What do griffons have to do with messy writing? Let’s find out.
Griffonage [ˈɡrɪfəˌnɑːʒ] is a rarely-used word that means careless handwriting or a crude or illegible scrawl. It comes from the French word griffonner (to scribble, scrawl), from griffer (to scratch), from Old French grifer, from griffe (claw, talon), from Old High German grīfan (to grab, grasp, gripe), from Proto-Germanic *grīpaną (to grab, grasp), from PIE *gʰreyb- (to grab, grasp) [source].
Words from the same roots include grip, gripe, grab, grasp, grave, groove, grope, grovel, grub and engrave in English, gryp (to grab) in Afrikaans, gräifen (to reach for, grab, catch) in Luxembourgish, grinfia (claw) in Italian, grípa (to catch, grab, clasp) in Icelandic, and grippe (influenza, flu) in French [source].
Other ways to describe messy handwriting in English include scribble, scrawl, chicken scratch and cacography, which also means bad spelling or puntuation, or deliberate comic misspelling [source]. Are there others?
Ways to describe messy handwriting in other languages include:
- ագռավի ճանկեր (ագռավի ճանկեր) = crow’s claws in Armenian
- 涂鸭 [塗鴨] (túyā) = daub(ings) of a duck in Chinese
- kragetæer = crow’s feet in Danish
- hanenpoten = cockerel feet in Dutch
- harakanvarpaat = magpie toes in Finnish
- pattes de mouche = fly’s legs in French
- ορνιθοσκαλίσματα (ornithoskalísmata) = chicken carvings in Greek
- ysgrifennu fel traed brain = writing like crow’s feet in Welsh [source]
It seems that messy handwriting is associated with crows and other birds in quite a few languages.
This post was inspired by this video on TikTok.