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Lubb

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If I take the first letter of my last five blog posts it spells "lubbl". I tried to see if lubbl had any interesting meanings. I even thought lubbl might be short for lubble or even a misspelling. But neither does lubble show up anything interesting for me. My last blog post was "love letters" and that is still fresh in my mind. What piqued my interest was lubb.

Lubb-dupp is said to be the characteristic sounds of a normal heartbeat as heard in auscultation. The first sound, the lubb, is caused by the closing of the mitral and tricuspid valves. The second sound, the dubb, is caused by the closing of the aortic and pulmonary valves. It is interesting to me that lubb sounds like a cute way to say love. The most interesting thing I found was that this word exists in Arabic and in Hindi with nice meanings.

According to my friend Bard, the Arabic word "lubb" (لبّ) means "heart" or "core". It is also used to refer to the inner meaning or essence of something. For example, the phrase "lubb al-amr" (لبّ الأمر) means "the heart of the matter." I found an article that discusses the difference between the "Heart" (Qalb), "Kindling Heart" (fuaad), and the "Pure Intellect" (lubb). According to that article, "the word itself means the marrow, pith or innermost core of something – a tree, a fruit or the breast of mankind, the heart."

From my friend Bard, the Hindi word "lubb" (लुब्ब) means "essence" or "gist." It is used to refer to the most important or essential part of something. For example, the phrase "lubb kalm ki" (लुब्ब बात की) means "the gist of the matter."

I asked Bard if there was any link between the two words. He said, both the Hindi and Arabic words "lubb" may be derived from a common Proto-Indo-Aryan root word meaning "heart" or "core". Also, the Arabic word "lubb" may have been borrowed from Hindi through trade and interaction between the two languages. But he does not know for sure and it is possible that the words came about independently.

Words that contain "lubb" as a sequence of letters is very rare in the English language. The only example I could find is "lubber" which is an informal (and even offensive) term for a clumsy or unskilled person, especially on a ship. There are even grasshoppers called lubber grasshoppers because of their slow-moving and clumsy behavior. Maybe the purest form of love is when it makes us clumsy and awkward.

I want to end by sharing this poetic quote by Rudy Fransisco, author of Helium, "There is nothing rational about love. Love stutters when it gets nervous, love trips over its own shoelaces. Love is clumsy, and my heart refuses to wear a helmet."
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