Drotchel, an obsolete term superseded by the equally obscure Drossel and Drazel, lead me to the word Dross.
Dross is a word I’ve used in mumblings to self and inside my head, but nowhere else. It is a word I love but am shy to use. The closest I came to using this word was the day I met a guy whose last name was Bross. I kept the story inside, though.
I know “dross” from the 2nd grade. A girl with long curly hair, sitting cross-legged on the floor, was doing some kind of arts and crafts project with long streams of paper. I don’t know what she was building but as she constructed the project she threw some streams of paper over her head and behind her. Some of the paper landed in her hair, adding to the fun.
This paper, a teacher repeatedly stated, was “dross,” defined as “worthless or dangerous material that should be removed.” As the girl threw the paper away another girl picked it up and moved it, and the teacher would say “Ah, dross!” I think the dross was used in another project.
Because of this incident “dross” has always carried a certain joy for me. I saw the girl as a genius at work casting refuse (I mean dross) to the winds as she crafted a masterpiece.
The teacher’s words, meant as gentle encouragement, burned the word into my mind at a young age.
My only use of it (never verbally, only in my head) has been “Ah, dross!” I say this to myself when something spills or tumbles, as when a box tips over unexpectedly and its contents scatter, or when a carbonated beverage explodes upon opening after being shaken. I have also thought “Ah, dross!” (with a mental sigh) to describe the emotion that invisibly explodes when an individual is spontaneously provoked to anger.
I know now that the more common definitions of “dross” would not be used in describing a grade school crafts project, and this makes the teacher’s repeated use of the word a little odd. Watching the girl toss papers over her head the teacher evoked dramatic images of “scum or refuse matter which is thrown off, or falls from, metals in smelting the ore.”
A more precise word related to “dross” might be “recrement,” meaning “superfluous matter separated from that which is useful.” I doubt I will use this word as it sounds too much like “excrement.” The girl of the paper project was not tossing recrement, but dross, and that is how the memory remains.
