Stickybeak
NOUN: an intrusive, meddlesome, busybody, nosy parker who sticks their nose (beak) into other people’s business. The act of stickybeaking.
VERB: to snoop or pry into other’s people’s business.
This was a delightful new word for me this week although it’s clearly common currency in Australia and New Zealand. I came across it first in one of a series of blog posts chronicling the saga of a protracted renovation of a corner shop on the blog I follow: Me Fail? I Fly!
She sees some people fishing with magnets from a bridge and has to go stickybeaking to find out what they are doing.
Too bad that stickybeaking generally has negative connotations. Why should it not also apply to those who love discovery, have curious minds and inquisitive natures. So choosing that more positive linguistic leaning, here is some recent stickybeakery.
Let’s start with this ornate mirror found leaning against the garbage in Riverside Park at 95th street. I literally stuck my beak into that.
Another recent and quite delightful recent find is the poetry of Gwen Grant. I’ve been sticking my beak in her extensive collection for a couple of weeks now and I’m always glad I have. With so much to discover in a poem archive that goes back five years, I have used the month as a selection device. So many favorites already but here’s how one begins:
October now,
Bringing the first sighting of Winter
Leaning on the fence
Like any old farmer
Looking over his fields.
October here was unseasonably warm so the poem fits now that we’ve had the first frost and you can actually imagine that winter is on its way. Gwen has a new poem up today – New Life – about fat red berries on frost-bitten branches in a winter lane and it’s quite lovely.
Other recent delights have been strolls to the Central Park Conservatory Garden. The chrysanthemums are still glorious, the fountains make rainbows, and there are lilies in bloom.
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"Stickybeaking"
It's a funny word but also a new word for me.
although it's a good experience.
Someone has to update the Tribe. The stickybeak performs a vital function, though I am not one myself. When social truths must be shared, the stickybeak hops up and down, ready to do her duty.
-- Catxman
http://www.catxman.wordpress.com
So glad you like my poems, Josie, and it's kind of you to mention them.
An absorbing Post, as always.
Bits of my computer are coming back but they keep going again, as well.
Gwen.
I like your work very much!
And hope you get that technology sorted. So frustrating when you run into one of those endless loops of tech troubles.
"Bits of my computer
are coming back
but they keep
going again, as well..."
- Do I hear a poem coming on?
I know someone with such an inquiring mind he will happily stand over someone to observe exactly how they do a job so he can do it himself. Amazingly, many people seem to tolerate this quite well (better than I could!). I guess he and I are not in the same place on the stickybeak spectrum!
The stickbeaky spectrum. I like it!
Maybe it's actually a quadrant with one pole - West to East being Positive and Negative (I.e. Intellectually Curious versus Oppressively Intrusive). And North/ South being the degree of stickybeakery from extremely Active to Asleep-at-the-wheel.) This would make the Top Left quadrant the place to be, And people on the Top Right to be avoided like the proverbial.
A nice distinction, Josie! There is a fine shading between curious and intrusive, I think - except that so much depends on the attitudes and expectations of the people involved. If I were to do what he does it would seem to me intrusive - at least to me!
You are right about the loveliness of Gwen Grant's poems . I so admire people who can produce just the right words. It's a lovely painting there too.
I did know the word "stickybeak" though I've no idea where I came across it and I've never heard it used.
I too have sometimes been accused of it. What's wrong with being curious? It's amazing the interesting things you can sometimes discover.
I find her poems just delightful. I read them in short bursts and still have many more to discover and savour. And as for stickybeaks - well, I'm sure we've all known and suffered from the worse of the species. But being curious? Of course that's great.
That's a new one to me, too, and I love it!
Thanks for sticking in your beak!
This is an awesome word!
Yes It surely is.
Thank-you for sticking your beak into the comments!
Stickybeaking should definitely come into use in its benign version. After all every writer must have some degree of stickybeaking in their make-up.
This is so true!
Every novelist, literary scholar, reader, researcher, writer, interactive blogger is surely somewhere on the stickybeak spectrum. Gentlespoons and ladles - find your place!
I would never be a stickybeak
Unless some dirt on you I seek
But if you say that wouldn't be cricket
I may just stick with sticky wicket.
But surely mistermuse you can agree
Being curious is a way to be.
It does not mean you spy and snoop and pry
Merely that you always ask: What? and Why?
I hope you rescued that mirror!
I did not. Although it was most rescuable so I am sure someone did. As you know, it is a well-trafficked spot. In fact - a shuffling fellow came up behind me and admired it. We agreed it was a fine item. Perhaps he took it off to Broadway to sell. It has no doubt found a new home.