My favorite archaic word–hurple is to draw one’s limbs in and scrunch up the shoulders in reaction to the cold or in a storm.
So why do people hurple?
WAG: it allows for more efficient shivering. (Shivering creates heat by moving muscles by a small amount; it’s hard to shiver your shoulders when your shoulders are relaxed.)
It conserves body heat by making less surface area for the heat to escape from.
It pulls your neck down into your jacket, sealing that opening from the wind.
It can also create a cavity or layer of air, kept warm by body heat, that acts as an insulator against the cold if you’re wearing loose enough clothing.
Great word. According to OED the usual form is hurkle, with variants hurple and hirtle. Definition: To draw the limbs and parts of the body closely together, esp. with pain or cold. Thanks for introducing me to it!
I agree with this explanation. You don’t just scrunch your shoulders, you also hold your arms close to your sides and even hug yourself, draw your neck down, and if standing hold your legs together. All of these things reduce the exposed surface area, as well as draw the extremities in closer to the core so blood doesn’t have quite so far to travel.
Doesn’t explain why you hunch up even when you’re just wearing a t-shirt.
That’s why I do it.
Are you sure? Have you never been cold when you’re weren’t wearing a jacket?
Pulling one’s arms close to the body to conserve heat, whether held to the sides, across the stomach, or across the chest pretty much requires the shoulders to tense which naturally ‘hunches’ them forward and up.
How do you figure? The blood still has exactly the same amount of distance to travel doesn’t it?
It also tightens the skin, causing your fur to lift and trap air as an insulating layer. In other words, an atavistic reflex from an earlier evolutionary incarnation.
It may also have something to do with thermogenic fat stores that occur in the shoulders/neck/upper back, but are much reduced in modern humans.
You’re welcome. I got it from a book The Dictionary of Archaic Words. Any word that rhymes with purple is one I will use.
And when I hurple/my lips turn purple.
I grew up in freezing cold New England, and I was always told to relax in cold weather because “it opens up your blood vessels, causing more blood to come to the surface and make you feel warmer.” I still do it, and it seems to work. Maybe psychosomatic?
Through the blood vessels, yes. But it has a shorter distance to travel within the body, so exposing it less to cooling.
In many cases, it creates distance (and a thermal pocket of air) between the skin and the cold cloth, reducing heat loss from the chest.
My shoulders hurple even if my arms are at my side. And I don’t think about doing it, I just notice it (sometimes) when I’ve already done it.
Leftover turtle DNA.
Just my SWAG but could it also be brought about by subliminal memories of fetal position?
The fetal position doesn’t involved hunching the shoulders.