Conker season
Passing by a horse chestnut tree this morning I observe it is once more conker season. You know conkers, of course. The shiny, brown, appealing-looking horse chestnut seed. Children play a game with them, bashing them into one another until they break apart – the conker that stays intact the longest wins.
What does this have to do with proofreading and copy-editing, you ask? Well, nothing much. Except perhaps that many editorial people have something of a misty-eyed nostalgia about them. We long for the games and pastimes of our youth, endless summer evenings stretching into early autumn drizzle. Conkers the friendly consolation. A general trend, not a rule, of course. Many proofreaders and editors have no such pretensions. Conker season passes and they hurry on by, poor souls.
Conkering heroes
There may be some etymological digging worth doing.
Opinion is divided as to the derivation of the word conker. It may come from conquer: the winner of a game of Conkers has conquered their opponent. Visit Bayeux in Normandy, by the way, to see Harold conk out at Hastings.
The other theory is that conker is a purely onomatopoeic word: the conk of one conker hitting another. I tend to concur, though we may never know for sure.
One thing we do know is that the word conker predates the game of Conkers as played with horse chestnut seeds. Until the second half of the nineteenth century, Conkers was played with snail shells. Perhaps equally effective, though I think somewhat less romantic.
Joke lands with feeble conk
A small question to end: if, passing by a horse chestnut tree in early autumn, one is struck by a sudden wistful longing and picks up a seed from the ground, does one stoop to conker? Or is that too much of a stretch?