Spelunking
Let's get wedged in an etymological seam
spelunking
speh-LUN-king
noun
(Chiefly North American) Exploring caves. Also known as ‘caving’ and ‘potholing’
Like the ocean, caves are full of horrors. Bats and their droppings are the least of it. Venture deeper into any cave system and you will doubtless be confronted with a disgusting parade of ghostly, eyeless worms, fish and molluscs that have been hanging around there for millions of years. It tells you something that, when I searched Google for ‘cave horror movie’, there are several articles listing the ‘top 10 cave horror movies’, so frequently are caves a setting. Incidentally the one I was looking for was The Descent, which I did not watch because do I really need a reason?
It beggars belief, then, why anyone would want to go poking around in cave systems, especially since many of them are filled with water, thus adding ‘drowning’ to the list of ‘ways to die in caves’ that already includes ‘crushed by falling rocks’, ‘wedged forever in narrow seam’ and ‘mauled by Gollum’.
But as they are wont to do, people will defy death and poke around anyway. Such people are called ‘spelunkers’, which is much more fun to say than ‘caver’ or ‘potholer’, which conjures up images of council employees in high-vis jackets wielding a spray can by the side of the road.
‘Spelunking’ comes almost intact from the Latin word ‘spelunca’, meaning (shockingly) ‘cave’. This is itself derived from the Greek word ‘spelaion’, which also gives us the term ‘speleology’, referring to the scientific study of caves and the horrors within.