I love words, and quirky is a great word because everyone understands what you mean when you say it, but it is a vague and very individual concept. For instance, if a man wore a skirt walking down Wall Street in New York he might be called quirky, but if a man wore a kilt in Edinburgh, Scotland, it would not be quirky or unusual behaviour.
Yet quirky means more than unusual, or even eccentric. Quirky has an extra, fun twist to it.
“No one says the word 'quirky' much in England. I guess because people are more naturally eccentric". Alexa Chung.
It is true that the English can be eccentric, but eccentricity is quirky on steroids. For instance, Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilsdon, Baron Berners (1883-1950), was a famous eccentric. He was also a talented musician, artist and writer. Berners was probably the inspiration for Lord Merlin in Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love. He was very social, and held lots of parties on his estate, where visitors would find dogs with diamond collars and pink & blue pigeons1. Berners would drive around wearing a pig's head mask to scare the locals, and he kept a pet giraffe. He invited a horse to tea, inside his grand house at Faringdon, and ended up painting him2.
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Quirkiness is quieter than eccentricity. It is the small, very individual things that people do - the often endearing traits that each of us have, that are sometimes too insignificant to be remembered.
The Oxford English Dictionary definition says, “the quality of being quirky, esp. in terms of character, behaviour, etc.; peculiarity; eccentricity; unexpectedness”.3
I have been thinking of my parents, and other people whom I knew well, who have died. We remember them, and talk of their lives, about what they did, and the kind of people they were. But we rarely talk about their small traits, their quirkiness.
After supper my father would remain sitting at the table because he “never watched TV”. We would go to sit around the TV in the adjoining room. However, by looking through the large archway, my father could see and hear the TV perfectly well.
While we watched the TV my father would sit and draw on his newspaper. Of the hundreds of drawings he made, most were thrown out with the rest of the newspaper. I have only one, that I loved when I saw it, and I asked him to sign it4.
What quirky traits of your family or friends do you remember?
Apparently, the tradition of colourful pigeons continued after the death of Lord Berners. The present owners of Faringdon House use a natural dye on the pigeons, and they seem to like it, probably because it removes all their parasites.
If you want to know more about Lord Berners, read The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me, by Sofka Zinovieff. It is out of print, but you will find it on Kindle or on second-hand book sites.
The word quirky was first noted in 1870. “It [sc. a bill brought before Parliament] bore upon its very face a plain appearance of quirkiness and dishonesty; for to begin with, it was deliberately misnamed for the purpose of deluding the unwary.” Saturday Falkirk Herald 12 March 1870. Nothing has changed in over 150 years!
Quirky was rarely used in conversation at that time, but since the 1930s quirky has steadily become more widely used.
Newspaper does not keep, as the quality of the paper is so poor that it quickly degrades. I scanned my father’s drawing.
I also like quirky; it reminds me of the Pippi Longstocking books for some reason. :)
Very interesting that the one surviving drawing of your father's was done on a newspaper with the text "Inside: Network+ Man Who Wants to Stop Bill Gates" !