Today’s word of the day, thanks to the Word Guru daily email, is ken. Ken, pronounced / kɛn / (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ken), can be used either as a noun or a verb. As a noun, it means “knowledge, understanding, or cognizance; mental perception” or “range of sight or vision” (ibid.). As a verb, it is chiefly used in Scotland and Northern England, where it means “to know, have knowledge of or about, or be acquainted with,” or “to understand or perceive,” or, in Scottish law, “to acknowledge as heir; recognize by a judicial act,” or, in British dialect, archaic, “to declare, acknowledge, or confess” or “to teach, direct, or guide” (ibid.).

Etymonline.com says that it is “a word surviving mainly in Scottish and northern England dialect, from Middle English kennen, ‘make known; give instruction to; be aware, know, have knowledge of, know how to; recognize by sight; see, catch sight of,’ a very common verb, from Old English cennan ‘make known, declare, acknowledge’ (in late Old English also ‘to know’), originally ‘cause to know, make to know,’ causative of cunnan ‘to become acquainted with, to know’ (see can (v.)). Cognate with German kennen, Danish kjende, Swedish känna. Related: Kenned; kenning” (https://www.etymonline.com/word/ken).

When it says that cennan was the causative of cunnan, you might wonder what a causative verb is. “Causative verbs or causatives are verbs used to indicate that an individual causes another person to do something for another one. In other words, someone or something is indirectly responsible for a specific action in the form of verb used” (https://grammarist.com/grammar/causative-verbs/). “All languages have ways to express causation but differ in the means. Most, if not all, languages have specific or lexical causative forms (such as English rise → raise, lie → lay, sit → set). Some languages also have morphological devices (such as inflection) that change verbs into their causative forms or change adjectives into verbs of becoming. Other languages employ periphrasis, with control verbs, idiomatic expressions or auxiliary verbs. There tends to be a link between how ‘compact’ a causative device is and its semantic meaning” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causative). “There are several causative verbs in English, each with its own usage and meaning. The most common causative verbs include make, have, get, let, and help” (https://englishgrammarzone.com/causative-verbs-in-english-explained/). So, in other words, we have some causative verbs that go way back to Old English, but the modern English way to make a causative verb is with an auxiliary. But in Old English, cennan was the causative form of cunnan.

You might have recognized the word kenning in the Etymonline.com quote if, that is, you remember reading Beowulf in high school or college. Perhaps you remember that a kenning in Old English poetry was a little simile that was almost like a riddle. For instance, in Beowulf a “swan-road” is the ocean. The body is a “bone house.” And this word kenning is related to the verb ken. In English, kenning does not appear until “1871, a modern learned word from Old Norse kenning in a special sense ‘poetical periphrasis or descriptive name’ (it also meant ‘teaching, doctrine; preaching; mark of recognition’), from kenna ‘to know, to recognize, to feel or perceive; to call, to name (in a formal poetic metaphor),’ from PIE root *gno- ‘to know.’

“’In the whole poem of Beowulf there are scarcely half a dozen of them [similes], and these of the simplest character, such as comparing a ship to a bird. Indeed, such a simple comparison as this is almost equivalent to the more usual “kenning” (as it is called in Icelandic), such as “brimfugol,” where, instead of comparing the ship to a bird, the poet simply calls it a sea-bird, preferring the direct assertion to the indirect comparison. [Henry Sweet, “Sketches of the History of Anglo-Saxon Poetry,” London, 1871]’” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=kenning).

In today’s news there was quite the interesting story from Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. Here’s the story from the AP:

“WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A young female bear caused a stir after wandering out of the forest and into the leafy suburbs of the Lithuanian capital.

“For two days, the brown bear ambled through the neighborhoods of Vilnius, trotted across highways and explored backyards — all while being chased by onlookers with smartphones and, eventually, drones.

“The government then issued a permit for the bear to be shot and killed.

“That did not go down well with Lithuania’s hunters who refused, aware that there is only a tiny number of the protected species in the entire country.

“The Lithuanian Association of Hunters and Fishermen said it was shocked by the government order.

“The association’s administrator, Ramutė Juknytė, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the bear was a beautiful young female who was about 2 years old and did not deserve to be shot. ‘She was scared but not aggressive. She just didn’t know how to escape the city but she didn’t do anything bad,’ he said.

“The organization tracks the movements of bears. It believes there is only five to 10 bears in the Baltic nation, but does not have a precise number.

“The drama began on Saturday when the bear entered the capital. It was the first time in many years that a bear had entered the city and it became a national story. The animal came within about 4-5 kilometers (about 2-3 miles) of the city center.

“Since causing a stir with their permit to kill the bear, Lithuanian authorities have been on the defensive.

Deputy Environment Minister Ramūnas Krugelis said that a kill permit was issued purely as a precaution in case the bear posed a threat, according to a report by the Lithuanian broadcaster LRT.

“The hunters proposed a more humane approach: sedation, tracking and relocation

“As the debate over the bear’s fate unfolded, she took matters into her own paws and wandered out of the city” (https://www.yahoo.com/news/lithuanian-hunters-refuse-government-request-081751892.html).

I am not a hunter. I have never shot a gun at a living creature in my life. But I kind of admire hunters. Not all of them, but there are a lot of responsible hunters out there. I have even read that in African countries where hunting elephants is allowed and carefully regulated, the populations of elephants have done much better than in countries where any hunting is considered poaching, in part due to the fact that the legal hunters themselves are interested in conserving the populations. “The push by several western nations to halt ivory and other game imports while at the same time calling for an end to elephant hunting is ignoring a wealth of research that suggests that hunting bans have had unintended consequences—that is, that they’ve led to fewer, not more, elephants” (https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisdorsey/2024/05/08/recent-us-fish–wildlife-service-ruling-sparks-new-debate-over-elephant-hunting/).

While it is certainly true that in ages past men with guns have hunted certain animals into extinction or near-extinction, it seems that in modern times that legitimate hunters ken more about preserving species than government bureaucrats. Perhaps they can ken the governments about conservation.

Today’s image: “A bear is recorded by a hunters’ camera in the Pabrade forests calmly feasting on animal baits in Pabrade, Lithuania, Wednesday, June 18, 2025. (Paulius Peciulis via AP)” (https://www.yahoo.com/news/lithuanian-hunters-refuse-government-request-081751892.html).