Asping Cleopatra

Since vocabulary is destiny, let me change the fate of everyone who reads this by introducing a word that I rediscovered recently. I love rediscovering vocabulary words, particularly words that exist only in a scene which includes a clown carrying a bunch of snakes disguised as figs.

At the conclusion of Shakespeare's version of Antony and Cleopatra, when a clown (rather than a fool) shows up with his basket of "figs" Cleo asks' Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there that kills and pains not?"

The clown produces the worms from his fig basket and before Cleo attaches one asp to her chest and another to her arm; she addresses the reptile and urges "come thou mortal wretch/with thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate/of life at once untie.

Thank God, she said it to the asp and not the clown!

Thus, we arrive at the death of Cleopatra and the birth of the word intrinsicate which after slapping its ass, I now hand to you to do with what you will.

In all my reading, this is the only time I've ever seen the word intrinsicate. In all my listening, I've never heard anyone say the word intrinsicate. I looked the word up in my handy dandy dictionary and it's not there. Intrinsic is there (basically essential if you want the shorthand) but no verb form is given.

Leave it to Shakespeare, at one of the most historic, dramatic of moments to have Cleopatra use a word that probably no one in the audience had ever heard yet whose meaning becomes immediately clear.

Good thing the clown got the job not the fool who might have said "WTF" and ruined the tempo of history and romance.

Cleopatra's in a big mess and only death will intrinsicate her from the knot that she has created. She's got to get down to the essential nitty gritty, death, in order to keep from being humiliated as Caesar's prisoner/slave and make a less grand re-entrance into room...naked and in a cage.

She decided to skip the cage and depart the mortal stage.

Intrinsicate is a great word.

Let's bring it back.

For example, earlier today Lynn was empathizing with a friend who was wallowing in a bizarre interpersonal boondoggle of her own willful making. When the conversation ended, I put my arm around Lynn and whispered, "Don't use all your strength trying to intrinsicate the knot of another."

I know she never heard the word before but she understood what the word mean't in context because she shrugged her shoulders and said "yeah, right."

Try intrinsicate today.

It worked for Will.

It worked for me. It inspired me to write this essay which may change all of our lives once again.