Eon? . . .eon?. . . eh?

OK, this is really a weird one (as if my other posts aren't - ). I've been collecting oddities to write about, but it was such a ragbag that nothing came together. (Why does no one talk about having "nerves" any more? Why is it always a fancy diagnosis like cyclothymia or post-traumatic stress? Why don't we have lumbago, quinsy, grippe - and how can diseases just disappear like that)?

But it didn't gell, or jell, or turn to jell-o or whatever else it's supposed to do. Except for one thing.

The word luncheon.

What's the deal with luncheon? We don't have a breakfast-eon, a bruncheon, or a dinnereon. What is the -eon supposed to mean? It seems to imply a get-together to have lunch, usually kind of a fancy one. So is that what the suffix -eon means?

Uh, that depends.

I had to go on a Wik-tionary somewhere to get a list of words ending in -eon: and they are plentiful. But finding common ground is difficult.

One that popped into mind was puncheon. I remember the long narrative poem The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning which, when the Piper began to play, exhorted the rats to "munch on, crunch on, take your luncheon":

"And it seemed as if a voice
(Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery
Is breathed) called out 'Oh, rats, rejoice!
The world is grown to one vast drysaltery!
So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon,
Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon!'
And just as a bulky sugar-puncheon,
All ready staved, like a great sun shone
Glorious scarce and inch before me,
Just as methought it said 'Come, bore me!'
- I found the Weser rolling o'er me."

I "took" this poem in about Grade 3, and mostly didn't understand the more lumpy vocabulary, which of course was never explained. This poem was meant to be read aloud in one long blurt. I see now that it was nuncheon, not luncheon which was used to rhyme with it. But what the hell is a nuncheon?

I always assumed a puncheon was a sort of barrel that had sugar in it, but it isn't, it's just a long piece of wood or some sort of tool for engraving (a "punch"). But Browning got away with it, I suppose, through poetic license.

I had to look up nuncheon because it was just too weird.

nuncheon 1353, "slight refreshment," originally taken in the afternoon, from none "noon" (see noon) + shench (from O.E. scenc) "draught, cup."

Oh yeah, so nuncheon is taken from "cup". My ass it is. And what the hell is a shench? Was there a fourth member of The Three Stooges?

I might as well make my own dictionary of eon-suffixed words, and I will, right now, before I've even had my coffee.

There's eon, the granddaddy of them all, and we won't bother with what that means. I like truncheon, which sounds pretty violent, and trudgeon, which surely is somehow related to bludgeon except that you walk on the person. Dudgeon is a good one, used with "high" and meaning someone leaving in that well-known vehicle, a huff.

Neil Dudgeon, born Doncaster, South Yorkshire,

                      England

I was mostly interested in words that might somehow relate to luncheon, that is, the suffix eon added to a known word to somehow extend it, formalize it, attach it to fund-raising for various diseases. There's a nickelodeon, an extinct term for dirty movies of the early 1900s that lasted a couple of seconds (see example, above, 2-second original plus extended version). Nickel plus odeon. The word was resurrected for a children's TV network. But that doesn't quite solve it, because we still have the problem of odeon.

Od. Eon. I don't get it, do you?

So let's go on to pantheon. You have your panth, meaning you juth-t can't get your breath, or miniature panthers getting together for a luncheon (or nuncheon). From there it gets weird, and I have to say I don't know exactly what it means, and I'll be damned if I'll look it up so early in the morning. For now we'll just say it means a whole lot of stuff, the entire pantheon of whatever.

Does anyone know what a widgeon is? Is it sort of like a widget? Is it some strange sort of pigeon, maybe a widowed pigeon? A pigeon dressed in black (going to a fundraiser)?

Chirugeon. A kind of dinosaur, maybe. Chirugasaurus Rex.

Gudgeon sounds like a wad of hard old gum you find stuck under your desk. Ewwwwwwww.

Ieon. Come on, now.

Mezereon must be something archaelogical, some sort of terazzo plaza for sacrificing young goats or children or something. Or else something awful from another planet, like kryptonite.

Pereon is part of a woman's body.

Surgeon is hard to take apart. Sur being, what, above in French? Surge means something quite else. But there's that eon part, like a gathering together. Psychosurgeon, cryosurgeon, supersurgeon, plastic surgeon, all of them give me the willies.

Odeon. Did I get to that one? Isn't that some big old place, one of those old theatres the town council is forever threatening to tear down to put up condos? We still have Cineplex Odeon, as if the theatre association still hangs on by a thread.

But it still means coming together, doesn't it? Even for a really short movie, and a nice bite of something for your nuncheon.