When you start reading this, you’re on the brink of a not-particularly-important discovery. To wit: what the heck is a “brink”, anyway?
You can be “on the brink” of something good, like a singer “on the brink of stardom,” or a scientist “on the brink of a major discovery,” but it’s more common to find “brink” used as the point at which something bad is about to happen. Nations are “on the brink of war,” people and things can be “on the brink of disaster,” and so on. The Oxford English Dictionary includes some examples of things one can be on the brink of, and they include “ruin, destruction, death, eternity, anarchy, revolution…” and only a couple of examples aren’t things you’d rather avoid: “absurdity” and “discovery.”
There’s even a derivative term, “brinkmanship” (coined in the 1950s) for diplomacy that goes right to the edge of war — and in fact the term was coined in the context of nuclear war. The February 16, 1956 issue of the New York Times published this: “He [Adlai Stevenson] derided the Secretary [of Defense, J. F. Dulles] for ‘boasting of his brinkmanship — the art of bringing us to the edge of the nuclear abyss’.”
The word “brink” has been around for a long time; since the 1300s. It comes from Germanic roots and originally meant a border or edge of something such as a field or a river. It eventually was used as a general term for an edge that wasn’t part of the landscape, such as the “brim” of a cup or a hat. There was (and maybe still is) an old Danish word “brink” that focused on the landscape-related brinks, particularly a steep bank of a body of water.
“Brim,” by the way, also comes from German roots: the Middle High German word “brem,” and the even older Old Norse “barmr” — “brim” has meant an “edge” since even before “brink” appeared. It can even be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European “bhrem.” That also seems to be the source of the word “berm,” which is something you’d find on a brink (or even on a brim) — a berm is a path at the edge of something (from a hill to a road to a canal), or a narrow fortification. In places where the temperatures can be extreme, a “berm” can be a soil piled agains the walls of a house or barn as protection from cold (or heat) and wind.
You might have noticed that “berm” sounds a lot like the “barn” it might be protecting — but that’s just a coincidence; the words aren’t related. “Barn” has also been around for an impressive amount of time. It comes from the Old English “berern”, which was a compound word formed from “bere” (barley) and “aern” (house) — a “berern” was the house where you stored your grain. Old English had another word for the place you stored grain: “beretun.” In this case it’s the same “bere,” and “tun” meant “enclosure.” It’s not clear exactly what the difference (if any) was between a “berern” and a “beretun” a thousand or more years ago, but just as “barn” is still a common English word, a form of “beretun” is still with us. It became the name “Barton,” which today is a common surname (e.g. Clara Barton), a place name (e.g. Barton, Cambridgeshire in England), and an occasional given name (e.g. “Barton Fink;” the title character in a weird and funny movie).
The name “Barton” shows up in relation to movies in several ways besides “Barton Fink.” There’s the film actress Mischa Barton, independent film production companies “Barton Films” and “Barton Productions,” the movie producer Don Barton (credited with helping bring film production to Florida in the first half of the 20th Century), and if you watch some of the recent Marvel blockbusters (which you might do in the Barton Creek AMC Theater in Austin, Texas), you’re likely to see the character “Hawkeye,” whose real name is Clint Barton.
And all that came from harvesting barley and needing a place to put it. And if one of the places with the name ever attracts a major sports team, we might find ourselves on the brink of seeing “Barton” on the brims of baseball caps.
