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2021: Creating a Lexicon of Future
W is for Wapenshaw
My father was born in Scotland and I grew up in Houston. Our family became part of the Houston Heather & Thistle Society so that we could learn about our Scottish heritage. The Highland Games was the annual ‘meeting of the clans’ in Houston and, as a kid, I could see that every event reflected the purpose of preparing for war: tossing the caber, the hammer throw, tug o’war and the shot put. Even the dances involved swords.
I recently learned the word Wapenshaw, which could certainly be applied to those Heather & Thistle Society Games, just substituting ‘social’ for ‘military’:
a periodic muster or review of troops or persons under arms, formerly held in certain districts of Scotland to satisfy military chiefs that their men were properly armed and faithful to the local lord or chieftain. [Spelling includes wapenshaw, wapinshaw, wappenshaw] ~ Dictionary.com
Modern Application: Wapenshaw as an Organizational Tool
Kent Dahlgren has written about wapenshaw in modern terms, relating to the development of successful teams:
But prior to this we had already identified a certain initiative-taking competency, which we came to call Wapenshaw; a Scottish word meaning the assembling of troops for battle.
