Words: Antitragus

The occasional “Words” feature on this blog aims to illuminate some of the more esoteric terms the common reader might encounter in fairly mainstream publications. This week’s word, antitragus, appears in a much-lauded first novel by Rivka Galchen entitled Atmospheric Disturbances.

Antitragus refers to 

A) a fourth-century heresy that was condemned at the Council of Nicaea

B) a part of the anatomy of the ear

C) an aesthetic movement in Ancient Rome that criticised the staging of Greek tragedies

D) the name of the drug administered in a tetanus shot.

Highlight the text in the quote box below to discover the correct answer.

It’s option B.  As you might guess, the nub of cartilage above the earlobe called the antitragus is located opposite the tragus. (That pinch of a gap between them—the straits through which sound enters the conchea—is evocatively named the “intertragic notch.” The tragus, the knobbly protuberance that helps keep earphones in place, derives its name from the Greek tragos, “goat.” The fine hair fringing the tragus supposedly resembles a goat’s beard. (This reproduction from Gray’s Anatomy will instantly clarify any obscurities that my explanation might have thrown up.)

Galchen deploys the word while describing a less-than-attractive reader sitting opposite her troubled narrator (antitragus to his tragus, if you like) in the New York Public Library:

“The mustachioed man’s hand was again behind his ear. His earlobe was large and pale, but the antitragus was bright red.”

This glancing observation presumably serves two purposes. First, it’s evidence that this writer’s eye can discern the microscopic details that, at a distance, blend to form what passes for “reality.” And second, it might be said to demonstrate that the author’s expensive medical education (the paperback’s inside page tells us Galchen received her MD from Mount Sinai School of Medicine) has not been entirely squandered by the switch to literature.