A Word That Sticks Out

Ccokoh, is arguably the natural state of the homo erectus trengganuiensis; but can he also be so in a moving state? Can a person be ccokoh when he is swinging (berayong)? Hanging by one hand to the branch of a tree (nnoneng or ggatong)? Or must he be sitting still, not doing much (dok ssaja) or minding his own business (dok wak dök)?

These are difficult questions given that nothing is completely static, that everything moves or hums or beats. So, presumably you could sit ccokoh on the edge of your verendah, with your legs swinging merrily to the sound of the trumpeting P. Jalil. Or be crouched over a newspaper, occasionally turning over the page.

I have always thought that what makes a person ccokoh is his conspicuous presence, sitting or standing proud, like a nail sticking out from the ledge. Haji Zainal Abidin Safarwan says in his monumental work, the Kamus Besar, that it is that and more. Cokoh can be lambing, tegak (erect) or tercokoh (i.e. the Trengganuspeak ccokoh) and that's melengung or, as Winstedt says in his Malay-English dictionary, ‘brooding’ (dok nnengung). Do you have to be brooding to be ccokoh? I thought not, but I must bow to their superior knowledge.

But even then I must disagree with my esteemed fellow Trengganuer Clark Gable of Pulau Duyong [see Comments, below]who seems to think that co’ko is synonymous with ccokoh (for which please see above), but must thank him for proposing that I be given the weight of the Awang Embong Dagang Award which is Trengganu’s answer, he says, to the Nobel Prize for Literature. I rather like the name, and will accept it — if offered — and will even pretend that I am deserving of the award. In true Trengganu spirit of göng and wak ek, no doubt.

My thanks to all of you who’ve put in comments here and elsewhere. I welcome and value every one of them; but please do not be disheartened if I take a long time to respond. I shall, in due course, give each one of them my attention.