Sweaty Pits

a word study

My armpits are damp.

What a terrible name for the space between my arm and chest that exists just under my shoulder, “armpit.” It’s not my under shoulder, sub-shoulder or anti-shoulder. ‘Armpit’ does not properly indicate its location as being in the upper arm/ shoulder vicinity. It’s not called my upper hairy crevice (that might be worse, actually) or my body external temperature control unit (BETCU for short, obviously), or some other inventive name that isn’t related to another body part like ‘anemos’ which is a Greek word for wind and is also the root from which sea anemone find their name. The space most often referred to as ‘armpit’ is a perfect candidate for a renaming as ‘anemos.’

I know that sciencey/biology/doctory sorts refer to the armpit as the ‘axilla,’ and all the fleshy junk in there is the ‘axillary fill-in-the-blank’ (examples: axillary vein, axillary lymph nodes, axillary burger, axillary phone, axillary artery, etc.). ‘Axilla’ is better than ‘armpit,’ but whoever came up with that was probably some bird obsessed old European dude with an Icarus obsession, or worse, they thought naming our armpit after the Latin word for ‘wing’ was an act of humor. Flap away humans, maybe one day you’ll fly. Cruel.

Your armpit is crucial to your body’s HVAC system. It regulates your upper bits’ body temps. It cools your body by pumping out salty liquids (a sea anemone’s natural habitat) and letting the wind evaporate the liquid off your skin. Also, a hairy armpit looks like a sea anemone. These things should be etymologically related. Anemos.

Anyway, my armpits (aka: my anemie) are damp. They often produce their patented moisture when I write. The act of thinking of words and producing them in readable form raises my body temperature enough that my natural cooling system feels the need to cut on and send trickles of cooling currents down my midaxillary line.

All that is to say, I am sweating.

Also, my AC is broken.

In wordy wordiness,

Walter