vængja

The English verb "to wing" captures my attention today. It means both "to perform or carry out without preparation" and "to shoot a game bird in the wing." I am no hunter, but I believe that winging is a less desirable way to bring down a gamebird, perhaps because it takes less skill or because it does not kill the bird outright. The duck in Ibsens Vildanden had been winged, I think, but it was nursed back to a kind of flightless health. Either way you take it, it is a word with a sense of less than optimal performance. But I think we all have days like that.