather, the OED’s further figurative examples. W. Baldwin & T. Palfreyman in 1555 wrote, “Vertue..is..a Syrope that healeth forthwith,” while G. Pettie records in 1581, “Riches...can hardly last, without they be conserued with the sweete sirrope of wisedome.”

Further inspired, I seek syrup’s etymology. Seemingly stemming from Old French with sirop, cyrop, serop (from 13^th Cent.), syrup’s origins notably predate Europe. “ [A]ll ultimately from Arabic sharāb wine or other beverage, syrup, shurb drink…” (OED).

For eons, Europe and the West have been importing the Middle East’s modern inventions. These include: coffee, chess, parachutes, shampoo, metal armor, surgery, soup, windmills, algebra, and yes, language, too. This digression and these Arabic origins, coffee in particular, now draw me back to an odd, overlooked entry earlier: syrup of soot. Humorously for coffee.

In 1663, this phrase was an attack on coffee in a satirical broadside. Titled, A Cup of Coffee: or, Coffee in its Colours, an excerpt reads:

They drank pure nectar as the gods drink too,

Sublim’d with rich Canary…

shall then

These less than coffee’s self, these coffee-men,

These sons of nothing, that can hardly make

Their Broth, for laughing how the jest doth take;

Yet grin, and give ye for the Vine’s pure Blood

A loathsome potion, not yet understood,

Syrrop of Soot, or Essence of old Shooes,

Dasht with Diurnals and the Books of news?

There is a bitter tension in this satire beyond the distaste for black coffee. Considering the context, this broadside seems to be less about coffee’s arrival in Europe and more about coffee originating in a crusade hardened Middle-East.

I’m enlightened; seems that syrup may be alone in the world of words, without synonym, yet is flexible in context, spelling, and usage. However, a true investigation into a word is incomplete without consulting urbandictionary.com to which it reads, “Syrup…in urban slang refers to a drink containing codeine, without codeine, it is not syrup” (smcastillo). Another entry states, “Look to all yall idiots out there, here is syrup. The purple cough medicine u get by prescription from ur doctor it has codeine in it. Just mix a deuce, which is 2 oz. in a 12 oz. sprite, shake it and lean. Add a jolly rancher if u want. No alcohol that shit will kill u. Lean, Drank” (Indiana Leaner).

Now, to syrup my brother’s ear. I’m not adding codeine but your college adopted a middle-eastern philosophy regarding syrup tea. It’s Arabic you know…not Far East. Yes bro, that’s true, tea still originates in China.