Gird, Girdle, Girder

This week “Building Blocks” wonders if “foundational garments” like girdles, that lift and support our “girth” are like girders that lift and support our buildings.

I’ve always been a little embarrassed, in church, to hear the Biblical phrase, “gird up your loins.” 

As a little girl in the pew I wasn’t sure what loins were but it sounded naughty.  What were David or Job or Sampson really doing when they girded their loins?  It felt like too much information about men’s private parts.  I didn’t want to be thinking about Bible heroes, or my father, walking around with that stuff bouncing around, let alone taking it into battle.

It was the King James Version translators who made up the phrase “gird your loins.”  It does have a sort of 17^th century ring to it, codpieces and forsooth. 

Some modern translations read “And so David prepared for battle.”  That’s how the phrase is used these days, to prepare or brace yourself for an ordeal.  This week’s New Yorker magazine has a (typically) slightly mocking piece about summertime in the ritzy parts of Long Island that begins, “As Memorial Day approached, Hamptons residents girded themselves for seasonal headaches: traffic jams, guys in tank tops, the Kardashians.”  Fearsome foes that would challenge even great warriors like Sampson and require much girding.

Turns out “gird” is a very old word, and it just means belt.  To gird yourself is just to twist and tie up your long Hebrew or Roman tunic, sort of make it into shorts, so you can charge really fast at the Philistines or slay lions without tripping.  And, I am guessing – guys? – to reduce the bouncing?

Check out this handy demonstration by clicking here.

It’s the same word as girdle.  Which originally, like a piece of cloth to tie up your tunic,  was just a belt.  But over time, as women’s fashions changed along with different expectations of what a good body looked like, women started wearing corset and girdles that shaped and squeezed and molded the “loin” part of women’s bodies. 

So just as men girded their bouncy parts, women girdled their flabby parts.  Mercifully, at least in my circles, there is now more acceptance of our bodies as the Good Lord made them.   I haven’t had a girdle in my underwear drawer for decades.

Now I do know that people wear girdles for health as well as fashion. Those delivery guys and gals and construction workers, with the big elastic thing around their midriff, that’s a girdle, good for back and muscles and loins.

So buildings are sort of like bodies, with foundations and trunks.  What holds them up?  Girders.  Same word as gird and girdle. Not so much a belt around, or a binding girdle, but a beam underneath.  A steel girder spanning a building’s foundation can support tons, floors, skyscrapers. 

So as a construction worker’s occupational girdle holds up their gut and protects their back, so a building’s girders keep it strong and true and safe.  I guess you could take a “gird” view of building; girders built by girdled workers.  Who have probably also girded their loins.

It’s all about girth.  Weight, mass, gravity.  If things (buildings and people) didn’t have mass, and tend to push downward, and sag, we wouldn’t need girdles and girders. 

But they do and we do.  I may not have girdles in my bureau drawer, but I have girders under my house. 

So a nod of appreciation to all the things that hold us up, our buildings and our bodies.

Copyright 2015 Deborah Streeter