The Hindu Business Line : Foul moles and pleasing blots

These are days when people are close to calling each other names, all because of an unnamed mole. If the question top on your mind is not `who', but `what', is a mole it's time we came to terms with the word.

Mole is "a small burrowing mammal with dark velvety fur, a long muzzle, and very small eyes, feeding mainly on worms and grubs," says Concise Oxford English Dictionary. The common variety may look like a benign rat, with its own distinct calls, even as it finds its way by the edge of the wall. "Mole rat is any of various burrowing Old World rodents," explains Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.

"Moles are considered to be a very dirty, smelly and filthy animal in India," alerts http://en.wikipedia.org. On the uncleanness scale, moles have company. "These also shall be unclean unto you among the creeping things that creep upon the earth; the weasel, and the mouse, and the tortoise after his kind, and the ferret, and the chameleon, and the lizard, and the snail, and the mole," reads a snatch from Leviticus in the Old Testament.

There are a dozen genera of moles, says Encarta. That number may not include the genus found only in books! "The star-nosed mole has on its snout a star-shaped projection composed of 22 rays that are used to sense its environment," educates http://encarta.msn.com. "There is some evidence that the rays can detect the low-level electrical fields of earthworms in the mole's wet habitat. The animal is an excellent swimmer."

In The Tempest, you'd hear Caliban's exhortation, "Tread softly, that the blind mole may not hear a foot fall."

Surprisingly, "the blind mole rat is the first animal discovered to navigate by combining dead reckoning with a magnetic compass," one learns from www.sciencenews.org.

Molehill is "a mound of earth made by moles while burrowing," defines www.onelook.com. To make a mountain out of a molehill is "to make a slight difficulty seem like a serious problem," as Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms explains. "As if Olympus to a molehill should in supplication nod," is a line of the Bard in Coriolanus. "Here on this molehill will I sit me down," says a weary King Henry VI.

An August 1 story on www.mirror.co.uk is about `the Mole Man' — William Lyttle; aged 75, he'd spent `40 years burrowing under his 20-room house, removing 100 cubic metres of earth with a spade and pulleys' and laying `a 60ft network of tunnels'. Tommy Douglas rues, "Man can now fly in the air like a bird, swim under the ocean like a fish, he can burrow into the ground like a mole. Now if only he could walk the earth like a man, this would be paradise."

The mole man

The mole man that Jaswant speaks about is "a person who works for an organisation or government and secretly gives information to its competitor or enemy," as Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary defines. Wikipedia mentions that the most famous examples of moles are the Cambridge Five, "five men recruited as students at Cambridge University who later rose to high levels in various parts of the British government."

On www.kenilworthtoday.co.uk, there is this story about `a giant mole' that has started tunnelling for the construction of `a huge underground sewer tunnel' at a cost of £14 million. Not a human, but a machine, this is. A mole machine works like the animal mole and burrows without having to dig a trench across. "A cost saving way of renewing your old lead underground water pipe by putting in a new pipe," invites www.moleuk.com.

"A mole in chemistry is a quantity of particles of any type equal to Avogadro's number (6.02252 × 10 raised to the power 23)," explains a glossary on www.hydrocut.com. "One gram-atomic weight (or one gram-molecular weight) — the amount of an atomic (or molecular) substance whose weight in grams is numerically equal to the Atomic Weight (or Molecular Weight) of that substance — contains exactly one mole of atoms (or molecules)." Find more about Avogardro on http://gemini.tntech.edu. October 23, 6-02 a.m. to 6-02 p.m. is celebrated as Mole Day to commemorate Avogadro's Number, "as a way to foster interest in chemistry," enlightens http://home.mn.rr.com.

The first meaning of mole, on www.bartleby.com is "a small congenital growth on the human skin, usually slightly raised and dark and sometimes hairy, especially a pigmented nevus."

Mole is "a benign growth on the skin that is formed by a cluster of melanocytes (cells that make the pigment melanin)," reassures Dictionary of Cancer Terms on www.cancer.gov. Shakespeare's Cymbeline speaks of Guiderius who had upon his neck `a mole, a sanguine star... a mark of wonder.' In Twelfth Night, Viola says, "My father had a mole upon his brow." Hear Oberon, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, bunching up mole with harelip and scar, as marks `despised in nativity'.

Unpleasing blots

So too, in King John, Constance talks of `foul moles and eye-offending marks' plus `unpleasing blots and sightless stains.'

Mole dates back to 1398 in the sense of skin mark and animal. The word is traced to German Mal, Gothic mail `wrinkle' on www.etymonline.com. Greek miainein `to stain, defile,' see miasma, says the entry.

Mole the mammal is from Old English molde `earth, soil'. Mold, meaning `loose earth', is from Gothic mulda `dust', and the Online Etymology Dictionary suggests a reference to `meal'. The spy sense is not too old; "first recorded 1974 in John le Carré, from notion of `burrowing'." Mole can be used metaphorically too, to refer to `one who works in darkness'.

In Stedman's Medical Dictionary mole means "an intrauterine mass formed by the degeneration of the partly developed products of conception (Latin moles, mass)." A mass of fleshy matter of a spherical figure, generated in the uterus, says Webster's 1828 Dictionary. Mole also means "a mound or massive work formed of large stones laid in the sea by means of coffer dams, extended either in a right line or an arch of a circle before a port, which it serves to defend from the violent impulse of the waves." Molest sounds close to the word in question, as if it were the superlative of mole; perhaps, it is, `on notion of either burden or barrier.' Related to moles `mass', postulates www.etymonline.com.

While authors may try to create appetite for their books with saucy mole-talk, it may be appetising to know that mole or mole sauce is "a dark brown Mexican sauce or gravy made from dry chillies, nuts, spices, vegetables, chocolate and seasonings," as www.mexgrocer.com says. `Mole poblano de guajolote' is a legendary recipe created in Puebla in the 17th Century by Sister Andrea de la Asunción, a Dominic nun from Santa Rosa's convent, notes www.mexconnect.com. "The original concoction used nearly one hundred ingredients."

One ingredient, however, that publishing industry can do better without is author's assertions without evidence.

ComingToTerms@TheHindu.co.in

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