English Vocabulary Today: Into the 21st Century [1 ed.] 0367001691, 9780367001698

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ENGLISH VOCABULARY TODAY

English Vocabulary Today: Into the 21st Century offers an innovative perspective on the ways in which contemporary English language vocabulary continues to adapt and grow in light of emerging technologies and ideas. The book begins with a concise history of the English language, followed by chapters covering key topics including lexical change, semantic change and word-formation. Additional chapters highlight unique topics not often covered in English language studies, including the mental lexicon, inclusive language and the importing and exporting of words between English and other languages. Chapter discussions are enhanced by dynamic examples from a wide range of varieties of English, including American, British, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian, South African and South Asian.Taken together, English Vocabulary Today: Into the 21st Century offers students a clear and comprehensive understanding of the multi-faceted nature of English vocabulary today as well as new insights into its continued development. Barry J. Blake is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at La Trobe University, Australia, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He is well known for a range of publications on Australian Aboriginal languages and language in general. His books include Case, Playing with Words, All about Language and Secret Language.

ENGLISH VOCABULARY TODAY Into the 21st Century

Barry J. Blake

First published 2019 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business ©  2019 Taylor & Francis The right of Barry J. Blake to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-00169-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-00176-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-40082-7 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

CONTENTS

Conventions ix Acknowledgements x Introduction

1

1 A brief history

6

2 The dictionary

13

2.1  About the size of it  13 2.2 Part-of-speech  16 2.3 Set phrases  19 2.4 Spelling and pronunciation  21 2.5 Etymology  21 3 The mental lexicon

22

3.1 An entry in the mental lexicon  22 3.2 View of the world  25 4 Extension 4.1 Metaphor and metonymy  29 4.2 Verbs and prepositions  31

29

vi Contents

5 Change of meaning

36

5.1 New meanings for old words  37 5.2 New words for old meanings  44 5.3 Respelling  47 5.4 Relics  48 6 Meaningful relations

50

6.1 Hyponyms and hypernyms  50 6.2 Synonyms  51 6.3 Antonyms  53 6.4 Homonyms (homophones and homographs)  56 6.5 Contronyms  57 6.6 Retronyms  59 7 Compounds and blends 7.1 Compounds  60 7.2 Neo-classical compounds  7.3 Blends  65

60 64

8 Affixes

68

8.1 Prefixes and suffixes  68 8.2 Back-formation  73 9 Zero derivation

75

9.1 Noun to verb  76 9.2 Noun to adjective  78 9.3 Verb to noun  78 9.4 Verb to adjective  79 9.5 Adjective to noun  79 9.6 Adjective to verb  80 9.7 Other conversions  80 9.8 Proper names to common nouns  80 10 Shortening, alphabetisms and acronyms 10.1 Shortening or clipping  82 10.2 Alphabetisms  83 10.3 Textese  84 10.4 Acronyms  85

82

Contents  vii

11 Reduplication

88

11.1 Plain reduplication  88 11.2 Reduplication with vowel alternation  89 11.3 Rhyming reduplication  91 12 Imports

94

12.1 Loan-words  94 12.2 Cultural contact in Europe  96 12.3 Contact with colonised areas  99 12.4 Immigration into English-speaking areas  101 13 Inclusive language

105

13.1 A changed world  105 13.2 The discourse of inclusion  106 13.3 Politically correct English  107 13.4 Talking about women  109 13.5 Language and race  112 13.6 Heterosexism  114 13.7 Disability  117 14 When sound echoes sense

119

14.1 Onomatopoeia  119 14.2 Vowels  119 14.3 Consonants  121 14.4 Sound symbolism  123 14.5 Names  127 14.6 Overview  128 15 A form of words

131

15.1 Resemblances  131 15.2 Malapropisms  131 15.3 Words similar in form and meaning  133 15.4 Folk etymology  133 15.5 Avoidance  135 15.6 Interference  136 15.7 Word play  137 16 Allusion

139

viii Contents

17 Slang

146

17.1 Slang in general  146 17.2 The inventiveness of slang  147 17.3 The attitude of slang  149 17.4 Is slang ephemeral?  150 17.5 Local nature of slang  151 17.6 Slang and jargon  152 17.7 Argots and ‘secret languages’  153 18 English exported

158

19 English today

163

Further reading 171 References 174 Index 176

CONVENTIONS

Quotations given with a date are from the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) unless otherwise indicated. An asterisk is used to mark unattested forms such as *dwō , the reconstructed Indo-European word for ‘two’ and non-existent words like the noun *departal.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to the following for examples and suggestions: Ketut Artawa, Gavan Breen, Robert Crotty, Michael Frazer, Annaliese Joy, Clive Perry, Tasaku Tsunoda, Anna and Ella Verduyn plus the anonymous readers for the publisher.

INTRODUCTION

English is a Germanic language related to German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. It was brought to Britain in the fifth century by Angles and Saxons from an area around southern Denmark and north-west Germany. In 1066 England was conquered by the Normans. The Normans are familiar to many as the ruling class in films and TV programmes about Robin Hood, but what does not come out in these dramas is that the Normans spoke French. The presence of a Frenchspeaking ruling class for some hundreds of years, coupled with the prestige of French culture in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, led to English importing numerous words from French such as audience, government, recreation, romance, salvation and treasurer. French is a descendant of Latin, so in effect English could be said to have imported numerous Latin words via French. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, during the Renaissance or rebirth of an interest in the classical civilisation of Greece and Rome, English imported a great number of words from Latin and some from Greek. The effect of all this borrowing meant that though English remained a Germanic language, it was in terms of vocabulary very much like the Romance descendants of Latin such as French, Italian and Spanish. Western European nations, mainly Portugal and Spain, began colonising other parts of the world in the fifteenth century. The English began colonising in the late sixteenth century, and by the twentieth century had acquired an enormous empire that included colonies in North America, South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka), Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, various parts of Africa including Malawi (Nyasaland), Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, and parts of the Caribbean. They lost a great part of their holdings in North America in 1776 when some colonies rejected British rule and formed the United States, but English remained the language of

2 Introduction

the United States. In fact, the United States became a far bigger English-speaking country than Britain. After the end of World War II in 1945 the United States came to assume a dominant role in the world. There has been an American presence in many parts of the world delivering aid, maintaining military bases and from time to time carrying out military interventions. Many large firms have morphed into global giants and American corporations have been particularly prominent among them; think of Burger King, KFC, McDonald’s and Subway in the field of fast food. The United States is a leader in science and technology and dominant in popular culture. Popular music, mostly American, has been broadcast since the 1920s and made available in various recorded forms ever since. English-language talking movies, again mostly American, have been distributed around the world since the late 1920s, and TV programmes likewise since the 1950s. Both became widely available on video and later DVD, and they can now be streamed to your television, computer, tablet or smart phone. As a result of British colonisation and the dominance of the United States in science, technology and popular culture, English is the most widespread language in the world. Besides the 400 million-plus native speakers, mainly in the United Kingdom and the North America, there are many more non-native speakers. English has become the most popular language to learn as a second or third language. English is a lingua franca, a language of communication between people who do not share a common language, a language that a Russian can use to talk to an Albanian, or a Spanish speaker in Chile can use to talk to a Japanese business executive. If we count everyone who has a smattering of English or basic reading knowledge, we can say that nearly half the people on the planet have some familiarity with English. English gives access to knowledge. Advances in hard science and social science, in technology and commerce are published only in major languages, and there is more such publication in English than in other major languages. In countries where English is not the first language of most people, a knowledge of English provides employment opportunities, such as call centre and tourism industry-related work, which would not otherwise be available; the latter is especially important given that the majority of tourists around the world speak English as either a first or second language. The legacy of the British Empire was an English language spoken in countries far apart that developed their own local varieties, mainly in the spoken language. Radio, movies, television and the internet have countered this centrifugal tendency by spreading American English. When American talkies were first screened in Britain, people complained they were hard to understand. There were jokes about ‘American film, English subtitles’. Those days are long gone. The American vernacular is known around the English-speaking world. Ever since radio and television began, presenters, hosts and commentators have had access to large audiences. These people are in a position to spread their variety and style of English,

Introduction 

3

they tend to be responsive to fashion and America is the centre of what is ‘happening’ in the world of entertainment. The 1990s saw the widespread introduction of the internet, a global computer network that hosts the World Wide Web and enables people all round the world to communicate, whether they be individuals, corporations or interest groups. People can use their computer or smart phone to email, to blog, to chat, to post and to use social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Among young people and some not-so-young, online culture is increasingly important, with related technology and the content largely coming from the United States. Anyone can reach an international audience via the Web, and for language this has meant a rapid spread of new words. The internet also allows almost anybody to express an opinion about language usage in posts, contributions to chatrooms and via social media. The Web is awash with word lists.You can browse lists of cliché s, drug terminology, new words, sports jargon and slang. The older technology of the printing press also plays a part in promoting new developments in language. Newspapers and magazines report what is ‘trending’ in language and spread ‘buzz words’, but they are usually reacting to what is already in circulation online. A language today has to cope with the accumulated knowledge of the human race and must expand its vocabulary to keep up with new discoveries as well as political and social changes. English has always made great use of compounding and affixation to form new words. Modern compounds in the field of road travel include breath test, hatchback, lead-free, road rage and whiplash. Prefixes of Latin and Greek origin are currently popular, particularly those to do with bigness, perhaps a reflection of advertising. Not satisfied with hypermarket, mega-bucks, maxitaxi, multivitamins, supermarket and ultraviolence, we have imported German ü ber – ‘over’, ‘above’ – as in uber-chic and uber-cool, or simply uber! We can even double up on these ‘superlatives’. In the media, film stars are often described as uber ultra-cute, with products sometimes being touted as ultra or super. It has been characteristic of English for centuries that words can be converted from one part of speech to another, for example, noun to verb, verb to noun and so on. This seems to be on the rise, and the presence of a nominalising suffix on a noun is no barrier to conversion to verb. In Present-day English we can message friends to tell them we hope to podium at the Olympics or that we are thinking of transitioning gender. Blending two words together as with brunch and smog is essentially a twentieth-century phenomenon and it is one that has become very popular recently with, for instance, chugger, a blend of charity and mugger and sexting, a blend of sex and texting. Blends such as locavore represent another trend, the smart, self-consciously produced blend. A locavore (local plus the -vore of carnivore, etc.) is someone who makes a fetish of eating locally produced food. Many of us live our lives on ‘fast-forward’ epitomised by the practice of using our mobile (cell) phone to talk and text while working, commuting, jogging or travelling, and with electronic media we are emailing, blogging, downloading, switching channels on the TV and recording programmes for playback. It is

4 Introduction

therefore not surprising to find various related abbreviated forms of words are in vogue. There are clipped forms such as app (application) and clipped compounds such as satnav (satellite navigation), alphabetisms such as to OD (to overdose on drugs) and asap (as soon as possible), and acronyms such as NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and PIN (personal identification number), one of the many passwords we need in the electronic world. And on top of this there is a special variety of language for use on your phone or other device to speed up messaging. ‘Why are you late?’ can be compressed to y r u l8?1 English has not only had to cope with new inventions; it has also had to adapt to social change. At the end of World War II, the world was ruled by men, who in almost all cases were white. Since that time, white male hegemony has been reduced. Females, non-whites and minority groups have been empowered; they are no longer marginalised, and they have been given voice.We have seen the emergence of feminism and objections to the use of man, a word that basically covers males, for the whole human race. English traditionally distinguished male and female with pairs such as actor/actress and usher/usherette, but feminists have pointed out the bias in using marked terms for females and the unsatisfactory nature of using terms such as policeman and fireman, particularly when women were filling these positions. Over the last 70 years non-white people have begun to assert their right to equal treatment and to protest against discrimination. This has led to many colloquial terms for non-Anglo-Saxons such as chink, kraut, paddy and wop being considered racial slurs and banned from public discourse. Language today also reflects an increasingly considerate attitude to those who are not mainstream heterosexual, that is, people who are lesbian, gay or have characteristics of both sexes. Disparaging terms such as dyke and faggot are unacceptable in the media. There is also a concerted move in society to recognise the feelings of people who do not have full mental or physical capacity; not only are colloquial terms such as spaso and dopey no longer unacceptable, but previously acceptable terms such as handicapped and retarded have also shifted in favour of the more politically correct terms disabled and cognitively disabled. The vocabulary of a language extends beyond what is found in the average dictionary. Colloquial and slang words and expressions abound, many of them too ephemeral or too local to find a place in a general dictionary. Slang is inventive. It uses the same methods of word formation as the standard language, but often exhibits a certain cleverness or cuteness with rhyming compounds like fake bake for artificial suntan and comparisons such as more push than a revolving door. It can also be dysphemistic with terms like flies’ cemetery for ‘currant cake’. Slang is a marker of identity and is restricted to groups within society, certain occupations or classes, certain areas and even particular countries. Today, however, many English slang terms are spread internationally, with a lot of this slang coming from America, mostly from African-American youth. It is spread via the media, particularly rap music and online, and it serves to mark young people as ‘with it’.

Introduction 

5

Besides slang words, the English language has also added many loan words to its vocabulary. When European colonial powers came into contact with new cultures, they discovered numerous exotic animals and plants. As a result, English acquired hundreds of new words such as jungle and khaki from India and moccasin and skunk from North America. Spanish took in words from Central and South America, and many of these, such as such as potato and tobacco, were later adopted into English. As the colonial period came to an end in the twentieth century, there was much ‘ethnic’ immigration into English-speaking countries; with these immigrants came new varieties of ethnic food and their associated vocabulary. Today words like kebab, pizza, sushi and taco and are part of everyday English vocabulary. English has been a major importer of words for the last thousand years, but recently it has now become an exporter. Pick up a glossy magazine in German, French or numerous other languages and you’ll find the pages sprinkled with English words. Almost anywhere in Europe you can ask your partner to accompany you to a party over the weekend. And when it comes to computers and allied technology, you’ll find that there’s no need for the English-speaking traveller to learn words for computer, email, internet and google, because these words are part of the universal vocabulary.

Note 1 See Bauer 1994: 38 for some statistics on the frequency of various word-formation processes in the periods 1880–1913, 1914–38 and 1939–82.

1 A BRIEF HISTORY

Two thousand years ago the Roman Empire included all the nations bordering the Mediterranean and took in France (Gaul), Belgium (Belgica), the western edge of what is now Germany, and after AD 43, Britain. The area to the west and north of the Rhine taking in modern Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark was Magna Germania, ‘Greater Germany’, and was inhabited by Germanic peoples speaking closely related Germanic languages, languages ancestral to modern Danish, Dutch, German and English. The empire was under constant threat from ‘barbarians’. In the fourth century the barbarians on the northern edge of the empire, mainly Germanic, were pressing belligerently on the frontier and in 378 the Roman army in the east suffered an overwhelming defeat at the hands of the invading Goths. Over the next 100 years the empire was overrun by these barbarians, mainly Germanic tribes such as the Goths and Vandals, but also Huns and Alans. As part of this aggressive expansion, some Germanic peoples in Denmark and north-west Germany settled themselves forcibly in Britain. They started raiding Britain in the fourth century and by the fifth they were arriving in numbers and taking over most of what is now England from the Celts. These invaders and settlers were mainly Angles and Saxons, plus some Jutes. They spoke closely related tongues and these have come to be called collectively Anglo-Saxon or Old English, though almost all the surviving literature is in one particular dialect,West Saxon. The name England derives from Engla-land, i.e. Angles’ land. Old English became the dominant language of England, with speakers of Celtic languages surviving in the west and north (Cornish in Cornwall, Welsh in Wales and Pictish in Scotland). England had been part of the Roman Empire from AD 43 until the fifth century. The last legion was withdrawn in 410. Although Latin must have been spoken by a good proportion of the population, perhaps

A brief history 

7

most of the population, it did not survive in England. It did, however, survive on the Continent, as well as in North Africa until it was later displaced by Arabic. In the Roman Empire two languages were used in administration to the exclusion of all others – Latin predominantly in the west and Greek in the east. Both were prestigious, written languages; languages of civilisation with extensive and varied literature.The languages of the largely unlettered barbarians to the north of the empire were doubtless considered primitive and inferior. Indeed, it’s likely citizens of the empire would hardly believe that an insignificant Germanic language, taken to Britain at a time when their empire was being overrun by predominantly Germanic barbarians, would one day be a global language, the most widely spoken language in the world if second and third language speakers are counted. The language of the Angles and Saxons, Anglo-Saxon or Old English, is so different from the English of today that one needs to learn it as one would learn modern German. Here is an example from the anonymous Life of Saint Euphrosyne followed by a fairly literal translation. I have retained the eth ending on verbs, a form familiar to readers of Shakespeare (e.g. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven), where nowadays we use (e)s. Eufrosina tha thohte thus cwethende, ‘Gif ic nu fare to faemnena mynstre, thonne secth min faeder me thaer, and me thaer findath, thonne nimth he me neadunga thanon for mines brydguman thingan. Ac ic wille faran to wera mynstre thar nan man min ne wene.’ Heo tha thone wiflican gegyrlan ofdyde, and hi gescridde mid werlicum. And on aefentid gewat of hire healle, and nam mid hir fiftig mancsas, and tha niht hi gehydde on digeire stowe. Euphrosyne then thought thus, saying, ‘If I now fare to (a) women’s minster, then seeketh my father me there, and me there findeth, then taketh he me forcefully thence for my bridegroom’s sake (thing). But I will fare to a men’s minster there no man me may expect. She then the womanly clothing offdid (took off ) and her(self ) clad with manly (clothing). And at eventide went from her hall and took with her fifty mancuses (gold coins), and that night her(self ) hid in (a) secret place. Old English had a certain number of grammatical suffixes. Nouns, adjectives and pronouns, including the word for ‘the’ and ‘that’, had up to four case forms: nominative for subject, accusative for the object of the verb and of some prepositions, genitive for possession and dative for the object of other prepositions.We still have the genitive s, which we separate from the noun with an apostrophe, and we still mark case differences with pronouns, but we do this by using separate forms such as I for subject and me for object. In the sentence where Euphrosyne takes off her female clothing the words thone wiflican gegyrlan have the accusative form since this phrase is the object of the verb ofdyde, and when she dresses herself in men’s clothing the adjective werlic (man-like) takes the dative -um since it is governed by

8  A brief history

the preposition mid, meaning ‘with’.Verbs had various inflections. In ic wille faran (I will go) the -e on wille is the first-person subject form and the n on faran marks the infinitive. Most of the words in this passage are still part of Modern English. Faran is no longer a basic word for ‘go’, but it lives on in the sense of  ‘to get on’ or ‘to get by’, as in the sentences ‘How did you fare with the solicitors’ or ‘She didn’t fare too well during the winter’. It also lives on in the words farewell and thoroughfare. Wiflic (womanly) lives on as wifely, though wife now means married woman. Towards the end of the eighth century Vikings from Denmark and Norway began raiding Britain and by the late ninth century many had taken over territory in the north of Britain. Like the Angles and Saxons, these new settlers spoke a Germanic language, a western variety of Norse, the language ancestral to modern Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic and Swedish. Old English acquired a few hundred words from this source, mostly everyday words including take, which eventually replaced Old English niman, represented by present tense nimth and past tense nam in the Euphrosyne passage. Languages change over time and by the eleventh century English was showing signs of losing some of its grammatical inflection. Something then happened in that century that radically changed the vocabulary of the language. In 1066 William the Conqueror successfully invaded England and established the Normans as the ruling class.The Normans were also Vikings who had taken over an area of northwest France and had come to speak French. The presence of a French-speaking ruling class in England eventually led to a large influx of words from French. This influx was augmented by the prestige of French culture in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Some of the imports were everyday words like table and chair, but many were words to do with government, including government itself, words such as authority, chancellor and minister, words to do with the church such as sacrament, cardinal and redemption, and words related to the law including judgement, defendant, attorney and perjury. By the fourteenth century around 10,000 words had been adopted from French, and the character of discourse in the fields of government, religion, the law and indeed any intellectual topic was drastically changed. Whereas previously the terminology in these fields had been made up from familiar Anglo-Saxon roots and affixes, now the make-up of ‘big words’ was obscure to ordinary people. Consider witherwine, meaning ‘adversary’. It is made up of wither, a variant of with ‘against’, as in withstand, and win, ‘win’ or ‘strive’. Adversary is the French word that came to replace witherwine. It can be broken down to ad-vers-ary, but this is not clear to someone who knows English, but not French, or better Latin, since French is a descendant of Latin. Or take concupiscence. It means a strong desire for sexual fulfilment. In Old English the term was lustgeornnes, which breaks down into lust-georn-ness, i.e. lust-yearn-ness, where the meaning of the whole is transparent from the meaning of the parts; in comparison, it would take a scholar conversant with Latin to identify the formatives of concupiscence, namely con-cupisc-ence. It should be added that after the Norman invasion, along with borrowings from French, English also imported words directly from Latin.

A brief history 

9

The period 1100–1500 is regarded as one which saw a transition from Old English to Modern English and the language of the period is referred to as Middle English. Old English is almost as difficult for us to understand as modern German. Middle English, however, is more readily comprehensible, more so towards the end of the period, as one might expect. This is illustrated in the following passage from Wycliffe (also Wiclif ) written in the second half of the fourteenth century: Lord! What cursed spirit of lesyngis stirith prestis to close hem in stonys wallis for all here lif, sith Crist comaundith to alle his apostlis and prestis to goo into alle the world and preche the Gospel. Certis thei ben opyn foolis, and don pleynly agenst Cristis Gospel; and, yif thei meyntenen this errour, thei ben cursed of God, and ben perilous ypocritis and heretiks also. Lord! What cursed spirit of lying stirreth priests to close them(selves) in stone walls for all their life, since God commandeth to all his apostles and priests to go into all the world and preach the Gospel. Certainly, they be open (obvious) fools, and do (act) plainly against Christ’s Gospel, and, if they maintain this error, they be cursed of God, and be perilous hypocrites and heretics also. In this passage the only words likely to be unfamiliar to the modern reader are lesyngis (lying) and sith (since), and the pronominal forms hem and here. In Modern English we have the forms they, their and them. These are from Old Norse. The corresponding Old English forms were hi, here and hem (with variant spellings). In Middle English the Old Norse forms were replacing the Anglo-Saxon ones. Wiclif uses a mixture, Old Norse thei and Old English here and hem.The form hem lives on in Present-day English as ‘em as in Chase ‘em, where it coincides with a reduced form of them. There are 13 words of Greek or Latin origin in the passage, most of which were relatively new in the language, and they came via French. These are: spirit, prestis, wallis, commaundith, apostlis, preche, certis, pleynly, meyntenen, errour, perilous, ypocritis and heretics.There is one unfamiliar inflection, namely the -n on ben marking the verb as having a plural subject. Be is familiar to us, but not in this context. We use are, a form taken from Norse. The term Modern English is applied to English from 1500 to the present day, and 1500 would appear to be an appropriate date if we consider a passage like the following. It is from Caxton’s prologue to his translation of Virgil’s Aeneid published in 1490. I have modernised the spelling to emphasise how close the prose is to Present-day English. And when I had advised me in this said book I delibered (deliberated) and concluded to translate it into English, and forthwith took a pen and ink and wrote a leaf or twain (two) which I oversaw again to correct it. And when I saw the fair and strange terms therein, I doubted that it should not please some gentlemen which late

10  A brief history

blamed me saying that in my translations I had over curious terms which could not be understand of common people and desired me to use old and homely terms in my translations. This passage deals with translation from Latin, and translations from Latin and Greek abounded during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This was the period of the Renaissance in Europe, the rebirth of an interest in the classics of Greece and Rome. Translators tended to retain or adapt words from Latin and Greek texts rather than find an equivalent in English. This led to a huge influx of words into English similar in size to the importation from French mentioned above. Examples include allusion, conspicuous, denunciation, expectation and meditate from Latin, anachronism, autograph, parasite and pneumonia from Greek via Latin, and anonymous, lexicon and thermometer directly from Greek. The result was that Modern English derives almost two thirds of its vocabulary from Latin and Greek. Almost all our ‘big words’ are from these languages. If citizens of the Roman Empire were reincarnated today, they would be heartened to find that in developing English from a local language to a national language and later an international language the Angle and Saxon barbarians took virtually all their learned vocabulary from Greek and Latin. By the seventeenth century English was pretty much as we know it today. Consider the following passage from John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, published in 1690. It is virtually indistinguishable from present-day prose. That men should keep their promises is certainly a great and undeniable rule in morality. But if a Christian is asked why a man must keep his word, he will answer: because God, who has the power of eternal life and death, requires him to. But if a follower of Hobbes is asked why, he will answer: because the public requires it, and the state will punish you if you don’t. And if one of the old philosophers had been asked, he would have answered: because breaking promises is dishonest, below the dignity of a man, and opposite to virtue, which is the highest perfection of human nature. The focus in the following chapters is on the vocabulary of Present-day English, but there will be frequent references in the text to other languages, so first a word about the relationship of English to some of these other languages. In an area encompassing Europe and extending into India most of the languages can be shown to be related and to be descendants of a common ancestor, which is named Indo-European. It is believed to have been spoken in an area to the north of the Black Sea and Caspian Sea in the period 4000–2000 BC. We have no records of Indo-European, but scholars have been able to reconstruct a good deal of it from records of daughter languages such as Greek, Hittite (spoken in what is now Turkey) and Sanskrit (spoken in India). Some sample words from Greek, Latin, Sanskrit and Old English are given in the following table. The words in each row

A brief history 

11

are cognates, reflexes or descendants of Indo-European forms. The reconstructed Indo-European form for ‘2’, for instance, is *dwō  (the asterisk indicating a reconstructed rather than attested form). The forms in each language have undergone various sound changes. In Old English, as in the other Germanic languages, initial [d] became [t]. Some Indo-European cognates

mother father brother ten tooth two

Old English

Greek

Latin

Sanskrit

mō der fader, fæ der brō ther tī en toth twā 

mā tē r patē r phrā tē r deka odont-os duo

mā ter pater frā ter decem dent-is duo

mā tā  pitā  bhrā tā  daś a danta dvā 

The diagram below shows most of the branches of Indo-European and a selection of languages from each branch. Indo-European

Celtic

Germanic

Italic

Hellenic

Breton Cornish Gaelic Welsh

German Yiddish Dutch Danish Norwegian Swedish Icelandic English

Latin

Greek

Italian French Spanish Portuguese Romanian

Balto-Slavic

Indo-Iranian

Baltic

Slavic

Iranian

Indic

Latvian Lithuanian

Russian Ukrainian Polish Czech

Farsi Pashto

Sanskrit Hindi Urdu Bengali Romani

The Celtic languages are found in Britain and Brittany and are relevant to English more in terms of proximity than influence. One sub-branch of Celtic includes Welsh, Cornish and Breton and the other includes Manx plus Irish Gaelic and Scots Gaelic, both descendants of Old Irish. Numerous place names in Britain are of Celtic origin including Avon, Thames and Ben Nevis, and English has borrowed a score or so words from Celtic languages in the Modern English period including galore, shamrock and shillelagh from Irish Gaelic, cairn, plaid and whisky from Scots Gaelic, and eisteddfod from Welsh. As can be seen in the diagram, English belongs to the Germanic branch of Indo-European. As mentioned above, in the tenth and eleventh centuries English borrowed some hundreds of words from Old Norse, which is ancestral to Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic and Swedish. Since Norse was a Germanic

12  A brief history

language not too distantly related to English, the Norse borrowings do not stand out. The sequence sk- at the beginning of words as in skin and skirt is one indication since the sk-sound combination had become the sh-sound in Old English. Shirt and skirt are cognates; the shirt form is Old English and the skirt form Old Norse. Obviously, they have differentiated in meaning. The Italic branch is represented by Latin and the Hellenic branch by Greek. Latin and Ancient Greek are relevant to English in that they are a great source of borrowing. We have inherited a prestigious literature from Ancient Greece including the epics of Homer, the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides and the histories of Thucydides and Herodotus. From Rome we have inherited numerous works in Latin including the Aeneid of Virgil, the odes of Horace, the histories of Livy and Tacitus, and so on. As mentioned above, during the Renaissance (or rebirth of an interest in the Ancient Greek and Roman civilisations) numerous words were borrowed from these languages. Latin in time separated into dialects and these diverged further into separate languages including French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian, to mention only national languages. English has been borrowing words from French since the twelfth century. It often comes as a surprise to people to find that many languages in India are related to languages of Europe, but in fact most of the languages of the SubContinent, except for the Dravidian languages in the south, are descended from Sanskrit including Hindi, the national language of India, and Urdu, the national language of Pakistan. Hindi and Urdu are essentially the same language. Bangla, or Bengali, the national language of Bangladesh, is also a descendant of Sanskrit. It is also worth mentioning Romani, the language of the people traditionally called Gypsies. It belongs to the Indic sub-branch of the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European. Over the centuries Romani has broken up into several different languages such as Vlax Romani and Balkan Romani. See also § 13.5.

2 THE DICTIONARY

2.1 About the size of it The vocabulary of a modern language is listed in a dictionary. I write ‘modern’ because dictionaries as opposed to bilingual word lists do not have a long history. Ancient languages did not have dictionaries.1 In the matter of dictionaries English is twice blest. We have two comprehensive dictionaries, Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of 1961, the culmination of a series of dictionaries going back to Noah Webster’s publication An American dictionary of the English language of 1828, and The Oxford English Dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a remarkable achievement. Work started on the dictionary in 1857 and the first volume was published in 1884 and the last in 1928. The full work was republished in 1933 with a supplementary volume and a second edition was published in 1989. The dictionary is now available online via subscription. It is a dictionary on historical principles in that it traces the various senses of each word with a sequence of citations. It was produced with the help of the public, who were asked to send in examples they thought illustrated various senses of words at different periods, particularly what looked like the first appearance of a word or a new sense.2 English like any language of today has to cope with the accumulated knowledge of the human race. The vocabulary has to be very big. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of 1961 contains nearly half a million words, and OED has a similar number, though it includes a number of words that are obsolete. A general dictionary does not always include words largely confined to areas remote from the dictionary’s home country, it records only a small proportion of slang, and it does not include the specialised vocabulary or jargon of various trades, professions and leisure occupations. For instance, Mosby’s Dictionary of Medicine

14  The dictionary

contains around 44,000 entries, of which about three quarters are not to be found in Webster’s or OED.3 A Harvard–Google analysis of over five million digitised versions of books published in English between 1800 and 2000 found that the English lexicon has grown to over a million words and noted that the total is rising year by year.4 The accumulated knowledge of the human race is enormous. There are millions of animals, mostly small creatures including a million or more insects. There are over a million plants. There are millions of chemical compounds including over four million organic compounds. All of these have scientific names, but these are based almost exclusively on Greek and Latin. The common ash tree, for instance, is Fraxinus excelsior and the Giant Panda is Ailuropoda melanoleuca, literally, cat-foot black-white. The two languages that were once the dominant languages of western civilisation live on as the universal language of science. The only nonclassical words employed are proper names as with fuchsia (after Leonhart Fuchs 1501–1566) and Berberis Darwinii (after Charles Darwin). While millions of small creatures and millions of chemical compounds are beyond the experience of the average person, there are numerous items to be named that we come across in everyday life. Large supermarkets, major hardware stores and retailers like Kmart between them stock tens of thousands of items.5 It is obvious that speakers of a language like English do not use all the words in a dictionary, not even all the words in the average one-volume dictionary of around 100,000 words. The question of how many words the average person uses comes up for discussion from time to time. There are numerous articles on the subject on the Web, and David Crystal devotes an entire chapter to the size of ‘wordhoards’ in his book Words,Words, Words. In An Alchemy of Mind American poet and essayist Diane Ackerman claims, ‘…  we’re losing words at a reckless pace, the national vocabulary is shrinking. Most Americans use only several hundred words or so.’6 This figure seems to reflect how the author feels rather than being based on evidence and is surely far, far too low for ‘most Americans’. It is difficult to gauge how many words a person uses. Clearly, I am familiar with words like deception and instigation, but I can’t be certain that I have ever used them. On the other hand, it is possible to estimate how many words the average person knows. By sampling every twentieth page of a number of one-volume dictionaries of around 100,000 words I estimate I am familiar with a little over 40,000 words, about half the total. By ‘familiar with’ I mean that I have at least a rough idea of what they mean. I asked a dozen or so of my acquaintances to estimate the number of words they were familiar with based on a sample of 20 pages drawn at random from dictionaries of similar size. They came up with figures similar to mine.7 The number of words people use is plainly much lower than the number they know and the total includes a range from words everyone uses frequently such as girl and boy to words one uses rarely. There are quite a number of learned words that come up only in restricted contexts. I learned the

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word boustrophedon as an undergraduate. It refers to a writing convention where left-to-right alternates with right-to-left. I found it a striking word, particularly with its etymology ‘oxturn’ referring to the back-and-forth way an ox draws the plough in tilling a field. I have probably used it only once or twice since. I was also impressed by the phrase lines of circumvallation, the circle of ramparts attackers built around a city they were besieging. I am still waiting for a chance to use it. Counting entries in a dictionary to estimate the size of vocabulary is not a satisfactory way to gauge the expressive power of a language. Firstly, there are numerous colloquial and slang expressions that do not find their way into general dictionaries, though admittedly almost all slang words and phrases are synonyms for formal ones, e.g. chuck for throw. Secondly, even where we can determine by objective criteria the number of entities to be named, language can apply labels at different levels of generality. For instance, we can use nail to cover nail, brad and tack or we can distinguish nail, brad and tack. But there are numerous areas where objective criteria do not apply.Where there are continua like the colour spectrum each language can make its own set of distinctions. And thirdly, and most importantly, counting entries in a dictionary overlooks the fact that some words have more than one sense. In fact, some common words have a very large number of senses. When we talk about the size of vocabulary, we are thinking of how much content is covered, but content can be covered by separate senses of one word or by different words. Consider the word take. The average dictionary lists about 70 different senses. Admittedly the difference between some of them is a fine one, but there are quite a number of substantially different senses. The Collins Sansoni English–Italian Dictionary gives 58 ways of translating the various senses of the transitive verb take into Italian. Here is a sample (the infinitive of each Italian verb and its meaning is given in brackets): He took the pen and began to write. Prese la penna e cominciò  a scrivere. (prendere ‘to take’) They take a cottage by the sea for the summer. Affitano un cottage al mare per l’estate. (affittare ‘to rent’) We take two daily papers. Riceviamo due quotidiani. (ricevere ‘to receive’) I took French at the university. Ho studiato francese all’università . (studiare ‘to study’) This pillar has to take the entire weight of the construction. Questo pilastro deve sostenere l‘intero peso dello costruzione. (sostenere ‘sustain’) This verb takes the gerund. Questo verbo regge il gerundio. (reggere ‘to rule, to govern’)

16  The dictionary

One could quibble about the illustration in that there are some alternatives in both English and Italian, but the point stands that counting words does not give a true indication of expressive power. It is interesting to contrast the vocabulary of speakers of languages such as English, Italian, Turkish or Japanese, which have to cater for the accumulated knowledge of the human race, with local languages, languages where the speakers have knowledge of just their local area. There is a widespread belief that these ‘primitive’ peoples have very small vocabularies. Now, bearing in mind that content can be covered by separate words or different senses of a particular word, there is not much point counting words; rather, one should count senses. In fact, local languages have vocabularies of over 20,000 senses, a figure that is something like the working vocabulary of speakers of major languages. The difference is that, in general, all the speakers of a local language know all the vocabulary of the language. In hunter–gatherer and pastoral communities there is little or no differentiation in occupation except on gender lines. There are no reference books; the words have to be in the brains of one generation to be passed to the brains of the next generation. In a large-scale society there is specialised vocabulary that is passed down only to the relevant juniors, the relevant apprentices. In languages that are written (and until comparatively recently no more than 100 or so of the 5000 odd languages in the world were written), some of this specialised vocabulary is recorded in reference books, recipe books, trade manuals and the like. As mentioned above, comprehensive dictionaries are fairly recent innovations. The first worthwhile dictionary of English was that of Dr Johnson, which was published in 1755. The bulk of a dictionary is taken up with describing the meaning of words and meaning is dealt with in the following chapters of this book; however, dictionary entries also indicate part-of-speech, spelling, pronunciation and etymology. These are discussed below.

2.2 Part-of-speech Almost all the words in the dictionary belong to one of four word classes, or parts of speech as they were traditionally called, namely noun, verb, adjective and adverb. Nouns mainly refer to what we might broadly call entities including individuals (Matilda, Fido), humans (girls, babies), other creatures (tigers, butterflies), places (Rome, Oslo) and inanimate objects (stone, moon).There are other words that are nouns, which do not fit into the above categories, but share grammatical properties with words that do. For instance, take a sentence such as Butterflies should be considered.We can substitute for butterflies words such as pivots, relationships, rematches and hundreds of other words and all these words can take plural marking, at least for entities that can be counted.Verbs cover actions (hurry, strike), processes (melt) and the direction of emotions (admire, impress), and they can be distinguished grammatically in that they can be marked to indicate past tense, either by a suffix

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(Lucy impressed the judges), a change of vowel (The thief ran away) or both (The thief leapt the wall). Adjectives describe properties of entities. These are words like old as in The mortar is old or The old mortar needs replacing. Most shorter adjectives can take the suffix -er to indicate ‘more’ and est to indicate ‘most’ (pretty, prettier, prettiest), while longer adjectives can be modified by more or most (more beautiful, most beautiful). There is one other large class of words, namely adverbs. Adverbs are a more heterogeneous class, but most of them fit the traditional description as words modifying the verb and are derived from adjectives by the addition of the suffix -ly: quick/quickly, slow/slowly. A survey of one-volume dictionaries of between 100,000 and 110,000 entries reveals the following proportions: Noun Adjectives Verbs Adverbs

66% 16% 7% 5%

As in other languages, nouns are the most frequent class. I specified the size of the dictionaries on which these figures are based since the proportion of nouns increases with the size of the dictionary. Most of the comparatively rare words found in large dictionaries but omitted in smaller ones are nouns. The six per cent not accounted for by the major parts of speech is made up almost entirely of set phrases such as better late than never and find one’s feet. These account for five per cent of the total. They are discussed in the next section. The other parts of speech make up less than one per cent of the lexicon and they are mostly grammatical words or function words. Nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs are lexical words in that they all have a clear meaning. Function words do not have a clear meaning. As the label suggests, they have a function. The label will be unfamiliar to many, but the distinction between function words and lexical words is made regularly with titles of books, plays and films. We use capital letters for lexical words and lower case for function words: Days of our Lives, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The class of function words includes pronouns, determiners and conjunctions. Pronouns are words like I, you, he, she and they. They are ‘pro-nouns’ in the sense they can stand for nouns as in When Brenda got back, she found the house had been burgled. Determiners are words like the, a/an, this and that as in This girl bought an atlas. Conjunctions are joining words. The words and, or and but are co-ordinating conjunctions. They can join words as in bread and butter, right or wrong and naughty but nice; they can join phrases as in out of the frying pan and into the fire, and they can join sentences to form compound sentences: The government decided to clean up the streets and they began by banning chewing gum. There are also subordinating conjunctions such as since in a sentence like Since she learned how to skate, she spends hours on the ice every day.

18  The dictionary

There is one other important class and that is the class of prepositions, words such as at, in, over, under and near. Prepositions are mainly lexical, but some are functional in some contexts. In Brenda went to the supermarket, the word to marks direction or destination and is lexical; in Brenda didn’t have time to talk, the word to does not have a clear meaning, but its presence is required by the grammar. The total number of function words, counting prepositions, is around 200. There is one other open class and that is the class of interjections. These are words that do not play any part in sentences.They stand outside the sentence.This class includes ouch! gosh! yuk! and the old-fashioned alas! as well as yes and no. The lexical classes are open classes in that new members can be added. English adds nouns, verbs and adjectives on an almost daily basis and, to a lesser extent, adverbs, and the minor class of interjections is open to ad hoc, ephemeral additions such as amazeballs. The functional classes are small, closed classes. We do not normally add new pronouns, determiners or conjunctions. The largely lexical class of prepositions is small. There are about 80 in English, and the exact number depends on whether you count marginal forms such as the old-fashioned anent ‘about’, circa, mostly confined to real estate and antiques, and versus, confined to phrases of the type A versus B (in law and sport). New prepositions are rare. Re is an example as in Re your letter of the 27th, I suggest you reconsider. This derives from the use of the Latin word re ‘in the matter of ’ set off with a colon at the head of business letters, as in Re: your letter of the 27th. Occasionally, the Latin preposition post – a common prefix in English meaning ‘after’ – is used as a preposition, as in post the Games, or post the match. As mentioned above, nouns can take a separate form, in most cases with the addition of a suffix, to indicate the plural as with lid and lids, and verbs can take a separate form, most often with a suffix, to indicate past tense as with melt and melted.We do not take lid and lids to be separate words and no dictionary lists them as separate words, likewise with melt and melted. In counting the number of words in a dictionary we count forms like lid and lids as one word, but we are using ‘word’ in a more abstract sense when we do that. A word in this abstract sense is a lexeme and when we say there are 100,000 words in a particular dictionary, we are saying there are 100,000 lexemes. Plural marking and past tense marking, which do not produce separate lexemes, are referred to as inflection. But there is another form of marking that does produce new lexemes and that is derivation. Here are some examples of derivational suffixes marking the derivation of one part of speech from another: noun → verb noun →  adjective verb →  noun verb →  adjective adjective →  noun adjective →  verb

glory hawk mow drink neat central

glorify hawkish mower drinkable neatness centralise

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Inflection is regular in its distribution. All nouns standing for entities that can be counted can take plural marking. All verbs can take past tense marking. Moreover, inflection is regular in terms of meaning. Plural inflection always means ‘more than one’ and past tense inflection always indicates past activity. Derivation on the other hand is more often than not irregular in its distribution and often inconsistent in terms of meaning. The derivational suffix al occurs in arrival and would appear to mean something like ‘the act of ’, so that arrival is ‘the act of arriving’; however, although recital can mean an act of reciting a poem or whatever, more often it refers to a musical performance. Moreover, al cannot be added to just any verb.You can have an arrival but not a *departal. Whiten means to make white, but blacken is often used in a metaphorical sense as in blacken his name. The suffix -ly, which converts adjectives to adverbs, typically makes no difference to meaning, something that is apparent in a lot of non-standard speech where the suffix is not used: He ran quick. She performed brilliant. However, there are irregularities. The adjective short refers to length, but shortly refers to time: I’ll be there shortly. The adverb hardly exists, but it does not mean ‘in a hard manner’. I once heard a report that a tourist in Thailand had been hardly beaten. Presumably, the tourist had been beaten hard.8 It is characteristic of English that many words can be used as more than one part of speech. This is true, for instance, of walk, run, hop, skip, fall, swim. We think of these as verbs, but all of them can also be used as nouns: take a walk, go for a run, suffer a fall, feel like a swim. Conversely some nouns can be used as verbs. Consider, for instance, nouns for parts of the body. One can head the ball into the net, breast the tape, elbow one’s way through a crowd, hand over the reins or knee an opponent. This is called zero derivation or conversion, i.e. moving a word from one part of speech to another without a suffix or any other form of marking. Dictionaries lump the different parts of speech together as one entry. Walk, for instance, will be given the label ‘verb’ first, and then the label ‘noun’ will be given within the entry. Elbow will be given the label ‘noun’, and the verb label will appear within the entry. This is practical, but misleading from the point of view of the lexeme. Where a form appears as separate parts of speech, each part of speech is a separate lexeme. It is often the case that the senses associated with one part of speech do not carry over to another. One of the senses of the verb skip is ‘abscond’, but this does not carry over to the noun skip. The adjective poor has a variety of senses as in The horse’s condition was poor and The soloist gave a poor performance, but the noun poor refers only to economically deprived humans as in The poor you will always have with you (Matthew 26:11).

2.3 Set phrases As a first approximation we can say that language is essentially a set of words we learn by heart and some rules that enable us to compose phrases and sentences to describe situations real or imagined, to ask questions, to issue instructions and

20  The dictionary

so on. But that needs some qualification in that what we know by heart includes numerous phrases and some sentences. In general, these ready-made expressions are for recurring situations. Obvious examples are Pleased to meet you, You’re welcome and Make yourself comfortable. Others are sentences with a variable slot such as I’d like you to meet so-and-so. There are also many sentences which, while they may be composed by the syntax, seem to recur frequently.Think how familiar the following are: Wait for me! It’s getting late.That’s a pity. None of these figure in the dictionary. The five per cent or so found there are short idiomatic phrases such as lean over backwards, scared stiff and split the difference. Quite a few of them are proverbs such as A stitch in time saves nine, Let sleeping dogs lie and the archaically phrased Waste not, want not. Often, one hears abbreviated references to proverbs. Suppose someone tells me Smith is accusing Jones of losing half his wages on the greyhounds. If I know Smith has a similar gambling problem, I might remark ‘pots and kettles’, a reference to the proverbial expression the pot calling the kettle black. A lot of the phrases in the dictionary seem to have been motivated by aesthetic concerns such as alliteration, and don’t make sense if taken literally. Take, for instance, fit as a fiddle. Why is a violin a standard of fitness? Other examples include bag and baggage, chop and change, hale and hearty, in fine fettle, the whole kit and caboodle, part and parcel, short and sweet and might and main, where main is an obsolete word meaning ‘might’. Nowadays we can say, ‘Let’s rock and roll’, meaning ‘Let’s begin’. Although this seems rather new and to relate to rock and roll music, which has its origins in the 1950s, it is fact another old alliterative expression referring to unsteady movement on a boat or train or in dancing. The word cliché  is often used with reference to set phrases. The term is critical and is used of phrases thought to be trite or overworked. If you want to describe the sound of someone’s head hitting the ground when they have fallen, then sickening thud would seem an apt choice. The problem is that this has become a cliché . The media is full of cliché s. Somebody who earned notoriety in the past is said to be famous for all the wrong reasons. Birds are frequently referred to as our feathered friends, dogs as man’s [sic] best friend and Shakespeare as the Stratford bard. Dancers who have hit town are described as having come to strut their stuff. Everyday language is full of fixed phrases and some of these might earn condemnation as cliché s. Newish phrases are more likely to be labelled cliché s than well-established ones, particularly if they are fashionable and used frequently. Here are some that have been called cliché s in listings on the Web: At the end of the day. Let’s touch base. It’s not rocket science. The name of the game. 110%.

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2.4 Spelling and pronunciation The words in a dictionary are arranged in alphabetic order. In English the spelling is accompanied by a guide to pronunciation. This is highly necessary in English since there are great irregularities in the relation between orthography and pronunciation. In languages such as German and Spanish this is hardly necessary since the pronunciation follows the spelling. The irregular relationship between orthography and pronunciation has some consequences. It means that correct spelling is a skill and that an inability to spell can mark somebody as being ‘uneducated’. It is not uncommon for a misspelling to indicate a false association between words. For instance, if someone spells surname as sirname, it probably indicates that they take the first syllable of surname to be identified with sir. This is folk etymology and is discussed in Chapter 15. Deliberate misspelling is often used to represent colloquial speech, as in ‘We wuz robbed.’

2.5 Etymology Dictionaries provide a guide to the origin of words, something that is of more than average interest in English, since, as pointed out in the previous chapter, English vocabulary is a mixture of Old English, Old Norse, French, Latin and Greek, to say nothing of a sprinkling of words borrowed from scores of other languages. Etymology also plays a part in the arrangement of the dictionary in cases where a single form corresponds to more than one meaning. Butt in the sense of cigarette butt and butt for buttocks are given as senses of a single entry, but butt – ‘cask’ – is given a separate entry since it has a separate origin. See also §  6.4.

Notes 1 The word dictionary is from Late Latin and has been in English since the Middle Ages. It originally referred to alphabetised word lists, usually bilingual. 2 One of the contributors was Dr W. C. Minor, who was incarcerated for murder in an asylum for the criminally insane. The story is told in Winchester 1998. 3 Mosby’s Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing and Health Professions, 3rd Australian and New Zealand edition, 2014, Sydney: Elsevier. 4 J.-B. Michel et al. 2011. As a measure of the recent expansion it is worth noting that OED recorded 185,000 new words and new meanings of old words introduced over the course of the twentieth century. 5 Woolworths in Australia claims to stock over 60,000 items, but that includes different sizes or quantities of the same item and different brands. 6 Part of an oft repeated quote, to judge from the Web, from An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain. 7 All complete words in bold were counted, not just head-words. Thus, under heart the subentry heartache was counted, under naked the compound naked-eye was counted. 8 In the past hardly could be used to mean ‘in a hard or harsh way’. In Book 1, chapter 11 of Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native, Mrs Yeobright says her daughter ‘has been hardly used’.This sense dropped out, probably because of the conflict with hardly in the sense of ‘scarcely’, a sense that Mrs Yeobright uses a few sentences later, ‘I can hardly say that just now.’ See §  6.4 for conflicts of this type.

3 THE MENTAL LEXICON

3.1 An entry in the mental lexicon In the previous chapter I wrote about the dictionary, a record of the vocabulary of a language. In this chapter I want to consider the dictionary in our brain, our mental lexicon. The vast majority of the words in our mental lexicon will be lexical words, words which refer to entities, actions, processes and emotions and qualifying words such as slow and slowly. In the case of words like fruit or education the reference is indirect. Fruit is abstract, generalising over specific types of fruit, and education abstracts from activities carried out in schools, universities and similar institutions. Let us take the word orange and consider what must be recorded in the brain under this label.The material will differ somewhat from one individual to another, so I will consider my understanding of the word orange. Since an orange is a physical object that I have had experience of, my brain has images of oranges, records of the smell, taste and feel of oranges and possibly of sounds associated with oranges, for instance, the sound of oranges being tumbled into a container. In these days of computers we can see what a lexical entry is like by thinking of multimedia and hyperlinks. Multimedia encompasses text, audio, still images and video. Under orange I would find recorded the opening lines of a nursery rhyme, Oranges and lemons sing the bells of St Clements. Along with sensory data the entry in my brain for orange records pronunciation and spelling and short video recollections. I remember as a child buying small oranges for 24 per shilling at my corner fruit shop, and handling fallen oranges covered in ants in a neighbour’s garden. If we google orange (fruit) we find hyperlinks (words and phrases in blue) to similar fruits such as mandarins, lemons and limes and the general label ‘citrus fruits’. This must also be true of the entry in our brain. Part of knowing what an

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orange is consists of knowing its relation to other citrus fruits. There must also be hyperlinks to orange juice, orange tree, orange blossom and orange cake. And of course, orange the fruit is linked to orange the colour, and my experience would include learning as a child that mixing red and yellow produces orange. For some people in the English-speaking world, the colour may be more familiar. In choosing a rather specific concrete noun as an example I took an easy path. If I had chosen a noun like thing or matter, an adjective like big or small and a verb like come or go, I would have found it more difficult to conceive of the reference, and for words like these it is not likely that they evoke specific examples. Our mental lexicon must contain information about part-of-speech, but without using labels such as noun, adjective and verb, since not all speakers know these words and children know how to put words together in phrases and sentences without any exposure to such terms. This information can be given in terms of the environment a word occurs in. Intransitive verbs such as come and go occur with a preceding noun or pronoun as in The storm came or She left.Transitive verbs such as rub and wash have a preceding noun or pronoun and the same following as in He ate fish. A ditransitive verb like give occurs in two frames as in Fred gave money to Oxfam and Fred gave Oxfam money. Adjectives can occur before a noun (new bike) or as predicates following a verb, most often the verb to be (The bike is new). Prepositions occur with a following noun, and so on. Nouns and pronouns are pivotal. They are not given an environment but appear in the environment of other parts of speech. Nouns and pronouns frequently occur on their own in one-word utterances. Information such as the fact that come takes a preceding noun is syntactic, but there must also be semantic information. Consider the sentence A dog strolled into the butcher’s. It sounds a little odd, doesn’t it? It would be normal to say A dog wandered into the butcher’s. The verb stroll is used only of humans. This is semantic information and it is part of the meaning of stroll. Note also that a sentence such as The dog strolled or The dog wandered sounds unfinished.These verbs require some kind of complement expressing direction, for instance: The dog wandered off, The dog wandered along the embankment, The dog wandered through the woods. A conventional dictionary is accessed via spelling, words being arranged in alphabetical order. The mental lexicon must involve something similar based on sounds as well as spelling. What is more remarkable is that it can be accessed from concepts triggered directly or indirectly from sensory impressions. If I see a dog chasing a rabbit and I want to tell someone what I saw, I can come up with the required words almost instantly. One thing the mental lexicon does not contain is a definition. It does contain the data on which a definition can be based. Writing a definition is an intellectual exercise that can be demanding. We can know intuitively what some words mean but be unable to define them. I know what cute means, but I would have the greatest difficulty in defining it.There is a story that a woman once asked Fats

24  The mental lexicon

Waller, ‘Mr Waller, what is rhythm?’ The famous jazz musician replied, ‘If you has to ask, I can’t tell you.’ Quite a few lexical entries in the brain must be incomplete.There will be cases where one has seen a word written, but is uncertain about the pronunciation, or has heard a word, but is uncertain of the spelling; in either case, one might have no clear idea of the meaning, just a vague idea of what it might relate to. It is common to make a distinction between reference and meaning. Reference is what a word refers to or denotes, but meaning is broader and covers what the word signifies to an individual. For example, I am familiar with 1500 metres as a distance in athletic track and field events. I am also familiar with one and a half kilometres in the context of how far away something is. 1500 metres and one and a half kilometres have the same reference but are used in different contexts and may not be understood as the same. I can remember that it occurred to me at some point that they were the same, which means I had not identified the two concepts up to that moment. Lexical items not only have denotations or reference, they also have connotations. Connotations are associations. What is evoked or brought to mind by the use of a word is a connotation. The word spry is defined in various dictionaries as ‘active’, ‘agile’, ‘brisk’ and ‘nimble’, but it is used mainly of old people, i.e. where there is an expectation of unsprightliness. It has connotations of old age. The word orange has connotations of the Orange Order, the international Protestant organisation prominent in Northern Ireland, the Orange People, the orange-robed followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh who were not uncommon in the 1970s and 1980s, and orange-robed Buddhist monks. The policy of exterminating Jews carried out by the Nazi government during WWII has become known as the Holocaust and has been well documented. Nevertheless, some individuals have denied the Holocaust ever took place and they are called Holocaust deniers. In recent public discussion on climate change those who deny that global warming is real have been called climate change deniers. This brings the unpleasant connotations of Holocaust denier to bear on climate change sceptics. Some people avoid mother-in-law when referring to a spouse’s mother. Instead they say Tom’s mother or Amanda’s mother. This may be because mother-in-law has negative connotations. Up till fairly recently, the mother-in-law was stereotyped as an unwanted, interfering pest. There were mother-in-law jokes and there were proverbial expressions such as cold as a mother-in-law’s kiss. The notion of connotations is something people are generally aware of. Indeed, there are everyday expressions such as I don’t like the connotations or That has unpleasant connotations or even just That has connotations. And there are numerous words and phrases that refer to connotations or something close to that. For instance, you can say of words, phrases, sentences or texts that they have a certain colouring, flavour or nuance, hint of ill-feeling, smack of an unsympathetic attitude, have a hidden meaning or subtext, are suggestive or that they carry an insinuation.

The mental lexicon 

25

Connotations are just some of the things a speaker needs to know about words apart from meaning. ••

••

••

••

••

Words can suggest something about the origin, age or sex of the speaker or writer. The word bairn marks the user as being from Scotland or northern England. Wee and lass/lassie are primarily Scottish, but in use elsewhere. Wee is a regular word in New Zealand, thanks to Scottish settlers. A word like directly as I’ll come directly betokens an older speaker, as do expressions such as make haste, perchance or to recompense. However, many speakers use archaisms from time to time such as methinks or hither. These are like quotes from the past, analogous to using a foreign word.There are a few words used mainly by women. The adjective divine as in What a divine outfit! is more likely to come from a female speaker than a male one. Words can be restricted as to what they can refer to. The word dapper is applied only to males. If I turn up for work in a suit, a colleague might remark, ’You’re looking pretty dapper today.’ But if a female comes to work more smartly dressed than usual, she will not be described as dapper. Many words have a status significantly different from the default. The default forms are the ordinary, everyday forms. Dictionaries recognise this and use labels such as informal (a crook), slang (booze) or taboo (  fuck). Some words are old-fashioned (compere). Some are politically incorrect (a retard). Some words indicate a certain attitude. For instance, OED defines gawk as ‘stare or gape stupidly’, but, in my opinion, it is mainly used for staring that the author disapproves of.1 Consider this example. Someone was once stabbed in a pub near La Trobe University and lay bleeding unnoticed on the floor because the other men in the bar were watching a stripper. This was reported as, ‘The man lay there bleeding for some time because the rest of the company was gawking at the stripper.’ Another word that connotes a certain attitude is gallivant. OED (which incidentally posits that the word is perhaps a humorous perversion of gallant) defines this as ‘to gad about in a showy fashion, especially with persons of the other sex.’ I’m not sure about ‘the other sex’, but the word is certainly used pejoratively as in, ‘You leave me home to do all the work while you gallivant all over the country.’ Speakers of English need to be sensitive to style or fashion, even if only to interpret behaviour in real life or on the screen. They need to be able to recognise cliché  and jargon. They need to keep up with current expressions such as ‘I’ve got it on my radar’ and ‘Ping me.’

3.2 View of the world In the first book of the Bible we find the following passage: ‘And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air and brought them

26  The mental lexicon

unto Adam to see what he would call them, and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof  ’ (Genesis 2:19). This passage embodies the view that entities were distinguished in advance of naming, that they were out there waiting to be named. But imagine if children with no prior knowledge of, for example, the category of ‘big cats’ were presented with these beasts and asked to name them. Tigers might merit a distinctive name because of their stripes, leopards, jaguars and cheetahs might be grouped because of their spots, and lions, jaguars and pumas might be grouped because they lack stripes and spots. There is no reason to expect they would come up with names for each species. If the children were presented with a wider range of animals including elephants, monkeys and zebras, they might or might not come up with a label for all members of the cat family. The idea that the world is broken up into discrete entities waiting to be named is natural enough. After all, the sun, moon and stars are part of universal experience and readily distinguishable from one another, as are fire, water, wind, thunder and lightning, and parts of the human body. You expect every language to have a word for eyes, ears, nose, hands and feet. But even with the human body, there can be different ways of naming the body. For instance, Fijian has a single word liga for ‘hand’ and ‘forearm’, and likewise in Samoan where the word is lima.These languages leave the distinction to context, making a more precise designation only where necessary. If that seems strange, consider our word hair. We use one generic word for all types of hair on the body, apart from the beard or whiskers. We take head hair to be normally in no need of further specification, and then use a qualifying word for underarm hair, pubic hair and facial hair. With the less prominent hair that covers other parts of the body we don’t really have a word and have to use syntax to compose phrases such as ‘the hair(s) on your legs’ and ‘the hair(s) on your arm’. In some languages separate words are used for the different types of body hair. In the Australian language Ngaanyatjarra, for example, head hair is mangka, pubic hair is nyanyi and body hair is purrmu. As in many other Australian languages the word for body hair is used for the fur on animals. Naming imposes a classification. At one level English classifies all hair on the body as one, whereas Ngaanyatjara classifies the types as being different, but picks out an analogy, or better, a cross-species homology, between body hair and animal fur. In some Australian languages the back of the hand is referred to as the back of the hand, as you might expect, and the palm of the hand is the stomach or front of the hand. Now when we look at the terms for the top of the foot (metatarsal area) and the sole of the foot, we find the top of the foot is ‘back of the foot’ and the instep is ‘stomach of the foot’. This makes anatomical sense as the top of the foot corresponds with the back of the hand (consider where the nails are), and the sole corresponds with the palm of the hand; however, this anatomical analogy is not revealed in English where we use separate terms back of the hand, palm of the hand, sole and perhaps top of the foot.2

The mental lexicon 

27

There are differences between languages when it comes to describing kinship. English has the words grandmother and grandfather. The former covers mother’s mother and father’s mother, and the latter covers mother’s father and father’s father. I find that when it comes to speak about my forebears, I have to use more precise phrases such as my father’s mother or use a more cumbersome phrase such as my grandmother on my father’s side. In the majority of languages this distinction is ready made. In Swedish, for instance, the terms for the four grandparents are created by compounding the words for mother (mor) and father (far): mormor morfar farfar farmor

mother’s mother mother’s father father’s father father’s mother

In many languages there is a single unanalysable word for each of the grandparents. Here are the Thai forms: yay    mother’s mother taa   mother’s father pù u  father’s father yâ a  father’s mother In English the word ‘we’ can include the addressee (you and I) or not (he, she or they and I). Suppose there are three people present, Alice, Celia and Mary. Alice might say to Mary We (she and Mary) are going down the street or she might say to Mary We (she and Celia) are going down the street. Quite a few languages distinguish the two possible references. In Malay and Indonesian, for instance, the inclusive ‘we’ including the addressee is kita and the exclusive kami. The colour spectrum is universal, but languages differ greatly in the number of colour terms they have. In the natural world each feature has its own fixed colour, so colour terms are hardly needed. In modern civilisation we can have cars, clothing, curtains and a host of manufactured goods of different colours, so naturally we have lots of colour terms ranging from basic ones like red and blue to more elaborate ones used only in the context of this year’s clothing or last year’s cars. At school, students are taught that the colours of the rainbow are violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red, but the spectrum is a continuum and the divisions arbitrary. When I see a rainbow and I have company, I ask my acquaintances how many colours they see. The answer is always less than the seven taught at school, and sometimes only three, namely blue, yellow and red. The colour spectrum is just one example of continua and the breaking up of continua with separate words is always arbitrary. The notion of the week is arbitrary, as is the division of the year into 12 months. The lunar month is of course natural, but it hardly coincides with the calendar month, so little in fact that it is

28  The mental lexicon

possible to have two full moons in one calendar month, something that happens ‘once in a blue moon’. In temperate and subpolar regions, the year is divided into four seasons, a reasonable division, but not the only one possible, and one less applicable closer to the equator. While the spectrum and the annual weather cycle are part of nature, there are continua that are peculiar to a culture. It has become popular in the media to group people by their birth year.Those born during the baby boom that followed World War II are called Baby Boomers. The period of the Baby Boomers has a definite beginning in 1945, but it cannot be said to have a definite end. Somewhat arbitrarily, people born between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s are said to belong to Generation X (Gen Xers), those born between the mid-seventies and mid-nineties are Generation Y (or the Millennial Generation, or simply Millennials), and those born since the mid-nineties are sometimes referred to as Generation Z. Language encodes the world view of its speakers; it is not always the same world view for all speakers, and it is subject to change. For most human beings who have ever lived (and for many today) the world is flat. We speak of the sun rising and setting – we do not refer to the spinning of the earth making the sun appear to rise and set. Even for most of us who know the earth is more or less a sphere, the earth is still flat for most everyday purposes. Many of us refer to heaven being up and hell down, positions that make little sense with a spherical earth. Even when we are thinking globally, we find the earth is almost always shown in atlases and on globes with a certain orientation that perpetuates the view that the North Pole is at the top of the globe and countries like Australia and New Zealand are ‘down under’. There is a commonly encountered view that the scientific classification of nature represents absolute truth. It is true that the Linnaean system of classifying fauna and flora is based on agreed principles, but folk classification represents a reality too. In the Linnaean system there is a category arachnid and it includes spiders, scorpions, ticks and mites, but ordinary people see spiders and scorpions as separate easily identifiable creatures and see little reason to group them together. We have words for spiders and scorpions, but we do not have a word for arachnid, at least not in our everyday language. We do, however, have the word arachnophobia, which is an irrational fear of spiders.

Notes 1 There is also gawp, which has a similar meaning and is used in much the same way as gawk. 2 There is also the ambiguous instep. See under contronyms in Chapter 6.

4 EXTENSION

A language can increase its power in three ways. Firstly, it can extend the meaning of the words it has, adding new senses. Secondly, it can form new words by such processes as compounding, as in bookcase, using a derivational prefix, as in preschool, or a derivational suffix, as in goodness.Thirdly, it can borrow from another language, as with vodka from Russian. Compounding, affixation and other means of forming new words are covered in Chapters 7–11 and borrowing is treated in Chapter 12. The processes of word-building and borrowing are well recognised, but to see them in perspective it is worth considering the extent to which new senses are added especially by metaphor. Metaphor is pervasive and can go unnoticed, or, to use a metaphor, slip under the radar.

4.1 Metaphor and metonymy The phenomenon of extending the meaning of an existing word can be illustrated by the word rainbow as used on a sign outside an ice-cream parlour advertising ‘a rainbow of flavours’. The rainbow contains all colours, all the colours of the rainbow one might say, so the sign promises a comprehensive range of flavours. As used here, rainbow is a metaphor, since it is used of something that isn’t a rainbow. However, this relatively striking example is the tip of an iceberg of mundane examples that tends to go unnoticed.Thumbing through a dictionary reveals that some words have large entries in which many senses are listed. One sense is basic and the others represent extension, either by the application of the word to a wider range of situations or by metaphor or metonymy. Take the verb close. Its basic meaning is to shut off an entrance, as in shutting a door; there is also another meaning, shown in the example The lifeguards closed the beach after seeing sharks in the bay. It could be that the lifeguards shut the gates leading to the beach. If that is

30  Extension

the case, there is no metaphor. The word is being used in its basic sense. But suppose the lifeguards posted notices warning intending swimmers. This represents an extension of physical closing to closing by moral or perhaps legal force. This is a subtle metaphor. Also consider this example: The president closed the meeting at 4 pm. This is more clearly a metaphor, where the sense of shutting off is extended from space to time. Metonymy refers to the extension of meaning based on an association between referents.Take, for example, the word tongue. Beyond its literal meaning as an organ of speech, the word can be extended to language itself, as in She knew several Indian tongues. Similarly, glass is extended from the substance glass to a drinking vessel made of glass, and the verb stand is extended as a noun to cover where one stands, as in a busker’s stand outside the post office or the (grand)stand at the cricket ground. The word rubber provides multiple examples of metonymy.The word originally referred to a person or thing that rubs.The substance we know as rubber (sometimes called caoutchouc, a French form of a Carib word) became known in the eighteenth century. Since this substance was used to erase pencil marks, the term rubber or India rubber became applied to the substance. Once established in that sense, it came to be used for products made from rubber such as waterproof overshoes and more recently condoms.The latter metonymy leads some people to insist on eraser for the piece of rubber or synthetic rubber used to wipe out pencil marks. Other examples of metonymy include suit for a business executive, ivy league for prestigious universities in the United States such as Harvard and Yale, and inked for tattooed. When I see organic chicken in my supermarket, I think that one cannot imagine inorganic chicken and then I reflect on the metonymy that is involved. Organic chicken is produced by organic farming, i.e. farming using only organic fertilisers. The meaning of a word can be extended by both metonymy and metaphor. The basic meaning of cheap is low price, but it has been extended by metonymy to cover someone or some business dealing in low price goods or someone who likes to buy such goods. It is extended by metaphor when we talk of a cheap shot meaning an offensive remark exploiting the victim’s vulnerability. Take also comb. The basic meaning is the toothed article we used to tidy our hair. It is extended by metaphor to cover the crenellated flap on the head of birds such as domestic fowl, and by metonymy to cover the action of using a comb (She combed her hair) and then by metaphor to refer to a thorough search as in The police combed the area around where the body had been found. Metaphor is much more extensive than metonymy and is fundamental in language. Humans do not create words for abstract notions out of nothing; they extend the range of words with concrete reference. Consider the following ways of expressing the notion of understanding something that has been said: I couldn’t grasp what he meant exactly. I didn’t get what she said. I gathered from what he said that he was in favour of raising interest rates.

Extension 

31

I couldn’t take in what she was saying. I didn’t catch what you said. Did you pick up on the insinuation? All of these verbs involve a metaphorical extension from concrete handling to mental activity. And note that when I write about understanding, I am using another metaphor since I am not literally ‘standing under’ something. These metaphors are well established in the language and usually go unnoticed, but there are numerous recent metaphors that are recognised as such. They include buzz (excitement), (computer) mouse, spin (doctor), surf (the web), twitter and tweet. Troll is an interesting example. It refers to someone posting inflammatory or abusive material on social media. The earlier meaning of troll is a troublesome, demonic creature of Scandinavian folklore who lurks in the countryside and harasses travellers. Mouse and troll are examples of words recruited for new technology or for practices made possible by new technology, but the technology itself can be a source of metaphor.1 We read claims that men are programmed to be aggressive or they are hard-wired that way, and a person stressed and confused might express a need to reboot.The verb network and the nominalised form networking not long ago referred to broadcasting radio or television programmes simultaneously to several linked stations or to linking computers, but now it can refer to humans making multiple professional contacts. For instance, one might see a conference as a good chance to do some networking. Where once it was computers and the like that interfaced, now people and organisations can interface, e.g. to enable the agencies to interface with the government.

4.2 Verbs and prepositions The extension of meaning is most prolific with verbs and prepositions. Take the verb go, for instance. The basic meaning is motion (I will go into the city tomorrow), but there are dozens of other senses including the following: The ripe ones will go by midday. (be sold) How did the party go? (turn out, eventuate) When your pants begin to go, it’s time to get rid of them. (wear out) The car won’t go. (run) Used as a noun go has further senses including the following: Flora’s got lots of go. (energy, enthusiasm) It’s your go. (turn) Other verbs with numerous extended senses include intransitive come, fly, lie, run, stand, stay and stop and transitive break, cut, get, hit, make, see and take. If we include

32  Extension

noun usage, break, cut and take each have around 80 different senses and run has well over 100. Prepositions all have, or at least did have, a local sense as their basic meaning. By ‘local’ I mean referring to relative position (in, on, under, over, up, down) or direction (to, from, through, along). Prepositions tend to develop extended senses. The preposition for had the sense of ‘in front of ’ or ‘in the presence of ’ in Old English and was used in expressions such as ‘for the throne’ where now we would say ‘before the throne’, but it developed other senses as in the members for working class electorates, to stand in for an injured player and punished for his misdeeds. To retains its local sense in He went to town, but has become a grammatical form in I want to go.The preposition off retains its local sense in They took the roof off the house, but an unstressed form of off developed into the grammatical form of. Prepositional forms occur in several contexts: as transitive prepositions with an object The thieves came over the back fence and through the unlocked back door. as intransitive prepositions, traditionally designated adverbs The thieves went inside. in combination with verbs; with transitive verbs the preposition is called a verb particle Jane carried on (made a fuss, expressed anger) when she found out her husband had been carrying on (having an affair). They took up the carpet.They took the carpet up. as conjunctions After they got in, they took all the cash they could find. in compounds where the preposition precedes: aftershock, downturn, oversleep, upside where the preposition follows: rundown, sleepover, turnout, turnup Used on their own as prepositions or adverbs, prepositional words have a number of different meanings. Consider over.We can say I heard it over the radio (via), I’m over him (no longer romantically interested) or The game’s over (finished). Numerous everyday expressions involve extended senses of prepositional words. I’m through. (finished) I’m on. (It’s my turn to perform) I’m on it. (actively dealing with it) I’m down. (depressed, owing money) He’s been up for a while. (out of bed) She’s into tennis. (very interested in) They’re for it. (in favour of, or in trouble with authority)

Extension 

33

The contribution of the local element is even more evident when we consider combinations of common verbs and prepositions. These combinations are in effect new verbs since most of the combinations are idiomatic, that is, they have meanings not predictable from the constituent parts. If you take any common verb such as come, go, take or get, you find that there are idiomatic combinations such as come around (revive), go for (attack), take after (resemble) and get about (be able to move). Virtually all common prepositions enter into such combinations. Consider, for instance, the possibilities with come: come about, come across, come after, come along, come around, come at, come away, come back, come by, come down, come for, come from, come in, come into, come of, come off (it), come on, come out (on), come over, come round, come through, come to, come under, come up, come up against, come upon There are combinations that in conjunction with a further prepositional word have an idiomatic meaning: come down on (censure heavily) and come down with (become afflicted with). In Old English prepositions were commonly compounded with verbs and this constituted a major means of word formation. In most of the examples below the contribution of the preposition to the meaning is transparent, but understandan and withstandan, familiar enough since they survive in Modern English, do not mean literally ‘stand under’ and ‘stand against’ respectively. Old English

Literal gloss

Meaning

æ fter-folgian fore-cwethan in-steppan of-healdan ofer-faran under-standan thurh-drencan ū t-scū fan with-standan

after-follow before-speak in-step off-hold over-fare under-stand through-drench out-shove against-stand

follow, succeed, pursue prophesy step in(to), enter withhold, retain go over, cross understand saturate push out, shut out withstand

In Modern English this method of word formation continues, but the part the Old English prepositions play has been greatly reduced since their place in this context has been taken by Latin forms and to some extent Greek forms. Only ofer- (as over) and under- have survived in any numbers, and to a lesser extent ū t(as out-). However, over is competing with Latin super-, under- with Latin sub- and ū t- with Latin ex-. It is not that super- replaces over in any particular word or sub-replaces under- in particular words, rather there has been a mass importation of words bearing the new forms. Forms such as super, sub and ex are prepositions in Latin, but prefixes in English. We have also imported forms that are prefixes

34  Extension

in Latin, namely dis-/di- ‘apart’, in- not’ and re- ‘back’, ‘again’. The number of words with Latin-derived prefixes is enormous. Over 1500 words have the prefix re- ‘back’, ‘again’ and over 1000 have com- ‘with’ or in- ‘in’.2 Latin in- is cognate with Old English in-, but the two can usually be distinguished in that Latin inappears only in words of Latin origin such as incorporate and include whereas Old English in- is confined to a few words that go back to Old English roots, words such as income, infight(ing), inland and inset. The prefixes ad- ‘to’, de- ‘down from’, dis-/di- ‘apart’, in- ‘not’ and ex- ‘from’, ‘out of ’ each occur in over 500 words. Inter ‘between’, per- ‘through’, pre- ‘before’, pro- ‘for’, ‘in favour of ’ and sub- ‘under’ each occur in hundreds of words. Altogether around 9000 words have prefixes of Latin origin. Greek forms with originally local senses are found in around 1000 words. These forms are prepositions in Greek, but prefixes or combining forms in English (see §  7.2). Examples include anti- ‘against’, dia- ‘through’, epi- ‘on’, hyper- ‘above’, ‘over’, hypo- ‘under’, meta- ‘after’, ‘among’, ‘together with’, para‘alongside’, peri- ‘around’ and syn- ‘with’. The Greek-derived prefixes abound in scientific terminology, mainly nouns, with words like antihistamine, diathermy, epiglottis, hyperventilate, hypoglycaemia, metamorphic, paraplegia, pericarp and synapse. Prepositions make up only a small fraction of the vocabulary in English, Latin and Ancient Greek, but combinations of preposition and verb account form a large proportion of the vocabulary in all three languages. In English, as mentioned above, the native combinations have been greatly reduced in number and their place taken by numerous imports. However, there are numerous combinations of the type get on and take in as well as compounds with a preposed preposition as in outdo and underline, or postposed prepositions as in cleanup and washout. In Latin and Greek the combinations mostly involve the prepositional form being preposed to the verb. All these forms are local in origin, but the local sense is usually obscured or lost in combinations. Consider invent. It comes from the Latin verb in-venire, literally ‘come in’ or ‘come on’, but in Latin it was specialised to mean ‘come upon’, that is ‘find’ or ‘discover’. Already the purely local notion of both the preposition and the verb has been lost. The word then develops the further sense of ‘create’ or ‘originate’, and in this sense is borrowed into English. Induce is from Latin in-ducere literally ‘in-lead’ and does not refer to a literal leading in, though the metaphorical development is obvious. Deduce is from Latin deducere, literally from-lead or away-lead, but here the sense of away-leading is pretty much lost altogether. This list of examples could easily be extended to show that most of the 10,000 odd classical borrowings with local prefixed elements involve some kind of derived meaning, typically a metaphorical extension from the concrete to the abstract.

Extension 

35

Notes 1 Mouse in the computer sense can take a regular plural mouses, though the plural is not often used. 2 Some of these prefixes are disguised. Com- appears as con- in numerous words such as conserve and convene and the m assimilates to the following consonant in words like collocate and correlate. Similarly, the n in in- assimilates in imbibe and impress.

5 CHANGE OF MEANING

As described in the previous chapter, metonymy, and more especially metaphor, regularly supply new senses for words, but there are a number of ways the relationship between words and the world can change. In some cases a word takes on new meanings and in others a meaning takes on new words. Anyone who reads literature from past centuries is bound to come across words that seem odd in their context. Over the course of Modern English artificial has meant ‘made by humans’ as opposed to occurring naturally, and it is commonly encountered in reference to items such as artificial flowers and artificial limbs. It has negative connotations. The modern reader is therefore likely to find it odd to read ‘the artificial and elegant structure of the eyes’ (1738) or ‘the body, the most artificial and beautiful piece of the visible world’ (1766).That’s because until the twentieth century artificial retained the meaning of its Latin origin artificialis ‘made by human skill’ or ‘skilfully made’ and had positive connotations. To take another example, the verb starve used to mean ‘to die’; in earlier literature we frequently find the phrase starve of hunger, where ‘hunger’ might seem redundant to us. However, until its current meaning became established, one could starve from anything, even overeating. In Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (IV, ii, 52) Volumnia says as much, though admittedly she is speaking metaphorically. Anger’s my meat; I sup upon myself, And so shall starve with feeding. Indeed, in this excerpt, we can see that the meaning of meat has changed over the period of Modern English too. It used to mean food in general, and that is the sense used here, but it now refers to flesh as food.

Change of meaning 

37

5.1 New meanings for old words 5.1.1 Updating of the referent A word can change its meaning sometimes subtly if it is retained when the referent is replaced. The word pen is from Latin penna ‘feather’ and came to be applied to feathers used for writing, i.e. quill pens. The term has been retained for successors to the quill, namely the nib pen, which one dipped into an inkwell after writing a few words, and a fountain pen, which one filled with ink every few days. Then came the ball-point pen and writing devices such as the digital pen, electronic pen and light pen. That is probably obvious, but now consider the noun rose. Even people who have little knowledge of flowers are familiar with roses, but the roses we see today are modern cultivars, almost all developed within the last 80 or so years. When we read of roses in centuries past, we need to keep in mind that the flowers are not likely to be quite the same as the ones we see in modern gardens. The words girlfriend and boyfriend have also undergone a change since the conventions of behaviour have changed. Until the 1960s, girlfriends and boyfriends were people to be dated with little admitted intimacy. Intimacy is now taken for granted and is practically part of the definition.

5.1.2 Application to a new domain When English spread from the British Isles to other parts of the world and new creatures and plants were encountered, it was common practice to extend names to new species.The term magpie in English traditionally refers to a black and white bird Pica pica of the crow family, but in Australia the name was extended to cover an unrelated black and white bird Gymnorhina tibicen. In Britain the term sparrow applies to birds of the Passer family, but in North America the term was applied to similar birds of the Passerellidae family. In Britain the label perch is used for the fish Perca fluviatilis, but in North America the name was applied to a different species, namely Perca flavescens. As a result of these extensions a number of fauna and flora terms cover somewhat different referents, but these extensions generally go unnoticed since the different sets of referents are not found in the same area. Device is a long-established word in English with a number of senses, in particular a stratagem (It was just a device to defraud people) or a mechanical contrivance (a device for sharpening pencils). Quite recently it has emerged as a cover term for smart phones and tablets and it is so prominent in this sense as to threaten to drive out earlier senses. Tablet of course is also being applied in a new domain, namely computers. It previously referred to a variety of small, firm, flat writing surfaces.1 The word chat, verb and noun, is an abbreviation of chatter, which originally applied to the twittering of birds and was probably onomatopoeic. It came to refer to informal conversation, but recently it has become THE word for online conversation, and indeed has been borrowed into other languages in this sense (See Chapter 18). This usage has become so dominant that if you say ‘I had a

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chat with Luke’, you are likely to be taken to mean that you had a ‘live chat’ with him online. In Middle English default, variously spelt, meant ‘a lack’. For instance, defaute of mete and drink meant ‘lack of food and drink’.The expression by default of has been in general use since the nineteenth century as in Smith won his first-round match by default, when his opponent failed to turn up. Default is now a common word in the context of computers and other electronic devices where the default setting is the pre-programmed one that prevails in the absence of the user specifying anything different. For instance, if I open a new document in Word, I find the line spacing is set at 1.15. This is the default. When I set a time on my microwave, the heat setting is ‘high’ unless I specify ‘mid’ or ‘low’. The word has pretty much retained its traditional meaning, but it feels new since it is now used in a different environment. OED has a few examples from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century where it means ‘defect’ as in defautes in the chirche walles.2 The noun journey came into English in the fourteenth century from French journé e and meant a day or a day’s travel. It was then extended to any travel and applied metaphorically to one’s passage through life. Recently it has become a buzzword for a career or a course of action, both of which are seen as a metaphorical journey. Sports stars, for instance, and other celebrities often talk about their ‘journey to success’. An Olympic gold medallist might thank her family for having been with her for the whole journey, that is from the beginning of a training program which probably started some years before. In marketing there is the customer journey or the buyer’s journey, the series of steps from hearing about a product to buying it, a path involving interactions such as being exposed to advertising, comparing prices, getting advice from friends, and so on. In the United Kingdom if you want to claim a Personal Independence Payment, you find a claimant journey on the Web explaining the steps you need to go through to lodge a claim. Icon was traditionally a representational image or statue, in particular a Byzantine religious image. Recently it has been applied to two new domains. In computing an icon is a symbol on the screen representing an option that the user can select to open a file or application. In the media icon is used for structures such as the Statue of Liberty or the Eiffel Tower, which are recognised symbols of New York and Paris respectively, and for celebrities who are famous in a particular sphere, e.g. Roger Federer is a tennis icon. The adjective iconic is used in a similar way for a person, work of art or event that is a memorable: The opening scene of Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 masterpiece is one of the most iconic images in cinema history (2002).3

5.1.3 Reinterpretation Words are sometimes misinterpreted and come to acquire a less specific meaning. Take, for instance, alibi. It is the Latin word for ‘elsewhere’ and refers to evidence

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that an accused person was elsewhere when a crime was committed, as illustrated in the following lines from the song Long Black Veil:4 Judge said, ‘Son, what is your alibi If you were somewhere else, you won’t have to die.’ It can also be used as a verb as in If she calls, tell her I was shooting pool with you… Alibi me, OK? (2001) or as a noun for the person providing the evidence as in Be my alibi. However, if someone hears something like He didn’t do it. He’s got an alibi, and they are not familiar with the meaning of alibi, they can easily take it to be some kind of unspecified justification or just an excuse. Certainly, the word has acquired the sense of excuse as in Don’t offer alibis for losing (1922). Transpire has undergone a similar shift. Transpire, literally ‘through-breathe’, is a scientific term referring to animals and plants giving off waste matter in a vaporous state. Plants, for instance, transpire through stomata on the undersides of their leaves. A metaphorical extension produced the sense of ‘leak out, of information’. OED gives the following example: The conditions of the contract were not allowed to transpire (1856). Here the sense is clear, but in many other cases the word is liable to misinterpretation. Consider the following: It transpired that four regiments composing the division had gone over to the enemy (1922). This could be taken to mean ‘it happened that’ and misinterpretations along those lines have led to transpire being accepted to mean ‘happen’ as in His account of what transpired was so utterly unlike what I expected (1883). OED labels such misinterpretations as ‘misuse’, but, as in so many other cases, the misinterpreters appear to have won. It would be difficult to use transpire at the present time in the sense of ‘leak out, of information’ and hope to be understood. Nowadays it is common for people to use the word literally incorrectly, as in I was literally floored by his impudence; here, floored is being used figuratively, not literally, and means something like ‘I was shocked,’ not ‘I was actually knocked to the floor.’The usage is not new and goes back at least to the eighteenth century. How did the word literally that meant, and still means, ‘to be taken in its actual sense, not figuratively’, come to be used with figurative expressions? It seems to have been used to emphasise that what is being said is to be taken at face value. For instance, if I am knocked over by a very strong wind, I might tell someone I was literally knocked over, trying to emphasise that I am not speaking figuratively. This emphatic usage has not unnaturally been retained with hyperbolic metaphorical expressions such as I was literally dead after drinking a whole bottle of whiskey, but I came good next morning. Anticipate means literally ‘before-take’ and its traditional meaning is to act in advance, to prepare for in advance and perhaps forestall. An example of the traditional meaning would be Someone told me the debt collectors were coming, but I anticipated them and left during the night. Here the traditional meaning is clear, but often the word can be interpreted as ‘expect’. Consider, for instance, The guards

40  Change of meaning

anticipated a breakout attempt and brought in reinforcements. Read with the traditional sense, this means the guards took steps in advance to counter a breakout attempt, but they would do that normally only if they expected a breakout and one can easily take anticipate to simple mean ‘expect’. Certainly, that is the most common sense in use in Present-day English. Some words are reinterpreted from what we might call a subjective sense to an objective one. Pitiful used to mean ‘full of pity’, but has come to mean ‘eliciting pity’, i.e. pitiable. Hateful has undergone a similar change from ‘full of hate’ to ‘exciting hate’. OED has an example from 1890 that illustrates hateful in the subjective sense paired with impiteous in a subjective sense: Impiteous and hateful are the gods, and void of ruth.The word ruth, meaning ‘pity’, is not much-used today, but ruthless is, of course, an everyday word.

5.1.4 Frequency considerations The word youth can apply to young people in general as in The country’s youth are up in arms over the proposal to raise the age limit for drinking alcohol, but over the course of Modern English it has tended to be narrowed to refer only to males, and nowadays it can have a negative connotation. This seems to arise from the frequency with which it occurs in contexts where the young men are seen to be loitering, acting suspiciously or are ‘up to no good’. Webster’s Third gives as an example Four youths are suspected of starting the fire and I think it is fair to say that almost all references to youths in the media are negative. Youth is also used in the phrase disengaged youth, referring to young men and sometimes women frequently in trouble with the law. This seems to replace yesterday’s juvenile delinquents. From the seventeenth century to the nineteenth attitude meant posture. For instance, in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience we find a stage direction, As they sing they walk in stiff, constrained, and angular attitudes – a grotesque exaggeration of the attitudes adopted by Bunthorne. But attitude has come to mean opinion as in What’s his attitude towards religion? This is understandable. A person’s body language betokens a certain viewpoint. It then became associated with what many of us would call a bad attitude, hostile, resentful, uncooperative and the like, and people would describe uncooperative people as ‘having an attitude problem’ or ‘giving attitude’. This appears to reflect the frequency with which the word came up with reference to a hostile attitude. More recently the word has become positive, at least in some circles, and is used to refer to a desirable independence of thought: You got to go at the business with an attitude or you get nowhere (1988). This reflects a general change in society in which politically progressive people stress the need for neglected people to speak out (see the first part of Chapter 13). The word promiscuous provides an example of a somewhat different type. It has been in the language since the sixteenth century meaning ‘indiscriminate’ as in promiscuous carnage or ‘mixed’ as in the heading list of promiscuous examples. However, it could also refer to being indiscriminate in choosing sexual partners,

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in particular to having a number of sexual partners. The sexual sense came to dominate.This may not have been through majority usage originally, but once the sexual sense came into use it would have made it difficult to use the older, broader sense, which would then have allowed the sexual sense to predominate.

5.1.5 Point of view Words reflect culture; they reflect a certain point of view. In Chapter 13 examples are presented that illustrate the fact that English vocabulary reflects the point of view of a healthy, white, heterosexual male. Changes in point of view are reflected in semantic change. For instance, when it became popular to co-habit without getting married, the question arose of what to call the de facto wife or husband. The term de facto had some currency, but certainly had negative connotations from the time when such a practice was frowned on. As the practice of living together gained wide social acceptance a new word was needed and the term partner came to replace de facto. Partner had been in use for bridge partner, business partner, doubles partner and sleeping partner in a business. Now it acquired the sense of ‘sleeping partner’ in a more literal sense. It is also worth noting that though it seems a natural choice, there was a time when there was no settled term and it was not obvious which word would emerge as the choice. Towards the end of the Middle Ages large towns and cities grew up and language came to present the point of view of the city dweller at the expense of farmers and farm labourers. Consider the way words like peasant, boor, villain, churl and rustic have changed. Peasant once referred to a modest farmer or farm labourer, but since the sixteenth century it has been used pejoratively for anyone adjudged to be ignorant, unsophisticated or loutish. Boor once meant much the same as peasant but is now used for someone thought to be ill-mannered and lacking refinement. A villain was a serf working the land subject to a lord (usually spelt villein in this earlier sense) but came to denote a habitual wrongdoer or criminal. In Old English the word churl (ceorl) originally meant an ordinary man, but it came to mean a serf and a peasant, and then came to acquire negative senses such as ill-bred, rude and miserly. It is perhaps obsolete now, but churlish lives on to refer to people who are deliberately acting in a surly, boorish manner. Rustic once meant relating to the country and, although perhaps rather literary in style, can still be used in this sense; however, it too came to acquire a sense of lacking in refinement. All of these terms attribute ignorance to the accused, especially ignorance of good manners, an ignorance thought to be characteristic of rural people. A city-dweller’s perspective can also be found with urbane. Urban and urbane come from Latin urbanus, a derivative of urb-s ‘city’. The original meaning in Latin is simply ‘to do with the city’, but in Latin urbanus came to mean ‘polished, refined, cultivated’, i.e. to exhibit the sophistication thought to be characteristic of a city person. English has borrowed the word with the original and the derived sense, differentiating them in spelling with urban meaning ‘to do with the city’ as in

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urban transport, urban planning and the like and urbane being used for the ‘refined’ sense. The urban feeling of superiority is also revealed in the word provincial. Since the eighteenth century this term, originally meaning ‘relating to the provinces’, has been used to mean ‘having or suggestive of the outlook, tastes, character, etc., associated with or attributed to inhabitants of a province or the provinces; esp. (depreciative) parochial or narrow-minded; lacking in education, culture, or sophistication’ (OED). In Present-day English an urban point of view is reflected, but now it is the view of the inner suburbs towards the outer suburbs. Once the suburbs were the built-up area outside the central business district, but now the area closer to the centre is excluded and ‘the suburbs’ lie outside that zone.The suburbs in this sense are sometimes referred to depreciatively as suburbia and the adjective suburban has taken on the pejorative sense of ‘having or expressing the narrowness of view or lack of sophistication often attributed to residents of the suburbs’ (OED).5 Common is a word of Latin origin and was adopted into Middle English from French. It has always been a word neutral in tone referring to the public (the common people, the common good) or to being of the most widely available kind (the common or garden variety) and ordinary (common soldier), but it has also taken on the sense of vulgar or not socially acceptable, probably used more of women than men. OED gives nineteenth century examples (Her speech was very common, She has rather a common look), but this sense is alive and well. Vulgar, another word of Latin origin borrowed into Middle English from the French, once meant relating to the people in general or just ordinary (as in vulgar fractions). In Present-day English it means ‘in bad taste’, particularly with reference to language: Arse is a vulgar word. The logic behind the shift is the same as with common – what is characteristic of the people at large is not acceptable to the elite, whose attitude is reflected in language. In the last sentence I used the word elite. OED defines it as ‘The choice part or flower (of society, or of any body or class of persons).’ Webster has similar meanings including ‘the choice part’, ‘the best of a class’, ‘the socially superior part of society’ and ‘a group of persons who by virtue of position or education exercise much power or influence’. Dictionaries are out of date here. Although the positive sense prevails in contexts such as sport (Usain Bolt is an elite athlete), with reference to the upper echelons of society elite is at least controversial if not negative. There is a natural resentment towards people with power and influence, particularly if they give any indication of thinking they are superior. There is also a resentment towards people of learning and culture, the ‘highbrows’, again particularly if they are seen as snobbish. The derivatives elitist and elitism are used only in a negative sense. This reflects a widespread view that one should not be elitist. When an inquest or criminal trial is concluded, relatives and friends of the deceased or injured party regularly say that the verdict gives closure. They didn’t say this a generation ago, although presumably the conclusion of the inquest or

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trial did bring to an end a period of anxiety. The word closure has been in English since the fourteenth century with meanings such as enclosure, the act of closing and bringing to an end.This last sense is close to the current, popular one.We now have a name for a phenomenon that existed for a long time without a name. One could speculate on how this came about, possibly through the regularity of radio and television interviews which made it possible for some ad hoc uses of the word to be picked up and imitated, thus giving rise to a standard term. To take another example of something that has come to acquire a name, consider bonding. This word has been in the language since at least the eighteenth century with reference to physical bonding between bricks and the like, but since the 1960s it has come to be used regularly for an emotional linking between humans and to some extent between humans and pets or ‘companion animals’. We hear about mother–baby bonding, about male bonding, about female bonding. We hear about a corporation promoting bonding between executives. One could raise the question of whether the notion of bonding existed before the word came into use. It probably did.The fact that the word took off suggests there was something lurking there waiting to be named, perhaps more prominent in the 1960s than earlier. Certainly, the frequency with which this word comes up indicates bonding is part of our culture. The word define has to do with setting boundaries, as when we talk about defining words. It has also developed the sense of ‘to make (a thing) what it is; to give a character to, characterise; to constitute the definition of ’. OED gives an example from Milton (1650): Being lawfully depriv’d of all things that define a Magistrate. Over the last decade or so it has become popular to write about defining a person, as in Princess Leia will always define her as an actress.This means that the late Carrie Fisher will always be associated with playing the part of Princess Leia in the very popular film series Star Wars, rather than for any other roles. But the dominant usage is with the negative ‘doesn’t’. The practice of saying ‘So-and-so doesn’t define me’ is so popular that there are pages of examples on the Web. Here are a few examples: My past is part of me, but it doesn’t define me. What’s behind me doesn’t define me. Failure doesn’t define you. Your opinion of me doesn’t define who I am Yes, I survived cancer, but that doesn’t define me. Any celebrity who is caught taking drugs, or arrested for being drunk, can be guaranteed to say, ‘That doesn’t define me.’ Given the quote from Milton we cannot say there that define has a new sense, but the notion of defining someone, stereotyping them, and tagging them has become a prominent part of our culture, particularly in the context of trying to minimise the effect of bad behaviour on one’s image.

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5.1.6 Weakening If we look at words like terrible and awful as in phrases such as terrible weather or awful behaviour, it is not hard to guess that terrible should have some connection with terror and awful with awe. Clearly, both have lost their original force.We could add the colloquial awesome, but it means something like ‘very good’. A similar weakening applies with a number of technical terms from psychology. The words inhibit, inhibited and inhibition originally referred to prohibiting or forbidding. In the nineteenth century they came to refer to the blocking of an impulse by a contrary psychical activity or impulse: A representation arises in a mind, but … it is inhibited by another which confronts it (1876). Today these words usually refer to shyness or diffidence. In the early twentieth century quite a few terms came into everyday language from the technical vocabulary of psychoanalysis and are used in senses weaker than the original. These include denial, extrovert, fixation, inferiority complex, introvert, obsession, the psyche, psychotic, repression and the unconscious. We can also see weakening in the word martyr, which refers to someone who suffers, often enduring death, out of loyalty to a cause. The history of Christianity carries numerous accounts of people dying for the faith, from Peter and Paul in the first century to Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley in sixteenth century England. Today we read of martyrs for Islam: It was a tenet of Islamic faith that anyone who died in a jihad would, as a martyr, earn admission to Paradise (1990). However, the word is also used in a weaker sense for anyone suffering. One can be a martyr to gout, insomnia or rheumatism. The weakened sense is not entirely new. OED has an entry from 1684 that reads: Alphonso’s Wife, that suffering Martyr to a wedded Life.

5.1.7 Phrase abbreviation It is common for nouns to be omitted from phrases of the adjective-noun pattern leaving the former adjective to become a new noun with the old noun being understood implicitly. The noun wireless started life as an adjective modifying telegraphy and telephony. As one would guess, the original sense was ‘without wire connecting transmitter and receiver’. It came to refer to the phenomenon of sending radio signals electrically and to the receiving devices. A wireless was a wireless receiver. In the United States a wireless receiver was a radio receiver, which was abbreviated to radio and radio has become the common term throughout the English-speaking world. Examples of this kind of development are not hard to find. Consider daily (newspaper) and remote (control). There are some examples involving verb-noun constructions. For example, if I say Boris is using, I mean ‘Boris is using drugs.’ Further examples are given in Chapter 9.

5.2 New words for old meanings From time to time words are replaced or face competition from newcomers. In some cases this reflects the influence of a culturally dominant source. American

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terms frequently replace British words or come to be used alongside them, for instance, cookie for biscuit, elevator for lift, motor for engine, train station for railway station and truck for lorry. In cuisine French words dominate. Casserole competes with stew, and crepe with pancake. In some cases the change appears to be mere fashion. In other cases replacement of existing terminology is driven by euphemism such as describing third world countries as developing as opposed to underdeveloped. Some replacement seems to stem from a liking for serious-sounding words. I have read recently of environmentalists wanting to remediate (repair, restore) an area along the coastal interface (seashore) and of a king being coronated (crowned). Coronate as a verb meaning ‘to crown’ is not new. OED has examples going back to the seventeenth century, but the usage is marked ‘rare’ and the examples are all metaphorical. It seems pretentious to use it when there is a verb ‘to crown’.

5.2.1 Fashion Some words just acquire a vogue and are spread via traditional and social media. Take surreal. It is back-formed from surrealist and surrealism, a movement in art characterised by the odd juxtaposition of realistic images.6 OED defines surreal as ‘having the qualities of surrealist art; bizarre, dreamlike’. A young person who has a very good experience such as winning the Murwillumbah beauty contest or winning a medal at the Olympic Games is likely to describe their experience as surreal. It seems to have replaced unreal, which OED notes as ‘chiefly North American slang or colloquial’, but unreal has long been part of youth language around the world. For the past decade or so conversation has largely replaced discussion in the media. Conversation typically refers to talk, particularly familiar talk, among two people or a small group. There need not be a topic. It can just be two people whingeing to one another about their health problems or remarking on the weather. Discussion involves a topic and there can be many participants. Conversation was used in the eighteenth century in the phrase publick conversation, i.e. discussion, and is currently used in place of discussion without public as a modifier. It is so pervasive in the media that what was a misuse is becoming the norm. However, the verb converse has not replaced discuss, so in a ‘conversation’ you still need to discuss matters. Issue has a number of senses including a discharge, as in an issue of blood, an outcome, offspring, as in He died without issue, and a point of contention. In psychology the term is used for emotional or psychological problems.This sense has now been taken up by the public, mainly in the plural, and it replaces problems. Sports people, children, and sometimes even pets may all be described as having issues. Empathy and empathise currently seem to be replacing sympathy and sympathise. Here we have a psychological term moving into public use, a phenomenon remarked on in the previous section. The stricter sense of empathise is ‘to

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comprehend and share the feelings of another; to identify oneself mentally with a person’ and to some extent the word is in general use in this sense, but it is also used for the weaker sense of ‘be sympathetic’. It is part of the wider phenomenon of using technical terms in a less specific sense. Take epicentre, for instance. The technical meaning is ‘the point on the earth’s surface that overlies the subterranean focus of an earthquake’, but it is used in the media for ‘centre’ as in the epicentre of Arab nationalism or the global epicenter of anti-Western and Islamic sectarian strife (2006). The noun impact has come to be used as a verb as in The fire is proving hard to put out and there is danger that it will impact adjacent properties. Here it is a useful substitute for ‘have an impact on’, but it overlaps with affect and has taken considerable ground from affect, being used in contexts where ‘have an impact on’ would not be a suitable paraphrase, e.g. Lack of sleep impacted my performance.

5.2.2 Euphemism A lot of replacement comes from euphemism.Words for things that are unpleasant or thought of as inferior or unattractive tend to acquire unpleasant connotations. This leads to a quest for fresh terms and leads to frequent lexical replacement. Today’s euphemism becomes tomorrow’s ordinary term. Euphemisms are common with sex and excretion. We find expressions such as sleep with or make love to for sexual intercourse, which is itself a euphemism, and expressions like to pass water, to do your business and to go to the bathroom for excretory functions. Menstruation was unmentionable until the 1970s and is still not a topic that can be introduced into general conversation. It has always been surrounded by euphemisms such as that time of the month. Pregnancy was a taboo area for our forebears and expressions such as She’s in the family way or She is with child were used, as well as the literary French borrowing enceinte. Death is a subject where euphemism is prompted by a desire to spare the feelings of those close to the dead person. Thus we talk of the deceased, and of someone passing away. A funeral is handled by someone with the very vague title of undertaker. The word euthanasia was introduced in the seventeenth century from the Greek eu-thanasia ‘good death’ and was used in reference to ‘a gentle or easy death’. By the eighteenth century it had acquired its current meaning of bringing about a painless death. Recently the verb form euthanise has come into use for the ‘mercy killing’ of pets and other animals which were formerly ‘put down’, an earlier euphemism. The extension of the terms euthanasia/euthanise to animals probably reflects the urban trend towards greater respect for animals seen in terms like companion animals for pets and in more and more people rejecting the idea of killing animals for human consumption. Firing or sacking is another area where there is an understandable desire to put the dismissal in a favourable light. Employers often speak of having to let someone go, of downsizing or rightsizing, of arranging a negotiated departure or offering staff a package. A generous package is sometimes called a golden parachute.

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Big business is good at euphemisms. Goods may be affordable, but not cheap; they may be standard size but not small. Second-hand cars are pre-owned or even pre-loved. The American military and intelligence services sometimes paper over unpleasant reality. Enemies are taken out, targets are neutralised, suspected terrorists may be subject to rendition (extradition of suspects across national borders) and have to undergo enhanced interrogation (torture). Replacement of terminology has come to be especially prevalent with respect to race, or, as some would have it, ethnicity, a euphemism for race. This frequent replacement presumably reflects negative attitudes towards races other than one’s own resulting in existing terms taking on negative connotations. In general, the words that acquire these negative overtones are not in themselves derogatory. Some such as Iti (Italian) and Jap ( Japanese) are abbreviations.The colloquial nigger just means ‘black’, but it has been tainted with centuries of what we now consider racist behavior and is currently taboo, at least for non-blacks. Euphemisms in the area of race are discussed further in Chapter 13. Euphemisms are also to be found in the domains of disease and disability. Over the past generation we have seen a move to institute politically correct language, and a lot of this activity has been aimed at replacing the ordinary terms for disabilities. For instance, people with some kind of physical disability were once called ‘crippled’ or ‘handicapped’, but now they are disabled. People with mental disability were once often referred to as ‘retarded’ and by numerous slang expressions such as loony, but nowadays they are people with learning difficulties or cognitively disabled. See further in § 13.7.

5.3 Respelling There are a few cases of words being deliberately respelled to give a new form with a new meaning. Anyone who uses a computer online will have come across phishing, the attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity. Phishing is a respelling of fishing, after the model of phreak. A phreak is someone who fraudulently obtains low-rate or free telephone calls. OED suggests it is a respelling of freak, with ph- from phone, possibly punning on free call. Phat is a respelling of fat and means ‘excellent, first rate’. It is slang of AfricanAmerican background, obsolescent slang according to some, but whether that is true or not it has been taken up in the registered names of various catering businesses. African-Americans have also introduced the alternative spellings brotha, sista and nigga, as for instance in the hip-hop group N.W.A. (Niggaz wit Attitude). A pharm is a place where genetically modified plants or animals are produced.The spelling links to pharmacy and pharmaceutical, which reflects a certain linguistic ingenuity. Boi is a respelling of boy to indicate a person who plays a ‘junior role’ in a nonmainstream sexual relationship. While the respelling of boy may still be esoteric, the respelling of come to cum in the sense of ‘to climax’ or for semen is standard in adult literature (so I understand).

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Google is a respelling of googol, which is 10100, a number sooo big most of us don’t need to know about it. It captures the fact that the search engine can cover vast quantities of data.

5.4 Relics When a word changes meaning or a new word replaces an old one, the previous meaning or older word can live on in set phrases, derived forms and compounds. In some cases where there are synonyms, one will lose ground to its competitor or competitors and be restricted to fixed expressions. Seek is a good example. It has lost ground to search and look for. Children play a game called hide-and-seek, but in playing the game it’s unlikely they’ll say, ‘You hide and I’ll seek you’ since seek is no longer in general use. It lives on only in phrases such as seek approval, seek help or the military seek and destroy. The verb to cast was once an everyday term competing with throw. It will be familiar to some from older translations of the Bible where there are references to men casting nets and casting stones at women caught in adultery. Its history runs parallel with that of seek. It is no longer in general use. If you are playing a game, you it’s unlikely you’ll say, ‘Cast me the ball.’ But cast lives on in expressions such as to cast your vote, cast your line further out and cast your eyes over this. It also lives on in the phrase cast a spell, although this activity is largely confined to wicked witches in fairy stories. It also lives on in outcast and castaway. Worm used to refer to snakes and various crawling reptiles and insects. It is now restricted to earthworms, but the older sense lives on in glowworm. Belly and stomach have been in the language for centuries as competing terms. Belly dropped out of use in the nineteenth century but lives on in the colloquial belly-button for the navel, belly-ache (noun and verb), belly dancing and belly-landing for the landing of a plane without the undercarriage being employed. In Australia decimal currency was introduced in 1966, but colloquial terms for the old currency live on. Bob for ‘shilling’, for instance, comes up in expressions such as not worth two bob, silly as a two-bob watch and two bob short in the pound. Metric distances were introduced in 1971 but we still say things like Nylon is miles better than wool and The Sharks are miles better than the Rabbitohs. There is no way kilometre could be used here. There is general acceptance today that the use of man to cover all humans is sexist, but the generic man lives on in man’s best friend, a cliché  for dogs, and caveman diet, an alternative to paleo diet.

Notes 1 Computing aside, the most prominent sense of tablet is a medicine tablet. These were originally flat and rectangular. 2 The French expression faute de mieux ‘for want of better’ has some currency in English.

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3 Iconic is used in linguistics for cases where there is a parallelism between language forms and what is referred to. It is so used several times in this book. For example, with the blending of labrador and poodle in labradoodle it could be said there is an iconic relation between blending words and blending breeds of dog. See § 7.3. 4 Long Black Veil is a 1959 American country ballad, written by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin, originally recorded by Lefty Frizzell and later by Johnny Cash. 5 In Australia there are TV series such as Kath and Kim and Upper Middle Bogan mocking suburban lifestyle and values. 6 Back-formation is discussed in § 8.2.

6 MEANINGFUL RELATIONS

Meanings are not entirely independent of one another. One word can have a meaning that is part of the area of meaning covered by a broader term. The more particular word is a hyponym of the broader term, the hypernym. Words that share much the same meaning are synonyms (buy, purchase) and pairs of words that have opposite meanings are antonyms. Separate words can come to be pronounced alike (homophones), written alike (homographs) or both (homonyms). One form can have opposite meanings (contronyms) and some artefacts are renamed when superseded by a new invention. They acquire a retronym. All of these ‘nyms’, which are based on the Greek onoma ‘name’, are the subject of this chapter.

6.1 Hyponyms and hypernyms All languages have words of different degrees of generality. I can refer to a tree simply as tree, or as a type of tree, say oak, or as a type of oak, say pin oak.The word tree covers numerous types of tree including ash, oak, beech, elm and maple. These names for particular types of tree are hyponyms of tree. The word oak covers several species of oak such as pin oak and scarlet oak. These are hyponyms of oak. Similarly, poodle, Pekingese, Dalmatian and fox terrier are hyponyms of dog.The more general term that embraces a number of more particular terms, the superordinate term, is a hypernym. Tree is the hypernym of oak, sycamore, elm, pine and so on; dog is the hypernym of different breeds such as collie, red setter, golden-haired retriever and Great Dane-Chihuahua cross.The hypo- of hyponym is the Greek preposition for ‘under’ and the hyper- of hypernym is the Greek preposition for ‘over’ or ‘above’. The corresponding Latin prepositions are sub and super. Almost every word is a

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hyponym of some other wider term even if it is only of general words such as object, thing, entity, idea, notion, action or process. The word for the hypernym can coincide with the name of one of the hyponyms. With the sexes, this is common. It was general practice until recently to use man to cover men and women (see Chapter 13). For animals, particularly where the female rather than the male is kept in large numbers, the name for the female can serve as the hypernym, so cattle are sometimes referred to as cows. There are terms duck and drake for females and males of the Anas genus, but duck is used to cover both sexes to the near exclusion of drake. With peafowl the male has a spectacular tail and peacock is generally used as the hypernym. In some instances we have a choice between using a hypernym or enumerating the members of a set. We can say sibling as opposed to ‘brothers and sisters’ or use cutlery for ‘knives and forks’. Napery (tablecloths and tea-towels) and manchester (towels and sheets) are hypernyms used practically only in stores. Quite often there is a choice between being less specific (choosing a hypernym) or more specific (choosing a hyponym). For instance, I can call something red or I can be more precise and call it vermilion or scarlet. One area where the degree of specificity comes up for comment is race. People often object to broad labels such as Indian as a hypernym for people from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, but this is understandable since people from these areas look alike. Similarly, objections are sometimes raised to broad terms such as Asian or African rather than more specific terms, particularly where one racial group or nationality receives bad publicity, but again there are difficulties in making distinctions and race and nationality do not always align.

6.2 Synonyms Therefore, you clown, abandon–which is, in the vulgar, “leave”–the society–which in the boorish is “company”–of this female–which in the common is “woman”; which together is, abandon the society of this female. Touchstone in As You Like It, Act V, Scene I Languages often have more than one word with the same meaning.These are synonyms. Examples include appear (to be)/seem (to be), begin/commence/start, buy/ purchase, concord/harmony, the Devil/Satan, hackneyed/trite, hard/difficult, fast/quick and naked/nude. It is common to point out that groups of words given in dictionaries of synonyms are not interchangeable in every context.This is largely because most words have different senses. Hard and difficult would normally be considered synonyms and they are interchangeable in the context This is a hard/difficult task, but

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they are not interchangeable when applied to a human. If I say Bill is a hard man, I mean he is physically or mentally strong or both. If I say Bill is a difficult man, I mean he can be argumentative, perhaps sulky or hard to get along with. The synonymy is between one sense of hard and one sense of difficult. To find ideal synonyms one needs to go to words with only one sense. Typhlitis and caecitis are synonyms, both referring to inflammation of the caecum (part of the large intestine). Medications are very often sold under more than one name. Valium and diazepam are two names for the same substance, but even here there is a difference in that valium is a fairly familiar name and diazepam much less so. In practice the term synonym is used fairly freely and not reserved for ideal pairs such as typhlitis and caecitis. Crosswords are built on synonymy, but often with a very generous interpretation. Since English has borrowed three quarters of its word stock from Latin and Greek, it is not hard to find synonyms or near-synonyms where one word or phrase is Germanic and the other from the classical languages. Examples include answer/reply, cross/traverse, give a hand/assist, hate/detest, get/receive, go on/proceed, late/tardy, path/trajectory, shut/close and stay/remain. Shakespeare sometimes exploits this richness to pleasing effect. In Richard III (Act III, Scene VII) Buckingham says in the wallowing gulf Of blind forgetfulness and dark oblivion. Forgetfulness is an archetypal Germanic formation (for-get-ful-ness) and oblivion is straight from Latin oblivio(n). Synonyms often arise from borrowing between dialects as with Scottish lass and wee alongside mainstream girl and small, or between languages as with slim, well-established in English since the seventeenth century and of Dutch or Low German origin, and svelte, a nineteenth-century borrowing from French. Synonyms often belong to different styles or registers. Besides the basic word horse, there are the kiddie-forms gee-gee and horsey and the old-fashioned, literary steed. If I find I have been unlawfully deprived of my lawn-mower, I might say colloquially Someone has pinched my lawnmower, but if I am reporting the theft to the police, I am more likely to use more formal language and say Someone stole my lawn mower. Most colloquial and slang words and phrases are synonyms of more formal words and phrases, e.g. wheels for ‘car’ and kick the bucket for ‘die’. Synonyms can differ in their connotations. If I tell someone they are skinny, I am suggesting they are underweight. If I tell them that they are slim, I am approving their weight. Deferential and obsequious have very similar meanings, but while deferential is neutral in its connotations, obsequious has negative connotations. It implies criticism. If we disregard differences of style, connotations and so on, we find that English is rich in synonyms. Synonyms abound in certain semantic domains. There are more synonyms among adjectives and verbs than among nouns, which is interesting given that nouns easily outnumber verbs and adjectives in the lexicon. If we

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take in colloquial and slang terms, we find there are numerous terms for sex and the body parts appertaining to that sphere and for drunkenness. There is a super abundance of expressions imputing lack of intelligence. Taking just terms that are not particularly colloquial we find the following: crazy, cretin, dense, dim, dope, dull, dullard, dumb, dunce, idiot, ignoramus, imbecile, lunatic, mad, moron, simple, simpleton, slow, stupid, thick There are over 200 terms for a lack of intelligence in Roget’s Thesaurus and if we count slang terms there are 100 or so more (see the list in §  17.3).These are good examples of synonyms since they are not used with a precise meaning, rather they are used loosely not only for someone with less than satisfactory mental capacity but also for someone who has made a minor mistake such as misreading a train timetable. Another semantic domain where English is rich in vocabulary is in the communication of information, telling, saying and the like. The following words are not strictly synonyms, but degrees of synonymy exist between members of the set. acquaint somebody with, advise, announce, annunciate, apprise somebody of, assert, aver, convey, declare, disclose, enlighten, express, fill somebody in, give someone to understand, impart, indicate, inform, instruct, intimate, let it be known that, let someone know, let out, notify, proclaim, pronounce, relate, remark, report, reveal, say, speak, state, suggest, talk, tell, utter Synonyms play a part in formal speech or writing, partly to allow nuances of meaning, and partly to avoid repetition of words. Suppose you write the following: In replying to his question I pointed out that it was a question of being fair. The use of the second question jars, particularly as it is being used in a somewhat different sense from the earlier occurrence. One way around the problem is to change the second question to matter and write In replying to his question I pointed out that it was a matter of being fair. And finally, as mentioned in § 5.2.1, words are often replaced according to fashion or to meet the demands of euphemism.When a word like conversation replaces discussion, it is intended as a synonym, similarly with issues replacing problems, and so on.

6.3 Antonyms If two words are opposite in meaning, they are antonyms. There are two types of antonym. The first is illustrated by pairs such as hot/cold and big/small where

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there can be degrees of temperature and size. These are gradable antonyms. The second type is illustrated by alive/dead and odd/even. In general one is either alive or dead, not somewhere in between, and numbers are either odd or even. These are contradictory antonyms. The pair male/female is traditionally given as an example of contradictory antonyms, but among humans and some animals there are individuals with characteristics of both sexes, a matter that comes up for discussion in Chapter 13. Some pairs of words are converses of one another. Buy and sell, and the nouns buyer and seller, are converses in the sense that if A buys goods from B then one can say B sells goods to A. Teacher and pupil are similarly related as are parent/child and employer/employee. These pairs are sometimes called relational antonyms or converse antonyms. The words husband and wife are opposite within the field of spouses in the sense that one complements the other; they are co-hyponyms of spouse. When children are introduced to antonyms in games, they sometimes take Mummy to be the opposite of Daddy and dog to be the opposite of cat. While a mummy implies a daddy and vice versa (though both might not be around), dog does not imply cat, so the idea of antonym is somewhat extended. The idea seems to be that dog and cat are members of the two-member set of common pets. The pairs come/go, left/right, north/south and east/west are directional antonyms. Words, like the verbs tie/untie, are reversive antonyms. Antonyms are not always of equal status. Heavy and light are antonyms, but in most contexts we would say How heavy is it? rather than How light is it? We talk about the heaviness of an object rather than lightness. The analogous point could be made about long/short and wide/narrow. The most productive way of producing antonyms in English is with the prefix un-. It goes back to Old English with the reversive verbs unbind, undo and unlock. According to OED, it became very productive in the sixteenth century and apparently has remained so. It is common with adjectives. Witness uncommon, unfitted, unjust, untested, unsuited, unwise, etc. In Through the Looking Glass Lewis Carroll uses this prefix with a noun to form the curious term unbirthday, of which each person has 364 per year, and ‘curiouser’ still is the verb unfriend. The noun unfriend goes back to Middle English and the adjective unfriended is recorded from the sixteenth century, but the verb unfriend appears to be new. It refers to removing someone from one’s list of friends or contacts on a social network website such as Facebook. Some adjectives with negative un- have no positive counterpart as is the case with ungainly. Uncouth lost its positive counterpart couth, but it has been restored recently as a self-conscious, slightly humorous creation.1 The other major means of forming antonyms is with the prefix non-, which, unlike almost all other prefixes, is usually set off from the stem with a hyphen.The prefix non- has been in the language since the seventeenth century, but over the last 50 years or so it has become popular.

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It can be found in nouns such as the following: non-adherence, non-arrival, non-contributor, non-driver, non-involvement, non-issue, non-occurrence, non-problem, non-recognition, non-resident, non-show It can also be found in the following adjectives: non-active, non-addictive, non-combustible, non-commercial, non-controversial, nondenominational, non-negotiable, non-refundable, non-stop, non-toxic It can be used for nonce forms.2 Non-skid and non-stick are accepted words, but one can make up similar adjectives such as non-peel, non-scratch, non-slip or nonwarp. In nouns such as non-event and non-person the force of non- is to indicate that something or someone is so insignificant as not to count. These are pseudoantonyms. This sense figures in nonce formations. One can talk of a non-date, a non-meeting, a non-party, and so on. There are restricted means of producing antonyms. The suffix -less means ‘lacking’ or ‘without’, but the meaning of the derived word does not follow from a literal reading of the stem and suffix.The word cashless looks as if it might mean ‘not have any notes or coins on one’s person’, but it is usually found in phrases such as cashless transaction or cashless society. Here are some examples given with some context: backless (dress), boneless (ham), flawless (diamond or performance), hairless (head), homeless (beggar), nameless (source), needless (delay), starless (night) The suffix -less is the antonym of the suffix -ful in careful/careless, fearful/fearless, harmful/harmless, painful/painless and tactful/tactless, but, as is usual with derivation, the effect of adding an affix does not produce consistent results. Doubtful is full of doubts, but doubtless means something like ‘certainly’. If someone says, ‘The outcome is doubtful,’ you can’t contradict them by saying, ‘No, it’s doubtless.’ The Greek prefix a- meaning ‘not’ can be found in words like apathy (nopassion) and atom (no-cutting-apart), and as an- before vowel stems in anarchy (no-rule) and anaesthetic (no-feeling, sensitivity). These words are of Greek origin, but since the seventeenth century the a- form has been used productively giving us words such as amoral, atypical and asymmetric. The Latin prefix de- can have a reversive sense. It is productive today in words such as desensitise (1904) and defrost (1937, back-formed from defrosted), but the entry in OED reveals that it was commonly used in the nineteenth century for what look like nonce formations or low-frequency formations. Examples include de-Italianise, depetticoated and de-religioned. The Latin prefix meaning ‘not’, namely in-, is found in numerous words of Latin origin and is not productive: indecisive, insincere, intolerable, etc. Another Latin prefix dis- has a reversive sense in a few words such as disarm and disconnect.

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6.4 Homonyms (homophones and homographs) Languages are not designed by any particular person or by a committee. They evolve, and it can happen that two or more words can come to sound the same such as bear (the animal) and bare (uncovered) or you, the pronoun, and ewe ‘female sheep’. Groups of words that sound the same are homophones. Sometimes it happens that two or more words coincide in spelling as with the verb to lead and the metal lead. Groups of words that are spelled the same are homographs. Some pairs of words are homophones and homographs: bear (the animal) and bear (carry). Some writers use the term homonym for homophones or homographs, and others reserve homonym for cases like bear, where words are alike in both sound and spelling. A glance at any dictionary suggests that many common words are polysemous, i.e. they have multiple meanings, and that homophony is not uncommon. Sometimes it is hard to tell polysemy from homophony. Dictionaries distinguish the two on historical grounds. Consider the word butt as in ‘the stump of a tree’, ‘the thick part of a rifle’, ‘the end of a cigarette’ and ‘the buttocks’. Dictionaries consider these to be four meanings of one word, but it is not obvious to the present-day reader, though on reflection one can see ‘thick end’ as a common thread of meaning. On the other hand dictionaries take butt (‘thick end’, etc.), butt (object of ridicule), butt (cask) and the verb butt ‘to strike with the head’ to be a set of homophones, i.e. separate words that sound the same. Although the conjunction but is also homophonous, it is spelled differently. Where words are pronounced alike, but spelled differently, they almost always have a different origin. It can happen that a single form comes to have two meanings that can be confused. The traditional term for this problem is ‘conflict of homonyms’, but the clash is almost always one of pronunciation, so ‘conflict of homophones’ would be more accurate. The conflict can arise from accidental homophony or divergence of meaning. In Old English there was a verb lettan ‘hinder’, ‘prevent’ and another lǣ tan ‘let’, ‘allow’. In Early Modern English these two words had come to be pronounced alike as let. When Hamlet says By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me, he means ‘him that tries to prevent me’. This homophony caused a problem since a sentence such as I won’t let you could have two quite opposite interpretations. So, what happened? Well, the word let ‘to hinder’ dropped out of use in favour of words like hinder and impede, though curiously it survives in the legal phrase without let or hindrance, and in tennis where a let or let ball is one that touches the net before landing in the intended service court. A similar problem arose with cleave. In Middle English two verbs, which had previously been separate, came to be pronounced alike. One meant ‘to stick, adhere’ and the other ‘to cut apart’. The former can be found in the King James Bible, ‘Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy’ (Psalm 137). Both verbs lingered on into the nineteenth century but cleave in the sense of ‘adhere’ appears to have vanished, save for the odd

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archaism. Cleave meaning ‘to cut apart’ lives on. It is not common, but the related noun cleaver is.The adjective cloven derived from the past participle of cleave occurs in cloven hoof, referring to the split hooves of various animals including cattle, sheep and goats. There are still problems with homophony in current English.The worst in my opinion is between too and two as in the following typical example: Ada: Elsie: Ada: Elsie: Ada: Elsie:

How old is Bruce? He’s forty. And how old is Gwen? She’s forty too. So Gwen is older than Bruce? No, they’re both forty.

English imported two prefixes from Latin with the form in-; one meant ‘in’ as in ingest and the other meant ‘not’ as in indestructible. Since the in-sense is found with certain verbs and adjectives and the not- sense with others, no conflict occurs, but inflammable proved a problem. To someone not entirely conversant with English this word could have been taken to mean ‘not-flammable’ as opposed to ‘very flammable’.The problem has been solved by dropping inflammable and using flammable and non-flammable. The widely-recognised ambiguity of the word hot arises not from two originally separate words coming to be pronounced alike, but through a substantial divergence in meaning. The original meaning is to do with high temperature, but as far back as Middle English the sense of burning taste developed. Since both senses can apply to food as in My curry is too hot, there is obvious scope for ambiguity. This is usually resolved by using the word ‘spicy’, but it is interesting that we have put up with the ambiguity for a thousand years. The word pepper presents the same problem.This word has extended from the pungent, spicy powder from plants of the Piper genus to include chilli capsicums or the innocuous bell capsicum. According to Wikipedia bell capsicums are called capsicums in the Sub-Continent, Australia and New Zealand, but the term pepper is used in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Canada.

6.5 Contronyms When a form comes to have opposite meanings, as was once the case with let, we have contronyms (alternatively contranyms). The word sanction fits into this category, since it can mean ‘allow’ or ‘disallow’. Consider first the noun sanction. It is from Latin sanctio, where the root sanc means ‘sacred’. It originally referred to a decree,especially an ecclesiastical decree,laying down penalties that served to enforce a law. It is commonly used for embargoes on trade imposed by the United States and other powerful nations. However, it also came to mean approval: This

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experiment had not only his sanction, but warmest approbation (1798). Now the ‘allow’ sense is pretty much lost today with the noun but is the regular sense of the verb, as in These statements are sanctioned by common sense (1836). However, the sense of condemn with the verb is not entirely dead as in the following newspaper report, ‘Mr Ryan has been implicated … , but has never been charged by police or sanctioned by racing authorities.’ From the context it is clear that sanction does not mean ‘allow’ or ‘condone’.3 In a recent news broadcast the two contrary senses of the verb followed one another. In one report a bank employee ‘was hardly sanctioned’ for alleged misconduct, and in the next report golfers were looking forward to play in a ‘fully sanctioned version’ of a new tournament. From the context it is clear the first token means something like ‘reprimanded’ and the second means ‘approved’.4 Instep has two interpretations, which are pretty much opposites. This word can refer to the upper surface of the foot, where you tie your shoelaces, or the underside of the foot, in particular the arch between heel and sole. OED and several other dictionaries give the ‘upper surface’ meaning and allow the ‘arch’ sense to apply only to footwear. Not surprisingly instep has come to mean the arch of the foot. A brief survey of doctors and footballers reveals both senses are alive, perhaps with arch of the foot more popular with doctors and top of the foot with footballers. Oversight provides another example where contrary senses can be found in much the same context. If I want to import drugs, I hope to escape the oversight of Customs, i.e. supervision or inspection. I might be lucky and get them past Customs through an oversight on their part, i.e. a careless failure to inspect. The phrase hoi polloi, literally ‘the many’ in Greek, refers to the common people, but quite a large number of English speakers believe it means posh people, those above the common herd. It is also used as an adjective. Judi Dench in the film Philomena describes a posh wedding as ‘very hoi-polloi’. So, it is a contronym in a different sense with one meaning for some speakers and another meaning for others. It is interesting to speculate how this arose. Kate Burridge suggests the meaning has been influenced by the partially similar hoity-toity (see § 11.3).5 Quite a few words and phrases can have opposite meanings in different contexts. If I dust the furniture, I remove dust, but if I dust the tomatoes then I add dust (insecticide powder or similar). If I seed a field, I add seeds, but if I seed tomatoes or grapes I remove seeds. A number of verbs can have a reversal of actor and patient. If I say, ‘I leased the house while I went on a world trip,’ I am the owner, but if I say, ‘I think I’ll lease a car’, it is likely that I am going to hire a car. Much the same applies to the verb rent. The preposition with has opposite senses in Tom fought with the 5th battalion and Bill fought with his attacker. Scan can mean ‘read through a document systematically’ or ‘glance through’.The verb trim has opposite senses in The boys trimmed the Xmas tree and the girls trimmed the hedge since the former token refers to adding material to the Christmas tree and the latter token refers to removing material.

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6.6 Retronyms In the British TV series Life on Mars, broadcast in 2006 and 2007, a man wakes up in the 1970s and is delighted to discover his old record store, which is entitled Vinyl Heaven. This is an anachronism. The term vinyl for long-playing records only came into use after CDs were introduced in 1982. Vinyl is a retronym, a name given in retrospect for a product superseded by a newer one. Long-playing records or LPs came onto the market at the end of the 1940s and the earlier shellac records they replaced were then called 78s after the speed of rotation at which they played, another retronym. Previously they had been just ‘records’. Here are some other examples. Original name

New invention

Retronym

aircraft, aeroplane book clock, watch guitar mail milk movie, film razor telephone television

helicopter paperback (book) digital clock, watch electric guitar e-mail skinny milk talkie safety razor mobile phone, cell phone prerecorded television

fixed-wing aircraft hardback (book) analogue clock, watch acoustic guitar snail mail whole milk silent movie, silent film cut-throat razor, straight razor landline live television

Notes 1 See also §  15.7. 2 Nonce forms are ad hoc formations, ‘one-offs’. The term is from OED for thone once ‘for the once’ where the n of thone has become attached to once. Thone is the accusative singular masculine of the definite article and it appears in the Euphrosyne passage in Chapter 1. 3 Melbourne Age 21/10/2016, p. 8. 4 Australian ABC TV News, 19/4/2018. 5 Burridge 2004: 148–9.

7 COMPOUNDS AND BLENDS

Chapters 7–11 are about word building and the processes are treated in descending order of importance. The major processes are compounding, which is treated in this chapter, and the use of prefixes and suffixes, which is covered in the next chapter. Subsequent chapters cover zero derivation, abbreviation and reduplication.

7.1 Compounds A word that is formed from two words is a compound. In English we have numerous compounds including nouns such as bookcase, chatroom, cloudburst, copycat, raindrop and smartphone, adjectives such as oil-rich, overactive and upmarket, and verbs such as to whitewash and to cherry-pick. Compounds can be constituents of larger compounds as with backwoodsman, blackboard duster, highwayman and whiteboard eraser, where the first two words form a compound within the larger compound. Some compounds are written as one word (windscreen/windshield, crossword), some are hyphenated (air-raid, drop-out, fast-track, out-take) and some are written as separate words (body language, cash register, learning curve, me time, role model, snail mail, spin doctor, spoiler alert). There is variation in the way some compounds are written, for example, the word for sending real-time updates on unfolding events via Twitter posts can be spelt live tweet, live-tweet or livetweet. Open compounds, those written as separate words, are usually hyphenated when used as modifiers, so we might write Send it by snail mail, but The snail-mail version will take too long to get there. But this hyphenation is not just for open compounds. It is for any multiword modifier. For instance, we write This type of mistake is all too common, but an all-too-common mistake.

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The existence of open compounds raises the question of what differentiates a compound from a collocation, a phrase or a sequence of separate words. Spelling conventions are not a guide. Compounds existed in English before the language was written and all languages have compounds including those they have no written form. There are two criteria that are a guide in English. Compounds can be distinguished from phrases either on the basis of pronunciation or meaning or both. Compare the way we say the phrase white house, a house that is white, with our pronunciation of the compound White House, which is not any white house but the residence of the US president.The compound White House is pronounced as a single word with a single strong stress on the first word of the compound, namely White, whereas white house is pronounced as a phrase. The stress on the final two words in the following sentences is the same in all three: I saw the white house, I saw the ice melt and I saw the roses die. Other compounds that meet both criteria are not hard to find. A greenhouse is not a house that is green and a bookmaker does not make books. A doghouse looks as if it is another word for kennel, but usually only in the metaphorical sense of the ‘sinbin’ to which an errant husband is consigned by an angry wife. The assignment of stress can be somewhat arbitrary. In US English lamb chop and pork chop are pronounced as compounds, but in British English they are pronounced as phrases. Birth control is pronounced as a compound with the stronger stress on birth, but family planning is pronounced like a phrase. The meaning of family planning is not predictable from the meaning of family and the meaning of planning. Family planning is something English speakers have to learn, something to store in their lexicon. Recently, the expression fake news is one that has increased significantly in usage in both social and traditional media. If you want to discuss this subject, you need to use this term. It has to go into the mental lexicon, and even though it is transparent, it is pronounced like a phrase and is just one of a series of phrases that can be formed by the syntax: disturbing news, local news, overseas news, etc. Most of the thousands of items for sale in supermarkets and hardware stores have descriptive names that are formed from noun plus noun (tomato soup, pumpkin soup) or adjective plus noun (broad beans, black beans, refried beans). Many of these are lexicalised, as opposed to phrases such as cold soup or stale beans. A compound can serve as a stem for prefixing or suffixing. Some compounds occur only with the suffix -ing as with adjectives like hair-raising and side-splitting. Some compound nouns regularly occur with -ing, such as the following which all relate to practices that have emerged recently. Collectively they throw an interesting light on society. Consider binge-watching, catfishing, courtsiding, lane-filtering, pitchsiding, speed dating and upskirting. Binge-watching is watching a large number of recorded episodes of a TV series in rapid succession, while catfishing is using a false identity in social media to establish a relationship. Courtsiding and pitchsiding relate to the practice of sending electronic signals from a sporting contest to aid gamblers, who can take advantage of the 10-second delay between the play and the broadcast. Lane-filtering refers to allowing bike riders to ride between slow

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moving or stationary traffic. Speed dating is an interesting innovation. Groups of people seeking a relationship attend a venue where they have a succession of five-minute conversations with prospective partners. Upskirting is a form of sexual harassment that involves using a smartphone or concealed camera to take photos or film up women’s skirts. Compounding has always been one of the most productive word-formation processes throughout the history of English. The majority of compounds are nouns and the most popular type is noun plus noun as in carbon-copy, click-bait, game-changer, hatchback, ringtone, road rage, selfie stick and workstation, where the first noun modifies the second. In a few of these the genitive s is retained.This is obvious in an example like baker’s dozen, i.e. ‘thirteen’, where the apostrophe appears, less so where the words are written as one without the apostrophe as in beeswax, bullseye and menswear. Quite a few noun compounds are built from adjective plus noun including blackmail, hardware and software. A smaller number are made from verb plus noun, e.g. copycat, playboy. An interesting feature of compounding is the emerging of certain words as regular bases. Consider formations such as booze artist ‘heavy drinker’, bullshit artist ‘someone given to telling tall tales’, con artist ‘confidence trickster’, short-change artist and piss artist ‘drunkard, feckless person’. Artist emerges as something akin to a suffix like -er as in baker, commuter or petrol sniffer. These formations are lexicalised, but freak as in health freak, train freak, etc. and nut as in health nut, tennis nut, etc. play an analogous role, but the combinations are probably not lexicalised, except control freak. OED gives the noun tragic as a further example, marked as largely Australian. One can be a live-music tragic, Hawks tragic, Tigers tragic and so on. Again, these combinations are not lexicalised, buts shows that tragic can be used as a base for descriptive phrases. Over the last 100 years or so nouns compounded from verb plus preposition have become popular.1 In one type the preposition follows the verb as in (computer) backup, (suffer) burnout and a drop-out, which are nominalised from to back something up, to burn out and to drop out. The prepositional word in has a specialised meaning in examples such as sit-in, pray-in and teach-in since these refer to forms of communal protest. Sit-in was the original where African-Americans protested against racial segregation by sitting in whites-only areas of cafes and the like. In the other type the preposition precedes the verb as in downturn, income, intake and outcome. Break and out can be compounded into both patterns as in an outbreak of flu or a breakout from prison. Breakout is also popular now as a modifier as in his breakout year, the year in which he became prominent, or her breakout single or her breakout album, the music that catapulted her to stardom. Examples of compound adjectives include age-related, capital-intensive, card-carrying (communist), cash-poor, drip-dry (shirt), entry-level (job, wine, etc.), gluten-free, gobsmacked, good-looking, lead-free (petrol), fan-forced (oven), hair-raising (adventures), in-house, life-threatening, nail-biting (finish), short-listed, sun-drenched, upmarket, userfriendly, upfront and uptight. Downtown and offshore can be adjectives (downtown area, offshore account) or adverbs (go downtown, go offshore).

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Among verbs there is to double-park, to dumb down, to fine-tune, to head-hunt and to outsource, plus some that double as nouns including to breath test, to self-harm, to stake out, to take out, to take over. Verbs composed of a preposition followed by a verb take stress on the second component as in outrun, underestimate and overcook. Also in the lexicon are idiomatic phrases consisting of a verb and its object such as give rise to, take advantage of and the colloquial take the piss, and to add one that has become popular recently throw shade as in This throws serious shade on the proposal (casts doubt, puts in a bad light). There are a few compound adverbs such as out there as in I don’t know how many records I’ll sell, but it’s out there or You’ve got to get out there and put yourself about. Another is up there as in I don’t know if he’s the best ever, but he’s up there, i.e. up for consideration as the best. Recently there are been a tendency in English to devise compounds selfconsciously in an attempt to make up something cute, smart or catchy. Examples include granny bank ‘grandparents as loan source to finance a major purchase such as buying a house for their children or paying school fees for their grandchildren’ and granny dumping ‘sticking grandma or grandpa in the old folk’s home’. The constituents of these cute compounds are often chosen so that there is a rhyme or alliteration. There is rhyme, for instance, in fake bake ‘suntan achieved by lamp or bottle’ and gender bender ‘someone combining characteristics of both sexes’, and there is alliteration in bible basher and greedy guts. But apart from these colloquial examples there are some clever compounds that are part of the standard language. Consider cliff-hanger as in something like The election is expected to be a real cliff-hanger. The term originated in the United States with reference to radio and film serials where episodes often ended with the hero or heroine in danger. One common suspenseful situation involved someone literally hanging over the edge of a cliff. So we had a part-for-whole extension from cliff incidents to suspenseful climaxes in dramas in general and then a further metaphorical extension to suspenseful contests. Nail-biter started off life as a term for someone who bites their nails. This activity was thought to be in response to anxiety and the term was extended to a nervous person and then further to a close-fought contest that involved suspense and hence nervous tension, in other words a cliff-hanger. English has a number of compounds based on phrases including a has-been, a couldabeen, a stick-in-the mud and a wannabe. Phrase-based compounds are common as adjectives. Examples include dog-in-the-manger (attitude), once-in-a-lifetime (opportunity), never-to-be-forgotten (experience), couldn’t-care-less (attitude) and take-it-or-leave-it (attitude). This is not common across languages, but it is common in English and we even make up nonce (one-off ) examples. For instance, you might hear someone say something like, ‘He got that ifIfeellikeit attitude’, or, to quote some examples heard from teenagers, ‘She’s so wouldn’t-getit’ and ‘She’s so not-with-it.’ In the extreme case you find a whole sentence used as if it were a word as in, ‘It’s one of those Close-your-eyes-and-think-of-England moments.’

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Some words originate as compounds but subsequent reduction renders their compound origin opaque. Breakfast and cupboard look like compounds in their written form, but cup, board, break and fast cannot be picked out in the pronunciation. A person not literate in English, and there are many such, would have no reason to think of breakfast as referring to breaking one’s fast, nor connecting cupboard with cup and board, which does not make much sense anyway. In some cases the compound has been obscured in the spelling as well as in the pronunciation. Daisy, for instance, comes from Old English dæ ges-eage ‘day’s eye’, while lord comes from Old English hlaf-weard ‘loaf-ward’, i.e. bread-guardian, and lady derives from hlaf-dige ‘loaf-knead’. The pair makes an interesting comment on gender relations. In most compounds the first word modifies the second, but there are a few examples where neither noun modifies the other as in owner–occupier and ­secretary– treasurer. This type of relationship is typical of blends, which are described in § 7.3 below. And finally there are a few score of compounds that arise from frequently occurring sequences that have been taken as single words. An obvious example is into, and others include altogether, inasmuch and nonetheless. Quite a few arise from sequences in which there, where and here are followed by a preposition. Prepositions normally precede, as the etymology of the name suggests, but prepositions follow interrogative adverbs in questions (Where to?) and in earlier English they followed relative adverbs. Both possibilities can be found in Coverdale’s translation of the Bible: Where upon stonde the pilers of it? and The pilers wher upon the house stondeth (1535). thereby therein thereof thereupon therewith

whereby wherein whereof whereupon wherewith

hereby herein hereof hereupon herewith

Most words of this type are formal, and some are archaic as with Wherefore are thou Romeo? (Romeo and Juliet Act II, Scene II) where modern audiences sometimes take wherefore to be a variant of where rather than a word meaning why.

7.2 Neo-classical compounds English has numerous words such as biology, biography, polygamy, polygraph and telephone which break up into two meaningful segments, but where neither segment can stand on its own. Phone does occur as a word, but only as an abbreviation of telephone. It is unsatisfactory to call the first element a prefix and the second a suffix, since that would mean there is no base. The forms used in the words are mostly taken from Greek and, in some cases, Latin, but the combinations did not occur in the classical languages, obviously not with inventions such as the

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telephone. The formations have been called neo-classical compounds and the segments are called combining elements, so that, for instance, tele- is a combining element meaning ‘far’ and -phone is a combining element meaning ‘voice’. However, a combining element can also be used as a prefix. Micro- is a combining element in microphone, but a prefix in micro-economics, microsurgery and microclimate.

7.3 Blends One way to form new words is to blend two words together. Twirl, first recorded in the late sixteenth century, appears to be formed from twist and whirl. A blend differs from a compound in two ways. In terms of form part of at least one word is lost. With twirl there is loss of -ist from twist and wh- from whirl. In terms of meaning there is often no head and no modifier. Both constituents have equal status and the meaning is a blend of the meaning of the constituents, so there is an iconic relation between form and meaning. Twirl blends the meanings of twist and whirl. Another term for blend is portmanteau word. This comes from Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass. Humpty Dumpty explains that slithy, a word from the nonsense poem Jabberwocky, means ‘lithe and slimy’. ‘Lithe is the same as active. You see it’s like a portmanteau – there are two meanings packed up into one word.’ Blending was very much a minor word-formation process for most of the history of English and OED tends to be cautious about identifying the elements of the few likely blends that can be found before the twentieth century. Hermaphrodite, a blend of Hermes (a male god) and Aphrodite (a female god) has been in English since the Middle Ages, but it came from Greek via Latin. It refers to a person who combines characteristics of both sexes. Eurasian is clearly a blend of Europe and Asia plus the suffix -an found in words like African and Persian. It dates from 1844 for a person with both European and Asian ancestry. OED does not record Eurasia for the landmass combining Europe and Asia, but it does exist. Blending began to be used more around the turn of the twentieth century when brunch (1896, breakfast-lunch) and smog (1905, smoke-fog) appeared, followed not long after by motorcade (motor-cavalcade) in 1910, surprisingly early considering motor cars were in their infancy. As the twentieth century progressed blends became increasingly popular. Examples include motel (1925, motor-hotel), discography (1930, disc-bibliography), newscast (1934, ­ news-broadcast), t­elecast (1937, television-broadcast), breathalyser (1960, breath-analyser), d­ ocudrama (1961, documentary-drama), filmography (1962, film-bibliography), sitcom (1964, situation-comedy), stagflation (1965, stagnation-inflation), carjacking (1970, car-hijacking) and tele-marketing (1980, telephone-marketing). Recent examples include bromance (brother-romance), a close non-sexual relationship between males, and chugger (charity-mugger), someone aggressively seeking donations from passers-by.

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Whereas most new words ‘just happen’ and we find them in the language without our knowing where they came from, blends tend to be conscious creations. Some are formal as with Tanzania, an east African state formed in 1964 by the union of the republics of Tanganyika and Zanzibar. Others are informal and appear to be conscious attempts at being smart. Staycation (stay-vacation), a term for a holiday spent at home, dates from 1944 and ginormous (giganticenormous) dates from 1948 as a slang term for anything considered very big. Recently affluenza has had an airing in the media and on the Web. A blend of affluence and influenza, it refers to the complaint of having more money than you know what to do with. It is not yet an established word, more like a joke that is going the rounds. The emerging trend to make up smart blends is epitomised by the work of Lizzie Skurnick, who has published a book titled That Should Be a Word featuring blends such as twiticule (twitter-ridicule) ‘making fun of somebody in a tweet’ and martyrmony (martyr-matrimony) ‘staying married out of a sense of duty’.2 Other smart blends, most of which have some claims to being established, include ambisextrous (ambidextrous-sex), greenwash (green-(hog)wash) – an allegedly insincere claim by an organisation that they are protective of the environment – and himbo (he or him+bimbo), i.e. ‘male bimbo’. Spamily (spam-family) refers to people who bombard their acquaintances with family photos via Facebook or Instagram. Besides the well-establish glitterati (glitter-(liter)ati) there is now twitterati for keen users of Twitter. Metrosexual is very much in vogue at the time of writing for a man who is up with the latest fashion in dress, cuisine and lifestyle generally. It is made up from the metro- of metropolitan and the -sexual of homosexual, not that it implies homosexuality, though it does reflect the fact that a metrosexual’s lifestyle is likely to raise the question. A man who likes to cook to impress his friends is a gastrosexual. A man who doesn’t care about his appearance and lifestyle is a retrosexual, which combines retro- with (homo)sexual. Another recent blend is locavore (2005), local plus the -vore of carnivore, etc., for someone who makes a fetish of eating locally produced food. An even more recent one is plogging, which refers to the practice of picking up litter while out jogging. It is a blend of Swedish plocka upp ‘pick up’ and jogging. Computers and associated technology probably represent the domain where recent blends abound. The term bit derived from binary digit and dates back to 1948. It also appears in the compound bitcoin, the name of a major crypto-currency introduced in 2009. Other recent formations include adware (advertisement-software), blog (web-log), email (electronic mail), emoticon (emotion-icon), infotainment (information-entertainment), malware (malicious-software), podcast (iPod-broadcast), sexting (sex-texting), webcam (web-camera) and Wikipedia, which is a blend of Hawaiian wikiwiki ‘quick’ and encyclopedia. With food and drink there are a number of examples. Take cheeseburger, which is recorded from 1938. As is probably obvious, it is based on cheese and (ham)burger. The word hamburger has been used in English since the seventeenth century for

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a person from Hamburg and since the late nineteenth century for the familiar minced beef patty served in a bread roll or bun, originally in the phrase hamburger steak. Since cheeseburger there have been numerous similar blends such as veggie burger, steak burger, chicken burger or tofu burger. Since burger can now be used on its own, these formations are for practical purposes compounds with the first word modifying burger. Alcopop (alcohol-sodapop) refers to drinks with alcohol and fruit juice, a kind of weakly alcoholic soft drink (if that’s not an oxymoron). Cappuccino coffee has given rise to a number of derivatives, such as babyccino, frothaccino, muggaccino – a cappuccino served in a mug – and Frappuccino from frappé  + cappuccino, the tradename of a line of frozen coffee drinks from Starbucks. Blends are regularly used for dogs of mixed breed such as dalmador (Dalmatian + Labrador), labradoodle (Labrador + poodle) and puggle (pug + beagle). Forms of English spoken by second-language speakers are often represented by blends. Singlish is English spoken by Singaporeans and Spanglish is English spoken by native speakers of Spanish.

Notes 1 Algeo 1998: 68. 2 That Should Be a Word: A Language Lover’s Guide to Choregasms, Povertunity, Brattling, and 250 Other Much-Needed Terms for the Modern World, Workman 2015.

8 AFFIXES

8.1 Prefixes and suffixes The great majority of languages employ prefixes or suffixes or both, with suffixes being more popular than prefixes. English employs over 100 suffixes and nearly 50 prefixes, though only a small proportion are productive. Prefixes and suffixes played a major role in word formation in Old English and some survive as productive affixes in Present-day English. The Old English suffixes that live on in mill-er, craft-y, friend-less, sore-ness and sorrow-ful are all quite productive. The suffix -ling as in darling (dear-ling) and underling is hardly productive but appears in what seems to be a new word, namely earthling. However, the form earthling (eorthling) was used in Old English for a man who worked the soil, a farmer or ploughman. In Middle English earthling came to be used for a dweller of earth as opposed to heaven, and it has been given a new lease of life in Science-Fiction. In English the suffix -er as in writer has served for centuries to mark the derivation of nouns from verbs. Most examples are agents as in baker, cleaner and driver or tools as in clipper, rubber and sharpener, but there are other possibilities such as diner, when it refers to a certain type of restaurant, and it extends further to someone associated with a place, e.g. Londoner, or an activity, e.g. footballer.There is also a suffix -ee (borrowed from French), which complements -er. A noun suffixed with -ee can correspond with an indirect object or the object of a preposition as in payee, grantee, to the patient of a verb as in evacuee, interviewee, or to the subject of an intransitive verb or adjective as in standee and absentee. The general idea is non-agent and for that reason escapee has always seemed anomalous. It makes it seem as if some villains have fallen out of a police van or been left behind when a work party returned to the prison. Escaper is recorded from as far back as the seventeenth century, but it is little used. The -ee suffix is much used in nonce

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formations. For example, in describing who the agent was and who the patient in a mugging, I could say Jones was the mugger and Smith the muggee. Mugger is a word of English, but muggee is not, but we can make up a word like muggee if it suits our purpose.1 Besides the suffix -er for forming agent nouns from verbs, Old English had a suffix -ster for forming female agent nouns as in hoppestre, ‘female dancer’. This lives on in Present-day English, but it no longer refers to females and it is now added almost exclusively to noun stems. It tends to be pejorative, witness fraudster, gangster, mobster and shyster and a few words to do with those who make unappreciated fun, words like jokester, prankster, punster and trickster.2 The suffix -ish goes back to Old English and can be found in folcisc (folk-ish) ‘popular’ or ‘secular’ and mennisc (man-ish) ‘human’. It is very productive. ­ Examples include words like biggish, boyish as in boyish charm, roguish as in roguish smile or rakish as in rakish angle. Quite a few ish-words express a negative point of view. Obvious examples include churlish, devil-may-careish, fiendish, foolish, hellish, prudish and selfish, and the occurrence of -ish with words denoting rough male behaviour put it in really bad company, e.g. brutish, loutish, oafish and yobbish. Then there are words not negative in their meaning, but likely to be used to express a negative point of view. Take, for example, bookish, a term I might use to dismiss a word as being found only in older literature, childish, used in criticising someone’s behaviour (compare child-like), leftish, a word likely to be used by those not of that political persuasion, and popish as in popish plot, again a word likely to be used by the non-sympathetic. It is also used for nonce formations, particularly in allusive formations such Spectator-ish or West Endish. It is frequently used with colour terms, as in blueish and yellowish, which is natural enough when you consider that the colour spectrum is a continuum. As noted in Chapter 4, English has imported numerous prefixes and some suffixes from Latin and Greek, and recently a few more have been resurrected and brought into service. The Latin pre- in the word prefix itself is historically a prefix and it occurs in words like pregnant, prefer and prepare.The basic meaning is ‘before’. This is clear in prefix and perhaps in pregnant, though it would be hard to identify the prefix in pregnant without the written form since the syllable break is between preg- and -nant.The identification is likewise not quite so clear in words like prefer and prepare. Over the last 100 years it has been given new life in formations such the nouns pre-school and pre-season, the adjectives pre-approved, pre-booked and preowned and the verbs pre-cook, pre-record and pre-set.3 There is also pre-drinking, which is drinking alcohol at home, usually in company, before going to drink alcohol at a function, party or entertainment venue. Note that in the modern formations the prefix is always pronounced ‘pree’. De- is another prefix that was introduced into English via words imported from Latin such as demolish, deduce and depend. Like pre-, it has been given a new lease of life and is currently quite productive.Witness deconstruct, defrost, defund (remove the funding), deglaze (the pan), dehumidify, delist, dehumanise and decentralise. In parallel

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with what we noted with pre-, this prefix is always pronounced ‘dee’ in modern formations. The Latin prefix re- meaning ‘back’ or ‘again’ is found in words like repeat, rescind, respond and return. In Present-day English it is moderately productive and can be used in nonce formations. For instance, a sales representative intending to display his materials again for the benefit of latecomers could say that he was going to re-present his material, and note the pronunciation of re- would be as ree so that re-present contrasts with represent. Other modern examples include reboot (the computer), recatalogue (documents), rehome (dogs), reinitialise (reset the starting values for a computer programme) and rewild (the forest) by reintroducing wild animals. The suffix -ise (-ize) has been used a lot in English over the last 100 years or so to yield new words such as finalise, glamourise, tenderise (meat), moisturise (the skin), sanitise (a hotel toilet or a news report), prioritise, radicalise (to cause someone to adopt an extreme point of view), novelise (to turn a screenplay into a novel) and veganise (to substitute vegetable products for animal ones in a recipe). Denormalise, as in ‘these tough new laws against smoking will help denormalise smoking’, combines the prefix de- and the suffix -ise. The prefix mini- is distinctive in that it can be freely used with a noun to indicate a small version of something, so we encounter words like mini-budget, mini-conference and mini-tour, which for the most part are not lexicalised. It is from the Latin root mini- as in miniature and minimum. It was popularised by the introduction of the Mini Minor motor car in 1959 and helped along by the appearance of the mini-skirt in 1966. Mini can be used as a noun for the car, the skirt or, in context, for the small version of a variety of objects. The opposite of mini- is maxi-.This prefix is probably an abbreviated form of maximum rather than directly from the Latin adjective maximus, which is the superlative of magnus ‘big’, ‘great’. OED has an entry from the New York Times Magazine, 1984, which tells the story of its rise: ‘Maxi- has been steadily gaining ground since its humble emergence as a prefix for a garment length in maxicoat, maxidress, etc. Recent examples of its use include maxicassette, maxibudget, maxisecret, maxitaxi and maxisingle.’ A maxisingle is a CD nominally of a single number but with extra tracks. A large racing yacht (21 metres or more) is a maxi-yacht. Maxi can be used on its own as a noun for a maxi-skirt or dress or a maxi-yacht. A number of other classical roots have emerged in English as prefixes recently. Micro- is a combining element in words like micrometer and microscope but is a prefix in microchip and microwave. Similarly, macro- is a combining element in macroscopic and macrocosm, but a prefix in macroeconomics. Mega- is a combining form in Greek meaning ‘big’ or ‘great’. It has some currency in English as a combining form in words like megalith, but in the twentieth century it has emerged as a prefix in both scientific terms and popular terms. Examples from science include terms such as megacurie ‘a unit of radioactivity’ and words like megalitre and megawatt, only too familiar from our utility bills. Popular

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examples include mega-event, mega-exhibition, megastar, megastore and mega-bucks. Mega also has some currency as an adjective analogous to super as in ‘It was mega.’ The Latin combining form multi- ‘many’ has been in English since the Middle Ages in words such as multitude. Since the nineteenth century it has been used a lot in scientific terms such as multidigitate ‘having many fingers’. Over the course of the last century it has come to be used as a prefix in non-technical words like multicoloured, multidirectional, multifunctional, multimedia, multimillionaire, multinational, multiracial, multitalented and multitasking. Multisyllabic has some currency as an alternative to polysyllabic. Multisyllabic rhyme is the standard term in rap circles where rhyme extending over more than one syllable as in precarious/hilarious is prized. Multiplex as in multiplex cinema, which sounds new, is a new use of a word that has been in English for over 600 years meaning ‘multiple’. Some multi- words such as multimillionaires, multinationals and multivitamins can be abbreviated to just multi. Curiously multi- has become very productive in slang.There is multibitching ‘complaining to or about several people at once’, multichatting ‘communicating online to more than one person at a time’ and multislacking ‘filling in time on surfing the net, switching TV channels, etc.’ Examples run to hundreds, but few are likely to be well established. The Latin prefix super ‘above’ has been in English since the seventeenth century. It is currently very popular, possibly helped by the fictional Superman and by our appetite for forms expressing ‘big’ or ‘very’. Recent examples include supercomputer, superglue, superhero, supermarket, superpower, superstar and supertanker. Super can be used as a noun standing for various words prefixed with super- such as superannuation, superintendent and superphosphate and for high-octane petrol. It is also a colloquial adjective, particularly in predicative use: Isn’t it super? It’s really super. Super can also be used as a modifier in nonce formations such as supersecret and super-exciting. The Greek cognate of Latin super is hyper. It occurs in a number of terms for health or medical conditions such as hyperactive (sometimes abbreviated to hyper), hypertension, hypersensitive, hyperglycaemia and hypercholesterolemia. Hypersensitive and supersensitive make an interesting comparison. Hypersensitive tends to be negative and implies excessive sensitivity in a human, whereas supersensitive is positive and applies to humans or other animals (supersensitive taste-buds) or inanimates (supersensitive smoke alarm). Hyper- has some currency in the business world with positive connotations. Hyperlocal advertising is advertising targeted to specific areas, and a hypermarket is bigger than a supermarket and usually combines a supermarket and a department store. The Latin preposition ultra ‘beyond’ has been used in English since the nineteenth century as a prefix, partly in scientific terms such as ultraviolet and partly with reference to views considered as extreme as in ultraconservative, ultranationalist and ultrarevolutionary. It also comes up in recent formations such as ultra-fast (mobile telephony), ultramarathon and related terms such as ultrarun and ultradistance, and in ultraviolence, which is used mainly with reference to very violent films.

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The penchant for prefixes meaning ‘very big’ is also reflected in German ü ber ‘over’ or ‘very’ adopted into English in the 1960s and used like a prefix, though it can be used also as a separate word. It can be found (with or without the umlaut) in nouns such as uber-model (applied to famous models such as Cindy Crawford, usually described as supermodels), uber-geek and uber-nerd, and adjectives such as uber-chic and uber-cool. OED has an entry from 2007 with uber-thin equated with super-skinny. Uber can be used as an adverb in phrases such as uber fancy and uber ultra-cute or on its own, ‘Isn’t that uber!’4 The Greek preposition peri ‘around’ is well established as a combining element in English in words such as perimeter and periscope. It is now being used as a prefix in perinatal (the time just before and just after birth) and peri-urban, the area around the fringes of a city. One surprising addition to the list of prefixes is cis-. It is a Latin preposition/prefix meaning ‘on this side of ’. Students of Roman history will be familiar with the distinction between cisalpine Gaul (Gaul this side of the Alps) and Transalpine Gaul (Gaul across the Alps). This is practically the only context where one is likely to encounter the prefix cis-. However, in the twenty-first century in the burgeoning discourse on people who have physical characteristics of both sexes or who feel a disparity between their physical appearance and the sex they identify with we find the terms transsexual and transgender. This has led to cissexual and cisgender or cisgendered for people who are unambiguously of one sex or the other and whose personal identity corresponds to their birth sex.5 See also § 13.6. This section is not intended to cover every affix in English, but there are two suffixes that need to be mentioned since they are distinctive in function. The first is spelt either as ie or y. It can be found in daddy, dearie and hankie. It is not imported and it has no clear etymology. In general, it does not alter the meaning of the stem, but produces a form that is informal, sometimes a pet name. So birdie, doggie and piggy are pet forms of bird, dog and pig. Pet names or terms of endearment have the alternative learned name of hypocoristic forms.They have something in common with diminutives as in languages such as Spanish, Italian and French, where suffixes are used to mark what is nominally the small version of something. In Italian, for instance, la mano is ‘the hand’ and la manina ‘the little hand’ but with tones of endearment and it could be translated ‘handie’. In English the suffix -ie/-y can be added to given names as in Betty and Charlie and it figures in the register used by children and by anyone talking to children as in doggy, froggy, mousie, mummy, tummy and so on. In adult speech it is used with a variety of stems, usually abbreviated if longer than one syllable, as in bookie, hankie, lassie, nightie, trekkie (a fan of the TV Sci-Fi series Star Trek) and undies. It can be attached to an adjective to yield a noun as in newie (there is also newbie ‘a new member of a club, fraternity, etc.’), smoothie, softie and sweetie. Selfie is interesting in that the base is grammatical rather than lexical, and so is the adjective iffy. In some formations it has a casual, critical undertone as in druggie, dummie, fatty, groupie and weepie, a rather off-hand colloquialism for a sad movie, a ‘tear-jerker’.

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There is also a similar suffix -o, which is used to form colloquial variants. OED notes, ‘The use of the suffix is widespread in English-speaking countries and is especially associated with Australia.’ It is used to form nouns from short, mainly monosyllabic, adjective or noun stems, as in cheapo, dumbo, sicko (person with disgusting habits), wierdo and wino or from abbreviated words as in aggro (aggravation), combo (combination) and metho (methylated spirits). This -o coincides with o in abbreviated colloquial forms such as condo (condominium), dipso (dipsomaniac), hippo (hippopotamus), intro (introduction), Metho (Methodist) and nitro (nitroglycerin). New prefixes and suffixes are rare, but here’s an example of how one can arise. In 1972 supporters of President Nixon broke into the offices of the Democratic Party’s National Committee at the Watergate Hotel in Washington. They were discovered and the name Watergate became synonymous with scandal. Although Watergate is essentially a meaningless name, the practice arose of adding -gate to words to describe scandals. In 1986 the Reagan administration was found to have been selling arms to Iran and this was dubbed Irangate. They were found to be using the profits to supply the anti-Communist Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua. This was Contragate.These two examples are still used in writing about the Reagan administration, but most of the examples are ephemeral and many refer to trivial incidents. One recent example that is relevant to language is pastagate. In 2013 an inspector from the Quebec office of French language warned a restaurant against using terms such as pasta and antipasto instead of the French equivalents. The restaurateur went public, which led to an outcry, and the demand to use French terms was never enforced.

8.2 Back-formation Consider the words babysit and babysitter. Babysitter appears to be made up from babysit plus the suffix -er and from the point of view of the language as we find it, that is true. Historically, however, babysitter was in use first and then the suffix was removed to yield babysit.This is back-formation.When a word is first backformed, it will seem relatively unfamiliar and people will realise it is an innovation.The words vape and vaping, which refer to smoking e-cigarettes, are relatively new at the time of writing, whereas vapour is a word of long standing, so it is clear that vape and vaping result from back formation. Other words that result from this process are to burgle, to curate, to edit, to enthuse, to hawk, to intuit, to sculpt, to surveill, to reminisce and the compounds to air-condition, to gate-crash, to lip-read, to stage-manage, to vacuum-clean and to window-shop.6 Over the last 20 years or so the verb to morph has become very popular. It originally referred to the transformation of one image into another in a film or TV programme, for instance, the image of a cygnet morphing into an image of a swan. It then came to be used for the transformation itself as in The cygnet morphed into the swan. It was further extended to various types of transformation as in The once

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shy schoolboy morphed into a confident business man. Morph is back-formed, but the source is not straightforward. OED suggests metamorphosis, and this would seem likely as a metamorphosis is a change as in the metamorphosis of a maggot into a fly. An interesting example is empath, back-formed from the set empathy/empathic/ empathise (Word recognises that this word is back-formed by turning empath into empathy each time I type it). The term has its origins in science fiction and refers to a person with the paranormal ability to perceive the mental or emotional state of another individual. Commander Deanna Troi, the protagonist of the TV series Star Trek:The Next Generation, is described as an empath. The term is also used for anyone who is finely tuned to the feelings of others.7

Notes 1 See also Bauer 1994: 40–7 for examples. One formation where there is no corresponding verb is biographee. There is no verb to biograph, at least not yet. 2 The root of shyster is not known. OED marks it as slang and it is originally a US term. 3 The pre- in pre-book would appear to be redundant. 4 It might seem that the adverb extra should rate a mention here. It derives from a Latin preposition extra meaning ‘outside’, ‘beyond’, but in English it is back formed from extraordinary. Semantically it certainly fits with super-, ultra- and the like since it is used in collocations such as extra special and extra sweet. 5 The cis- and trans- prefixes are also used in organic chemistry in describing the orientation of constituents of molecules. 6 Wikipedia lists over 200 examples, almost all twentieth century, but few are likely to be in regular use. 7 Empathise was mentioned in §  5.2.1.

9 ZERO DERIVATION

Most languages have some kind of overt derivation to convert a word from one part of speech to another. The most common method is to use a suffix and English has a number of such suffixes, some of which were mentioned in the previous chapter including -er to mark the derivation of a noun from a verb as in drive/driver, and -ise as in legal/legalise, which derives a verb from an adjective. However, as we noted in Chapter 2, English quite freely allows words to be shifted from one part of speech to another without any change of form, a process known as zero derivation or conversion. Derivation often involves an irregularity with meaning as we saw with recite and recital, in Chapter 2 where it was noted that recite refers to spoken delivery, but recital usually refers to a musical performance. This lack of predictability is also found with moving a word from one word-class to another. A ghost is the disembodied spirit of a human, but to ghost is to write an examination paper, an assignment or a literary work on behalf of another.The form ghost can also appear as a modifier in the compound ghost writer, which refers to the person or writes a literary work for someone else, usually the autobiography (sic!) of a sports star, film star or other celebrity. A paper can be a newspaper, an academic text of chapter size or a cigarette paper (for those who ‘roll their own’), but to paper means ‘to cover with wallpaper’. Conversion is a process of long standing. In Shakespeare’s Richard II (Act II, Scene III) the Duke of York, when addressed as ‘my gracious uncle’, replies, ‘Grace me no grace and uncle me no uncle’, where grace and uncle are used as verbs. Most conversions are between the major word classes, namely noun, verb and adjective, but there are other possibilities. In The Busie Body (Act II, Scene I) Susanna Centlivre, the celebrated playwright of the early eighteenth century, uses the conjunction but as a verb and as a noun, ‘But me no buts.’ Over the last seventy years

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or so conversion from one part-of-speech to another has become particularly productive and examples run to thousands. On top of this nonce formations are not uncommon. Similar to conversion is marking the difference between a verb and a noun or adjective with a shift in stress. The noun import has the stress on the first syllable and the verb to import has the stress on the second. Frequent as an adjective has the stress on the first syllable, but the verb to frequent has the stress on the second, but here there is also a difference in the vowels. In the adjective frequent the vowel of the second syllable is reduced to the indeterminate vowel, and in the verb to frequent the vowel of the first syllable may be reduced, so it is not just a matter of the position of the stress.

9.1 Noun to verb The conversion of nouns to verbs is the most common form of conversion.There is even a word for it in some circles, namely verbing. OED has an example from 1984: ‘Practically any noun can be verbed in English.’ Here is a list of examples, most of them quite recent: to access files, to architect a building, a solution, a future, etc., to auction property, to birth a baby, to blackmail, to bottle the home brew, to commerce ( as in the publisher will commerce the author well), to donor (act as a donor), to dux one’s class (gain top marks), to eye the cakes, to finger someone (inform on or touch up), to hammer the nail (or to hammer the point home), to host a party, to intrigue the reader, to lunch, to name a child, to parent children, to pocket the takings, to premiere in Cannes, to salt the fish, to sex chickens, to shape the future of the company, to summit the mountain, to sunset the process, service, etc., to suicide, to torch the building, to trial a new product or process. Other recently formed examples include to email a friend, to google, to message someone, to microwave the pizza, to network, to nuance the text before presenting it, to showcase one’s talents, to text someone via mobile/cell phone, to trial the case (bring to trial, traditionally try the case), to profile (a celebrity in an article) and to workshop (what came up in the plenary session of a conference).1 The noun partner has long been used as a verb as in to partner someone to the ball and to partner someone in doubles (tennis). Now one finds ads that read seeking singles to partner (not tennis). Trend has been in the language for centuries as a noun and verb and referred to a tendency to change direction. The verb could be used literally as in The rail-road trended to the right (1792) or metaphorically as in The discussion …  trended away from theology in the direction of politics (1886), but the verb hardly survived into the twentieth century. The noun, however, survived and could refer to the way thoughts were turning or tending and this sense of ‘tendency’ has developed recently into ‘be a hot topic’, especially ‘a hot topic in the social media’ where an issue can be

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on trend. Trend in this sense has been converted to a verb, particularly in present participle form: Justin Bieber trends really high and some people …  then tweet about the fact that he’s trending, which only makes him trend higher (2010). The noun trash has been in the language since the sixteenth century to refer to hedge clippings and the like. In the early twentieth century it began to be used in the United States for domestic garbage, and more recently it has come to be used as a verb meaning ‘vandalise’.We sometimes read of celebrities trashing their hotel room or rioters trashing the offices of their political enemies.There is also a phrase to trash the brand referring to behaviour that allegedly damages the reputation of a company. It is common in the media to speak or write of sports stars medaling or podiuming, i.e. receiving a medal or being placed in an event and therefore earning a place on the podium for the presentation of medals. These verb usages probably strike us as being relatively new. In the case of podium it appears all the verb examples are very recent, for instance: I realized it was not worth it to go out and run the 1,600 if there was a chance I wouldn’t podium (2011). However, the use of medal as a verb is not new. OED has an example from 1860, admittedly in a non-sporting context: Irving went home medalled by the king. It has become popular in the media to use gift as a verb and it arouses adverse comments from conservatives. The usage is not new. OED has an example from the sixteenth century – He gyfted them richely with right good speede – and others down to the late nineteenth century – Many settlements … were gifted subsequently with parliamentary representation. In contemporary usage the recipient is often considered to have had a windfall, a lucky gift. For instance, if some competitors in a race fall over and a lowly ranked competitor is able to win, the successful competitor is said to have been gifted the race. Similarly, if a football player on the back line falls or fumbles and allows an opposing forward to goal, the team that scores is said to have been gifted a goal.2 Even nouns with noun-forming suffixes can be converted to verbs. Inventory as a verb is recorded from the sixteenth century, as is to dialogue. To position is recorded first in the seventeenth century. To allowance (a portion of corn) is recorded from the eighteenth, as is to action and to commission: You have commission’d me to paint your Shop, and I have done my best to brush you up like your Neighbours (1706). To oversight (workmen) is recorded from the nineteenth century. A headline to a report on a recent boxing match read Mayweather decisions Maidana in thriller. This reads like headlinese, but boxing examples of decision as a verb go back at least to 1914: He has done ring service … having decisioned … George Chip. OED has earlier examples of decision as a verb in other contexts, but they are labelled ‘colloquial, regional and nonstandard’, for instance: I decisioned tu elope with you in kinsequence (1877). The use of stretcher as a verb seems to be recent. OED’s earliest citation is from The Daily Mirror (1976): the sickening blow of seeing Gary Locke stretchered off in only the seventh minute. Another example that is relatively new is the use of transition as a verb. The earliest examples in OED date from 1975. The following example is from the

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Washington Post: Macmillan, the former British prime minister, has transitioned himself from a somewhat nervous childhood … into an old age of supremely confident ease (1980). Webster has examples of a company that transitioned to new management and a student who is transitioning to a new school. Nowadays, a person can transition gender or transition sex or simply transition. Examples like this tend to evoke negative comment, particularly as established verbs such as change and transfer are available.

9.2 Noun to adjective Nouns regularly modify nouns as in Paris fashions, newspaper editor, teak furniture and Saturday takings and, as we saw in the previous chapter, some such collocations such as tomato soup are lexicalised. In some collocations the modifier that appears to be a noun is in fact an adjective and the evidence is in the change of meaning. Take average, for instance. It is a noun meaning ‘arithmetic mean’, but it can be used as an adjective as in a very average performance or He’s quite average. There is a change in meaning from ‘arithmetic mean’ to ‘ordinary’ or ‘not particularly good’, an understandable shift since the arithmetic mean does not indicate success. Square has been recorded as noun, verb and adjective since the fourteenth century. If we take the noun as basic, and I think that that would be accepted, then we have conversion to adjective. Certainly, the form in question can take the comparative as in Try to get the frame squarer and Stand squarer to the wicket [in cricket]. In the derived sense of ‘conservative’, it can take the superlative. He’s the squarest person I’ve ever come across. Other nouns that can be converted to adjectives include the following, where in each case the meaning of the adjective is not the literal meaning of the noun: brute (force), mammoth (fire), model (citizen) and animal (attraction).

9.3 Verb to noun Examples of verbs used as nouns include the following: to launch an attack, to make a call, to issue a command, to have a sleep, to catch a spy, to give a shove, to make a start. These are all well-established, but there are recent examples. The verb to commute, with reference to travelling to work, goes back to the turn of the twentieth century. Commute the noun as in to have a long commute is first recorded in OED from 1960. It is less common than the verb and is probably perceived as the result of conversion. The same applies to the noun spend as in 100 extra frequent-flyer points on your next spend. The traditional noun formed from the verb reveal is revelation, but it is common now to use reveal as a noun as in something like, The hero seemed innocent until the final reveal where it came out that he had murdered his brother. The noun interrupt is fairly new. It refers to the interrupting of one computer program

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to switch to a more urgent one. To build is a well-established verb along with the noun build as in A man of solid build. But now the noun build is in common use referring to the operation of building as in The build will take three years. This may be motivated by the fact that the noun building is ambiguous. It can refer to the product of building activity (a tall building) or to the activity itself (The building will take three years).The noun build is also to be found nowadays with reference to more abstract forms of a building operation as in a roster build and a team re-build. Although primarily a verb ask is also used as a noun. It has become popular fairly recently in colloquial usage and this upsurge might make it seem to be comparatively new. However, a little research reveals that it has been used as a noun, at least occasionally, since Old English. A straightforward example from Modern English is I am not so unreasonable as to desire you to … answer all my asks (1781). The verb mostly refers to requests for information (ask a question), but it can refer to requests for action (ask someone to do something) or for money (ask a high price). The noun refers only to demands for action or for money or a donation of some kind, and it has come into common use in contexts such as the following: four pounds is ‘a big ask’ (1987) and Every week is a bit of an ask (2003), where what is asked is a lot to ask.

9.4 Verb to adjective Verbs can be converted to adjectives, but it is not the root that is converted but inflected forms.You can say She is an amusing girl or He was greatly amused. Other examples with the present participle include very boring, very entertaining and quite tiring. Examples with the past participle include agreed (sum), (unfairly) blamed, fictionalised (account) and (absolutely) wrecked.

9.5 Adjective to noun The conversion of adjectives to nouns often arises from the omission of a noun from an adjective–noun phrase. To take a straightforward example, if we talk of a tabloid, this is derived from a tabloid newspaper. However, if we say Fred is a regular at the local pub, we mean he is a regular patron or regular visitor. Here it is less certain what the omitted noun is. In other cases there is no likely phrase that serves as a starting point. The noun intellectual is derived from the adjective, but a phrase such as intellectual person hardly occurs. As mentioned above in §  5.1.7 these conversions from adjective to noun involve a change of meaning, usually a narrower meaning. Here are some other examples: to set the alarm (clock), to be attacked by crazies, to read a daily (newspaper), to become a drunk, to recycle the empties (empty bottles), to do one’s finals (exams), to call in the heavies, local (hotel, bar), microwave (oven), to collect originals, to view video nasties, to admire the royals, to eat sweets.

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The irregular forms used to express the comparative and superlative degree of good and bad can be converted to nouns: He was respectful towards his betters, He gave his best, Worse was to come and Let them do their worst.

9.6 Adjective to verb Examples of adjectives used as verbs include the following: to bare your arm, to better the previous record, to blunt the knife, to calm the situation, clear the table, don’t dirty the tablecloth, to let dry in the sun, to dry the dishes, to empty the ash trays, to faint, the wine will mature over the next few years, to mature the concept or idea, to open the door, to right a wrong, to savage, to total a car, the white cloth yellowed over time, to wet your lips. In some instances there is a shift of stress between adjective and verb so we do not have true conversion. Examples include to abstract and to perfect where the adjective takes stress on the first syllable, but the verb on the second.

9.7 Other conversions Outside the three major word classes of noun, adjective and verb, examples of conversion are not common. There are a few examples of conversion to nouns from prepositional words (ups and downs, ins and outs, afters), from adverbs (the whys and wherefores, the hereafter), from conjunctions (no ifs and buts) and from interjections (her oohs and aahs). As mentioned in Chapter 7, phrases can also be nominalised: an also-ran, a has-been, a couldabeen. Some prepositions can be used as verbs: to up the ante, up the price, then she ups and leaves, he downed the drink. Prepositions modify nouns in up train, down train, the in thing and the off ramp and there are some conversions to adjective with a change in meaning: She’s been up (cheerful) for weeks, He’s been quite down (depressed) for days, They are really in with the toffs (accepted), I’m a bit off (unwell) and He’s a bit off (deviant, socially unacceptable).3 An interesting conversion is found with a verb to verse, as in We were versing them on the weekend, which derives from the preposition versus as used in sporting fixtures. It is almost always abbreviated when written, e.g. Tigers v Lions. This conversion seems to arise from reinterpreting the infrequently-written versus as if it were verses, a form of a verb ‘to verse’.

9.8 Proper names to common nouns There is another kind of conversion and that is from proper name to common noun. It is not new. Roman emperors bore the title Caesar after the cognomen or third name of Gaius Julius Caesar and the title Caesar is perpetuated in Kaiser and in Czar/Tsar. Since the nineteenth century there have been numerous

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innovations that have come to bear the name of the inventor. A macintosh takes its name from Charles Macintosh (1766–1843) the inventor of the waterproofing process. Diesel takes its name from Rudolph Diesel (1858–1913), the inventor of the diesel engine, and braille, the system of representing letters by a pattern of raised dots for the benefit of the blind, takes its name from the inventor, Louis Braille (1809–52). In Britain public address systems are called tannoys after the name of a manufacturer: The tannoy blared, telling the passengers to go aboard (1954). It has also become common for trademarked names to be taken as generics. Biro was a prominent brand when ball-point pens first appeared and came to be used as a general name for ball-points, not only in English, but in a number of other languages as well. The brand name comes from the name of the inventor of the ball-point pen, Lá zló Bí ró (1899–1985). Kleenex is a brand name, but a very prominent one and it has come to be used for tissues in general. Band-Aid is another trade name, but people often use it for products from rival firms. It can also be used figuratively as in an emotional band-aid, a political band-aid or a bandaid solution. Hoover is a brand of vacuum cleaner, but not only has it become a generic word, but is also used as a verb, so one can say, ‘I hoovered the floor with my Electrolux.’ The names of people, real or fictional, who were famous for some particular activity are often used as common nouns. You can call someone a Casanova, an Einstein, a Judas, a Mata Hari, a Mother Teresa, a doubting Thomas, a Romeo or a Scrooge and we can say someone has a Jekyll-and-Hyde character (see also Chapter 16). The names of units in physics are often taken from the names of scientists: ohm, amp(è re), joule and pascal, for instance. These words are not confined to English.

Notes 1 ‘To message someone’ seems common nowadays with email and texting, but in the press I came across ‘ …  this information lettered to me by a reader’, which struck me as unusual. 2 In the 2002 Winter Olympics in the shorttrack skating event the Australian competitor, Steven Bradbury, was running last when all the other competitors were involved in a pile-up on the last turn gifting Bradbury the gold medal. This has given rise in Australia to expressions such as doing a Bradbury or scoring a Bradbury, i.e. winning by the misfortunes of other competitors. 3 See also §  4.2.

10 SHORTENING, ALPHABETISMS AND ACRONYMS

It is generally true of languages that frequently used words are short, one or two syllables, but infrequent words may be longer. In Indo-European most roots were monosyllabic, and many of our monosyllabic words reflect these roots, lexical words like eat, lick, love, mouse, red, sit, teach and function words like for, in and of. The correlation between high frequency and short length in part reflects the fact that bare roots are more frequent than compounds and derived forms. Consider the words red, reddish and reddishness. Think of how often we use the word red. We don’t need reddish nearly as often, and as for the nominalisation reddishness we certainly would use it less often than reddish. Another factor is the tendency to reduce words that we use frequently and that is the subject of this chapter. Some speakers will have reason to use certain words more often than other speakers and they will use shorter forms. Scientist students will call the laboratory the lab, music students at the conservatorium will talk about the con and both will talk about exams (examinations). Abbreviated forms of various kinds are also a feature of in-group language since shortening a word or using just initials adds a layer of obscurity. This comes up for mention in Chapter 17.

10.1 Shortening or clipping The terms shortening and clipping refer to abbreviating a word as with ad (advertisement), app (application), deb (debutante), deli (delicatessen), fan (fanatic), flu (influenza), gas (gasoline), mike (microphone), pop (popular music) and phone ­(telephone). Some of these examples such as flu and mike don’t really involve a change of meaning, but others do. Fan does not have the same meaning as fanatic. You can be a fan without being a fanatic. Gas, the clipped form of gasoline, is not a

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gas at all. Shortening may involve specialisation as with app, which is an abbreviation of application but only in the computer sense, especially for phone apps. Dox is an abbreviation of the noun documents, but the abbreviation is a verb and refers to publishing someone’s personal information online. T   hese shifts of meaning indicate shortening is to be considered a way of making new words. Another reason is that the connection between the full form and the abbreviated form can easily be lost. Not everyone knows that pub is an abbreviation of public house. T   his can easily happen where the full form is little used. Con man is common, but confidence man not nearly as much. Pram is an abbreviation of perambulator, which is hardly used at all. Perambulator is formed on the basis of Latin per-ambulare ‘walk about’ and makes an interesting comparison with stroller, where the etymology is transparent. Here are some other common clipped forms where the full form is not much used and may not be familiar to all speakers: bra deli memo tie typo zoo

brassiere delicatessen memorandum necktie typographical error zoological gardens, zoological park

Some words that are well entrenched in the language are abbreviations. These include sport (from disport) and fence (from defence). Bus is from omnibus, Latin for ‘for all’, and mob is from mobile vulgus, Latin for ‘fickle people’. Vax is an abbreviation of vaccination. There is no change of meaning involved, but the abbreviation occurs only with the prefix anti-. Anti-vax is a movement opposed to vaccination. People of such a persuasion are anti-vaxxers. Recent abbreviated additions to the anatomical vocabulary of English include pecs (pectoral muscles), abs (abdominal muscles) and glutes (gluteal muscles, i.e. the buttocks). In these three cases the clipped form is used much more than the full form. It has become popular recently to compound abbreviated forms. These are called clipped compounds. Examples include mod-cons (modern conveniences), satnav (satellite navigation), sitcom (situation comedy), sci-fi (sciencefiction) and fintech (financial-technology) business. Some clipped compounds appear on warning signs: HAZCHEM (hazardous chemicals), HAZMAT (hazardous materials).

10.2 Alphabetisms In a written language it is possible abbreviate a compound word or a phrase by using the initial letters, and the proliferation of such examples has been a feature

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of English since the middle of the last century. They are known as alphabetisms or initialisms. Examples that are normally written in capitals include ATM (automated teller machine), CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), IOU (‘I owe you’ with u for you) and SUV (Sport Utility Vehicle).1 Other examples include bo (body odour), faq (frequently asked questions), fyi (for your information), ott (over the top), pow (prisoner of war) and tlc (tender loving care). There are examples where the initials of meaningful segments of a word are used for an initialism. These include HQ for headquarters, ko for knockout, OD for overdose on drugs and TV for television. With tb (tuberculosis) and pj’s (pyjamas) syllables are represented by initials. As with clipped forms it must happen that people may know the initialism but not the free form. The abbreviation DNA is in common use, but how many people would be familiar with the full form deoxyribonucleic acid? Doctors traditionally use Latin in writing prescriptions with a number of alphabetisms that render the text obscure to the outsider. They still do, but in many cases the modern doctor does not have a full grasp of the Latin and few pharmacists do. They just know what the abbreviations mean in English. a.c. b.d. m.d.u p.c. t.d

ante cibum bis die more dicto utendus post cibum ter die (sumendum)

before meals twice a day to be taken as directed after meals (to be taken) three times a day

10.3 Textese With the introduction of mobile phones (cell phones) came the practice of texting, that is, sending written messages. These were originally limited to 160 characters and this encouraged the development of a style making heavy use of abbreviations of various kinds; modern phones currently allow much longer messages. Communication via computer keyboard also encourages abbreviation, particularly in cases where communication is interactive as in chat rooms, LiveChat, instant messaging and even email if two correspondents are online at the same time.2 Electronic chat is chat in written form. It demands speed to get close to the speed of spoken conversation where a short sentence takes only a second, hence the proliferation of abbreviations and a neglect of punctuation and capitals. The style that has developed in electronic communication is named variously as Textese, Internetese, Netspeak, Weblish and Webspeak. It features words abbreviated by the omission of vowels so that we find, for instance, forms such as pse (please), txt (text) and thx (thanks with x for ks). Alphabetisms abound: asap (as soon as possible), aykm (Are you kidding me?), bfn (bye for now), bty (by

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the way), icymi (in case you missed it), lol (laughing out loud), omg (oh my God), smh (shaking my head (with disappointment, disbelief or disdain)), stfu (Shut the fuck up) and ttyl (Talk to you later). Letters and numerals are used for the homophonic value. y r u l8? b4 i go 2 l8

Why are you late? before I go too late

A conversation via keyboard lacks the usual clues to interpretation such as facial expression and tone of voice.This has led to the use of emoticons (emotion icons). ‘Happy’ can be represented as : - ) and ‘sad’ as : - ( (You need to tilt your head to the left to ‘get the picture’), though there are stylised faces now available. If you type the colon, dash and a curved bracket without intervening spaces, Word produces the following: ☺. These are emojis, from the Japanese e-moji ‘picturecharacter’ and some hundreds of emojis are available in fonts for computers and smart phones. To indicate that one is not being serious, one can add something like jk ‘just kidding’. To emphasise a point, one can write in upper case, a natural enough development, but there has emerged the curious practice of adding a hashtag as I had a gr8 time, a # gr8 time. If this all seems terribly modern, it is worth remembering that abbreviations were used in ancient times and were concentrated in inscriptions where text space was limited. Roman funerary inscriptions regularly begin dm (dis manibus ‘to the ghost-gods, the spirits of the dead’), use initials for first names (L for Lucius), omit vowels as in dne for domine, the vocative of dominus ‘lord’, and abbreviate words as in vix ann xxx for vixit annos xxx (‘lived for thirty years’).

10.4 Acronyms In some cases the initial letters of a phrase form a pronounceable sequence as with RAM (random-access memory: the computing power of your computer) and ROM (read-only memory: the storage capacity of your computer). These are acronyms, though it is true the term is sometimes used to include alphabetisms as described above. Acronyms are not nearly as numerous as alphabetisms. For every acronym there would be something like a hundred alphabetisms. This is understandable since many sequences of initials will not yield a pronounceable form. In particular they often lack vowels. At the time of writing LGBTIQ is much in the news. It stands for ‘gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender/ transsexual, intersex and queer’. It is an initialism crying out for an acronym. Scuba is an acronym standing for ‘self-contained underwater breathing apparatus’, but it is uncertain whether the expression ‘self-contained underwater breathing apparatus’ existed independently of the acronym or was thought up to provide the acronym.

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Acronyms have become popular since the middle of the twentieth century. An early example is radar (radio detection and ranging) invented during World War II. Note the first two letters of radio have been taken to provide a vowel and make the sequence pronounceable. The laser was invented in 1960 and the name laser derives from the initials of the descriptive phrase ‘light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation’ where a vowel fell where it was needed. In the 1970s the taser came into use. It is an electro-shock weapon and its name is from the initials of Thomas A. Swift’s electric rifle. The name was thought up by the inventor, Jack Cover, after Thomas A. Swift, the hero of a series of juvenile sci-fi books, though laser would appear to be the model it is based on. Taser has given rise to the backformed verb to tase. Yuppie is an interesting acronym. It came into use in the 1980s and originally stood for ‘young urban professional’, though frequently interpreted as ‘young upwardly mobile person or professional’ (OED). It bears the diminutive suffix -ie and there are derivatives yuppify, yuppified and yuppification. An area is yuppified if substantial numbers of yuppies move in. The arrival of yuppy was accompanied by dinky (double income no kids) defined in OED as ‘either partner of a usually professional working couple who have no children and are characterised (especially in marketing) as affluent consumers with few domestic demands on their time and money’. Another acronym bearing a suffix is woofer, ‘worker on an organic farm’. Some acronyms circulate only in informal contexts. Examples include yolo ‘You only live once’ and fomo ‘fear of missing out’. Their usage is parallel with alphabetisms such as aykm and omg mentioned in the previous section. Acronyms that seem to be based on a naturally occurring sequence include GIF (graphics interchange format), NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation), PIN (personal Identification number) and VIN (vehicle identification number), though with the last two we normally talk of a ‘PIN number’ and a ‘VIN number’ even though the word number is included in the acronym. Acronyms based on a series of words chosen to make an acronym include the following: The acronym BASE is used in conjunction with jumper or jumping. BASE jumping is parachute jumping from a BASE (Building, Antenna, Span (Bridge) or Earth (Cliff  )). Note how span and earth are chosen to get the acronym to work. Captcha. This stands for ‘completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart’. It refers to the distorted image of letters and numbers sent to a computer user accessing a restricted site. eftpos stands for electronic funds transfer at point of sale, i.e. a cash point.

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Notes 1 ATM is a US term widely used around the world. In Canada the equivalent is ABM (Automated Banking Machine). 2 LiveChat is the registered name of a software system used by businesses through which customers can have interactive online keyboard chats with representatives of the business.

11 REDUPLICATION

11.1 Plain reduplication Many languages form words by reduplication. In many cases there is an iconic relation between ‘more’ in form and ‘more’ in content, so we find nouns reduplicated to indicate plurality (more than one). For instance, kuda ‘horse’ in Malay and Indonesian can be reduplicated to yield kuda-kuda ‘horses’, as well as horse-like structures such as ‘easel’, ‘saw-horse’ or ‘trestle’.Verbs can be reduplicated to indicate ongoing action, repeated action or intense activity. In Swahili piga ‘hit’ can be reduplicated as piga-piga to mean ‘beat’. In Motu (Austronesian) mahuta is ‘to sleep’ and mahuta-mahuta ‘to sleep constantly’. Birds often have names that exhibit reduplication, usually reduplication of a syllable. Examples in English include bobolink, boobook (owl), chachalaca, kookaburra and pipit.1 This may relate to their repeated calls, but it is interesting to note that reduplicated names are not uncommon for butterflies. Perhaps the reduplication is iconic of flapping wings, as with examples such as wig-wag and flip-flop (see § 11.2). ‘Butterfly’ is kupu-kupu and rama-rama in Indonesian and Malay, balam-balam in Woiwurrung (Australian), pepe in Samoan, titalee in Hindi, babochka in Russian and labalaba in Yoruba, a Niger-Congo language of Nigeria. Children when they begin to speak tend to repeat syllables and pairs of their early syllables often become enshrined in words for close kin such as mother and father and also breast. Forms similar to our mama and dada can be found in a variety of languages, though not necessarily with the same alignment of form and reference. Mamma in Latin is ‘breast’ (hence mammary), and mama is ‘father’ in the Western Desert language of Australia. Dada is ‘breast’ in Malay and Indonesian. Children’s tendency to repeat syllables is reflected in forms such as choo-choo, din-dins, gee-gee, pee-pee, poo-poo, ta-ta and tum-tum. Some forms of this type also

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have currency in adult language, in words such as bye-bye, night(y)-night and ta-ta (usually syllabified as tat-ah). Horse racing is often referred to colloquially as ‘the gee-gees’. Apart from forms associated with baby talk straight out reduplication is not a prominent feature of English. There are practically no examples recorded from Old English and Middle English, though cuccu ‘cuckoo’ is an example of a repeated syllable, cu-cu. So-so ‘mediocre’ was first recorded in the sixteenth century and goody-goody in the eighteenth, while fifty-fifty, hush-hush and no-no (noun) are recent twentieth-century formations. Pooh-pooh as an interjection is recorded from the late seventeenth century and as a verb from the nineteenth.Tom-tom is a word borrowed from languages of East India in the seventeenth century for a kind of drum, and tam-tam is a nineteenth-century borrowing for an oriental gong, but they are not really reduplicated words in English in that tom and tam do not exist on their own.2 However, the repeated syllable is clearly iconic of repeated sound. Chop-chop is derived from Pidgin English and is based on a Chinese model. Again, it is not really a reduplicated word in English, but the reduplication suggests emphasis as with the collocations come, come, now, now and yum, yum, which have a word-like status. The phrase on the never-never is an emphatic version of on the never, both expressions referring to deferred payment for a purchase.The earliest citation in OED for on the never-never is from the Sydney Truth 1891, but the phrase has been in use in Britain.3 The phrase stresses the length of time allowed for payment with a suggestion that full payment may never be forthcoming. While it is true that English makes little use of reduplication in word formation, it is not uncommon to reduplicate words with emphasis on the first token: Do you want a drink, or a drink drink? This question would be interpreted as, ‘Do you want a drink or a real drink, i.e. an alcoholic drink.’

11.2 Reduplication with vowel alternation While standard reduplication is marginal in English, there are quite a number of examples of reduplication involving vowel alternation and the pattern is productive. The first vowel is i and the second o as in clip-clop or the second vowel is a as in crick-crack. The first set of examples below is onomatopoeic and in some instances the alternating vowel mirrors an alternation in sound, the ding-dong of a church bell, for instance, or the uneven clickety-clack of a train’s wheels over rail joints. Other examples include chiff-chaff (a bird), clickety-clack, crickle-crackle, pitter-patter (and pit-a-pat), rittlerattle, scritch-scratch, splish-splash, tick-tock The adjective sing-song probably fits in here when it is used to refer to a monotonous speech marked by a regular, exaggerated rise and fall in the pitch of the

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voice. Pitter-patter once referred to the mechanical repetition of prayers, being derived from the pater of pater noster ‘our father’, but now refers to the sound of rain, light footsteps or, according to OED, romantic heart beats: … your heart kind of flitters, and pitter-patters, and you just know she’s the one (2004). More interesting are examples where vowel alternation mirrors an alternation, but where there is not necessarily any sound: chit-chat, criss-cross, dingle-dangle, flip-flop, flip-flops, ping-pong, shilly-shally, titter-totter and teeter-totter, wig-wag and zig-zag (also see-saw where the first vowel is ee) Flip-flop covers a range of alternations including electronic circuits that alternate, to somersaults and to switches of position, literally and figuratively. Flip-flops is also an alternative for thongs (footwear), which flap when you walk. Wig-wag refers to alternation or movement from side to side, particularly of illuminated signals, including the largely obsolete signal at a railway crossing with an arm that ‘wagged’ from side to side. Shilly-shally could be considered to refer to an alternation in that it refers to hesitation between alternative courses of action. In fact, it derives from shill I shall I. OED gives an example from Congreve: Way of the World III.i 47 I don’t stand shill I, shall I, then; if I say’t, I’ll do’t (1700). Perhaps the same could be said for dilly-dally. There are other threads of meaning to be found among the words with the i-a pattern of reduplication. Knick-knack and jim-jam refer to any small trinket or trifle. They are more often than not in the plural and the plural suggests a miscellany. Jim-jams also extends to cover nervous fidgeting. Bric-à -brac, a word borrowed from French in the nineteenth century, refers to a miscellany of household items. These two themes of trifling items and miscellany can be found in other words with the i-a vowel alternation. Fiddle-faddle, trim-tram and whim-wham refer to trivial items such as toys and ornaments, but also extend to cover nonsense. Some words with this pattern refer just to nonsense, namely bibble-babble, jibber-jabber, skimble-skamble and tittle-tattle. Flim-flam belongs here. It too refers to nonsense but usually to deceptive nonsense such as the spiel of a salesman or confidence trickster. Chit-chat was listed above among words referring to an alternation, but chit-chat tends to be used derisively as in phrases such as ‘mere chit-chat’, so it fits in with trifling talk. In fact, most of the words in this group have a dismissive tone. Among words referring to a miscellany the contemptuous tone is most evident with riff-raff but also in mishmash and pish-pash, a kind of stew but also used metaphorically. Wishy-washy is another example where the tone is contemptuous. It means weak, trifling or unsubstantial. Most of the examples of i-a reduplication are derived from the a-form. Chit-chat derives from chat, dilly-dally from dally, flim-flam from flam, mishmash from mash, tittle-tattle from tattle and so on. The i-vowel form acts as an intensifier and contributes to the dismissive tone. The pattern is deeply entrenched in English and

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examples like bing-bang and cling-clang are ad hoc creations rather than items drawn from the dictionary. One improvised example that struck me as a nice example of onomatopoeia was A taxi went over a manhole cover, clink-clank.4 The pressure on the manhole cover produces one kind of metallic sound and the release another. Another new example is tic-tac, the term used in skaters’ slang for pivoting left and right as one moves forward. Piddle-paddle seems to be a new example where the alternation is more abstract. It refers to indecisive behaviour, as does paddle, when used metaphorically, and it echoes shilly-shally and dilly-dally. As noted above, the addition of the i-form intensifies the critical tone. The pattern can also be found in phrases such as dribs and drabs, mix and match, spic and span, Here kitty-katty and tit for tat, which expresses reciprocity, a form of alternation. Examples such as bing-bang, ting-tang and wing-wang recur in nonsense verses for children and in the traditional rhyme, A-tisket, a-tasket, a green and yellow basket.The pattern also occurs in the names of several edible products. Nestlé  produces chocolate-coated wafer bars called Kit-Kats, Arnott’s in Australia produces chocolate-coated biscuits called Tim Tams and Griffin’s in New Zealand produces a similar biscuit called Chit Chats. In the United States and Canada Ding Dong is the name of a small chocolate-glazed chocolate cake, and Ferrero sells small mints called Tic Tacs around the world. Other trade names with the pattern include BingBang, Piff-Paff and Tring-Trang.

11.3 Rhyming reduplication There are rather more examples of near reduplication where the just the rhymes match.5 Whereas most of the compounds with vowel alternation involve monosyllabic roots with a few trochaic example (accented syllable followed by unaccented syllable), with the rhyming compounds trochaic examples abound and monosyllabic roots are few. Two that come to mind are ragbag and ragtag. Other typical examples include argie-bargie, arty-farty, boogie-woogie, easy-peasy, fuddy-duddy, fuzzy-wuzzy, hanky-panky, harum-scarum, heebie-jeebie, helter-skelter, higgledy-piggledy, hocuspocus, hoity-toity, hokey-pokey, hotchpotch (and the later hodge-podge), hurly-burly, hurry-scurry, hustle-bustle, itsy-bitsy, jeepers-creepers, lovey-dovey, mumbo-jumbo, namby-pamby, nitty-gritty, okey-dokey, pell-mell, razzle-dazzle, super-duper, teenie-weenie and wingding. Except for hurry-scurry these have in common that they are somewhat obscure. In some the first member of the compound is transparent and the second an apparently arbitrary rhyme: arty-farty (also artsie-fartsie), easy-peasy, lovey-dovey, okeydokey, super-duper and teenie-weenie. In others both members of the compound are unfamiliar though in some instances this was not always the case.The first element of hurly-burly is an obsolete word meaning ‘tumult’ or ‘commotion’, ultimately

92  Reduplication

from the verb hurl, which once meant ‘to move or be driven with violence or impetuosity, to rush’ (OED). The first component of hoity-toity is based on the obsolete verb hoit ‘to romp’ and the reduplication originally referred to riotous behaviour before acquiring its current meaning of assuming a haughty superiority in manner or attitude. OED suggests the change in meaning may have been influenced by high and height as evidenced by the occasional spelling highty-tighty. Hokey-pokey meaning underhand dealing or just nonsense is based on hocus-pocus. This is first recorded from the seventeenth century and derives from the Latin or pseudo-Latin patter of a conjurer or magician. Harum-scarum is based on the verb hare (to run like a hare) and scare. There is an occasional spelling hare-emscare-em, which may point to the origin of the mysterious -um, if that is not a folk-etymological attempt at explanation.6 Mumbo-jumbo is used today as a disparaging term for meaningless jargon or nonsense. It has a respectable origin. OED gives, ‘Probably from Mandinka maamajomboo, the name of a mask or masked dancer representing a cultic society and participating in religious ceremonies.’ It has overtones of the colonial era. Fuzzy-wuzzy is a word of the British Empire, a colloquial term for blacks of north-east Africa or Melanesia based on the fuzzy nature of their hair. It would now be thought of as disparaging or racist. In many of these examples the reduplication is iconic in that it expresses intensity (easy-peasy, hurry-scurry, super-duper, teenie-weenie) and the rhyme with a nonsense component imparts an informal character. Another thread common to some of the set is miscellany as with higgledy-piggledy, hodge-podge, hotchpotch and ragbag (compare grab-bag).7 Quite apart from these well-established examples there has been a recent upsurge in transparent rhyming compounds consisting of two words where the first modifies the second. They are also mostly colloquial and almost all self-conscious attempts to produce something clever or cute.Whereas the well-established examples are almost all trochaic, these modern examples are a mixture of monosyllables and trochees. brain drain, bum-chum (male homosexual), chick-flick, culture vulture (someone very keen on highbrow culture), even-steven(s), fake-bake (artificial suntan), fat-cat (rich person), fender-bender (vehicle collision), flower power (used to describe hippie culture of the 1960s and 70s), gang bang (many-to-one intercourse), mop-chop (haircut), pooper-scooper (a little shovel for picking up dog excrement), shock-jock (right-wing talk-back radio host), silly-billy, rugger-bugger (macho male), stun-gun (gun that stuns), tin grin (dental braces), toy-boy (woman’s much younger lover), wacky backy (marijuana). Walkie-talkie is a technical term, though with a colloquial flavour through the suffix -ie. It belongs with abbreviated technical terms such as hi-fi and wi-fi. Nitwit is a twentieth-century colloquial term originating in the United States. The etymology is not certain, perhaps just nit as in ‘nits, the eggs of lice’ and wit.

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Hobnob has a distinctive origin. It is from Old English haban-naban where haben is ‘to have’ and naban ‘not to have’ formed from a blend of negative ne and haban. It came to be used with reference to taking turns in drinking one another’s health and from there it developed its present sense of ‘to keep the company of ’ or ‘get around with’. The term is somewhat pejorative. You do not normally use it of yourself, rather it comes up in contexts such as,‘What do you expect? He is always hobnobbing with criminals.’ Another example is willy-nilly, which has an origin analogous to that of hob-nob. It is from Old English will I nill I, where nill was the negative of will formed by the blending of negative ne and will.

Notes 1 Besides pipit there is peewit and peewee where the intervocalic [p] has weakened to [w]. There is a verb pipilare ‘to peep, chirp’ in Latin. Cicada is from Latin and in that language was pronounced as kikada. It probably has reduplicated onomatopoeia based on the very shrill chirping sound the insect makes. The Ancient Greek equivalent was tettiks, modern tzitziki. 2 The Tam-Tams is the informal name of a weekly summer festival involving drums held in Montreal. 3 In Australia the term never-never refers to remote parts of the country. T   he origin of the expression is obscure. 4 Damon Knight, One Side Laughing: Stories Unlike Other Stories. See also § 14.3 on onomatopoeia. 5 Algeo 1998: 75, Burridge 2004: 52. 6 For folk etymology see § 15.4. 7 See Benczes 2012 for a thorough treatment of rhyming compounds.

12 IMPORTS

12.1 Loan-words English has adopted words from numerous languages. If we count cases where just one word has been adopted, we can say English has taken in words from over 300 languages. The adoption of words from another language is usually called borrowing and the adopted words are called loan-words. This is not exactly accurate terminology when you consider there is no intention of returning the adopted words to the donor. However, the terminology has been conventionalised and I will use it here. As mentioned in Chapter 1, English is a Germanic language. In the Old English period a few words were borrowed from the Celtic languages of Britain, some hundreds from Latin and towards the end of the period some hundreds were borrowed from Old Norse. After the successful invasion by William the Conqueror in the eleventh century and the establishment of a French-speaking ruling class, around 10,000 French words came into English; a few such as table and chair did little to change the character of the language, but the importation of words in the areas of government, administration, the law, the church and all fields of learning produced a marked dichotomy between everyday words of Anglo-Saxon origin and learned words from French, almost all of which are ultimately from the classical languages, particularly Latin. This division between everyday words mainly of Anglo-Saxon origin and learned words mainly of Latin origin was made more pronounced by the importation of over 10,000 words during the Renaissance, mostly from Latin, some from Greek. Most of the borrowing occurred in the sixteenth century and early seventeenth century but has continued as a trickle to the present day.

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In Old English, and indeed in other Germanic languages which did not borrow heavily from Latin, big words are made up of small words or small words plus prefixes and suffixes of transparent character. In German, for instance, a dictionary is a Wö rterbuch ‘word book’, ‘entrance’ is Eingang ‘in-go’ and ‘abduction’ is Entfü hrung ‘out-lead-ing’ as in Mozart’s Die Entfü hrung aus dem Serail ‘The Abduction from the Seraglio’. If English had not borrowed from the classical languages, we would have transparent formations as in German. In Old English ‘entrance’ was ingang which would have given us ingoing, ‘abduction’ was withlaednes, which would have yielded withleadness, and ‘dictionary’ would have been *wordboc to yield wordbook. However, as remarked in Chapter 2, dictionaries are a comparatively late invention and not surprisingly *wordboc has not been recorded. There was, however, wordhord, ‘word hoard’, which a poet might ‘unlock’ to compose a poem. Besides borrowing actual words, a language can borrow patterns. The English phrase marriage of convenience is modelled on French mariage de convenance. We have borrowed the pattern but used our own words. This is loan translation or calquing. The phrase marriage of convenience is a calque (copy) of mariage de convenance. The expression that goes without saying is a calque of the French ç a va sans dire. Other examples include free verse from French vers libre and loan-word, which is what this chapter is about, from German Lehnwort. There is another type of calquing and that is where the meaning of a word changes to match the meaning of a similar word in another language. Consider the word sympathetic. It commonly refers to someone showing sympathy as in, When I told him I would be off my feet for a few weeks, he was quite sympathetic and offered to shop and cook for me. It can also refer to someone, particularly a character in fiction, who elicits sympathy and is presented as likable, for example, She is presented as a sympathetic character early in the movie, but later a dark side is revealed.This sense, which is found in French sympathique and Italian and Spanish simpatico, came into the language at the turn of the twentieth century, probably under French influence. Fresh means something like ‘new’, ‘newly made’, ‘newly discovered’. In American English it also means ‘impertinent’ or ‘cheeky’. This sense appears to have been borrowed from German frech via German immigrants. After the large-scale importation of words from Latin during the Renaissance, English continued to borrow words but from a variety of languages. Most of the borrowing occurred in three contexts: (a) Cultural contact in Europe (b) Contact with colonised areas (c) Immigration into English-speaking areas In terms of the types of words borrowed we can say that almost all borrowings are nouns. With borrowings from the colonial period, words for fauna and flora predominate, and in all contexts words for food and drink figure prominently among the borrowings.

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12.2 Cultural contact in Europe Not surprisingly, French has continued to be the major source of borrowing since the Renaissance, contributing roughly one third of all borrowings. Some of these borrowings retain an approximation to the French pronunciation and the correspondence between letters and sounds gives an indication of French origin. Consider coup d’é tat, for instance, where the final consonants are silent, the vowel letters pronounced with their French values, and of course the acute accent retained. A word such as police betrays its French origin in the fact that the second vowel is pronounced ‘ee’ and not as in divine, sublime, etc., similarly with machine, which also has ch pronounced as sh. In the Middle Ages ch in French had the same value as ch in Present-day English and French borrowings from that period have the ch-sound as in chair, champion and charge, but later the ch-sound in French changed to an sh-sound. This means that borrowings from French in the period of Modern English have an sh-sound: champagne, chauffeur and chef. There is, however, one exception – chivalry was borrowed in Middle English as one might expect and therefore should have the ch-sound. It did in fact have this sound, but then over a period English speakers switched to the sh-sound. The French borrowings cover a wide range. Some of the borrowings are in general use, including words and phrases such as bouquet, café , garage, parole, sabotage, silhouette and voyeur, but many like cachet ‘prestige’ and soubriquet ‘nickname’ belong to an educated stratum.1 You might see them in a broadsheet newspaper, but you are unlikely to hear them in a pub. One new one that you might hear in your local is peloton, which has become widely known in recent years with the television coverage of cycling events such as the Tour de France. Here is a representative selection of French borrowings: à  propos, attaché  , au fait, barrage, blasé  , bourgeois and bourgeoisie, brochure, bureau, cachet, carte blanche, chic, coup d’é tat, coup de grace, critique, cul-desac, dé cor, dé jà  vu, dossier, entrepreneur, en route, espionage, facade, fait accompli, femme fatale, gauche, genre, glacier, hotel, intrigue, laissez- faire, liaison, lingerie, mirage, milieu, motif, moue, panache, peloton, penchant, plaque, rapport, renaissance, repertoire, savant, soubriquet, tableau, terrain, tê te-à -tê te, triage, vis-à -vis. Forte as in His backhand is his forte is French in origin, but it is almost always pronounced as if it were Italian, possibly because it is confused with the musical direction forte ‘strong’, i.e. loud. Conversely, dilettante is an Italian word, but usually pronounced as if it were French. The most obvious concentration is in the provision and preparation of food, where we find numerous French words and phrases ranging from the generally known terms such as baguette to esoteric words such as julienne and allumette, which refer to cutting food such as carrots into strips.

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Other French loan-words related to food are à  la carte, aperitif, aubergine, au gratin, baguette, blanc mange, bon appetit, café  au lait, canapé , champignon, coulis, courgette, crepe, croissant, é clair, entré e, fondue, gateau, hors d’oeuvres, jus, mange-tout (peas), mousse, puree, ragout, roulade, roux, sauté  and vinaigrette.2 A number of words for venues serving food or drink have names of French origin: brasserie, café , patisserie, restaurant and tavern. Entré e is the term for the first, relatively small dish in a meal, but in US English it has become the term for the main course and the preceding dish is the starter. English has imported some hundreds of words from Italian since the fifteenth century mainly to do with the arts. In architecture we find balcony, cupola, portico, stucco and terra cotta. In art there is cameo, fresco, graffito/graffiti, sepia, sienna, studio and umber, and in literature canto, sonnet and stanza. In music there are not only terms such as concerto, opera, piano(forte), sonata, soprano, viola and violin, but there is also the system of directions for how music is to be performed with words such as andante ‘at a walking pace’ and vivace ‘brisk or lively’. A handful of words have been borrowed from German including flak, kaput, kindergarten, rucksack and spiel plus a number to do with eating and drinking, words such as frankfurt(er), hamburger, muesli and sauerkraut.3 Muesli, which is actually Swiss German Mü esli, has given rise to muesli-belt, a jokey term for an urban area with a concentration of health-conscious inhabitants. German has provided a number of terms in geology not only to English, but to the world generally. These include cobalt, feldspar, gneiss, nickel, quartz and zinc. Dumbkopf has some currency as a slang term, and ü ber ‘over’ is currently fashionable in the sense of ‘very’ or ‘too’. In World War II the Germans developed Blitzkrieg ‘lightning war’, which involved a concentrated attack with planes and tanks. The British described the heavy bombing of London as the blitz and today we can talk about the police launching a blitz on speeding drivers.There are also words found in educated circles, words such as doppelgä nger, leitmotiv, lied, schadenfreude and wunderkind. Over the centuries English has acquired a score or so of words from Dutch or Low German. A few terms connected with boats such as deck, freight and skipper were adopted in the Middle English period and yacht in the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century English acquired some words connected with art such as easel, etch and sketch. Other borrowings in the Modern Period include brandy, kink and knapsack. With Spanish it is worth distinguishing Spanish of Spain and overseas Spanish. Spanish of Spain has been the source of a score or more words in the Modern Period. These include the following: adobe, aficionado, armada, breeze (briza), castanet, cigar (cigarro), guerrilla, incommunicado, junta, macho, matador, mosquito, paella, patio, plaza, sherry, siesta, sombrero

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Cockroach is a reworking of cucaracha (see § 15.4 on folk etymology). In the United States it is euphemistically reduced to roach. Fifth column is a calque of quinta columna, which was a term originally used by General Mola when besieging Madrid in the Spanish Civil War. He said he had four columns besieging the city and a fifth column, i.e. supporters, inside the city. The term is in common use for supporters of one side located within the ranks of the other side and fifth columnist is used for alleged spies. A greater number of words have come into English from New World Spanish, mostly from native languages of colonised areas, and a number have come into English from contact with Spanish speakers in the United States. These are covered in the next section. Other European languages have contributed a few words. These borrowings include fjord, floe, krill, lemming, quisling, ski and slalom from Norwegian; moped, ombudsman and smorgasbord from Sweden; biro, coach, goulash, hussar, paprika and shako from Hungarian and cravat and vampire from Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian. Vodka, as might be expected, is a borrowing from Russian. In the 1980s glasnost and perestroika were popular in the media. Glasnost referred to greater openness in government and perestroika referred to restructuring of the economic system with greater response to market forces. Among the sources of loan-words coming from the Continent is Arabic. With the spread of Islam in the seventh and eighth centuries, Arabic became the lingua franca of Iberia, the Middle East and North Africa. In Middle English words such as algebra and alkali were introduced via Latin and alchemy and almanac via French. These words, all of which contain the Arabic definite article al, reflect the prominence of the Moslem world in science during the European Middle Ages. A few words for products of the East were also introduced, words such as cotton, orange, saffron, sugar and syrup. During the Modern Period a steady trickle of Arabic loans continued, almost all via Romance languages, words like alcohol, algorithm, apricot, coffee, giraffe, harem, jasmine, hashish, mohair, muslin, talc, tamarind and tariff. Cipher and zero both come from Arabic ç ifr, the former coming into English in the Middle English period and the latter via Italian in the seventeenth century. OED gives the following example of both forms used in conjunction: They accompted their weekes by thirteene dayes, marking the dayes with a Zero or cipher (1604). One borrowing from Arabic that does not fit any of the categories I am using is shufti (pronounced shoofti) meaning ‘a look’ as in ‘Take a shufti at this’, which is like ‘Take a butcher’s’, rhyming slang for ‘take a look’ (see §  17.6.2). It was picked up by British servicemen in North Africa during the Second World War. Merely a few score words have been borrowed from the Celtic languages of Britain, surprising in the light of their proximity, but understandable in terms of English dominance. From Scots Gaelic English has acquired caber, cairn, clan, glen, plaid, slogan, and whisky, from Irish Gaelic banshee, galore, leprechaun, limerick (from the place name), shamrock and shillelagh. A few words could have come from either variety of Gaelic, namely bog, brogue, gob ‘mouth’, sporran and trouser(s). Welsh has

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supplied corgi and eisteddfod. Bard and crag are of Celtic origin, but it is not clear which language they come from.

12.3 Contact with colonised areas In the fifteenth century Portugal and Spain began to establish large overseas empires, followed by England, France and the Netherlands. Belgium and Germany had colonies in Africa from the nineteenth into the twentieth century. England, or more accurately Great Britain, came to control India (presentday India, Pakistan and Bangladesh), Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Burma (Myanmar), the Malay States (Malaysia, Singapore), Hong Kong, large parts of Africa and some parts of the Caribbean, and to fill North America, Australia and New Zealand with people from Britain usurping the native owners of these regions. In India under the British Raj (‘rule’) English acquired some hundreds of words, but most of them refer to the culture of the country and do not have any application outside India, words such as maharaja and nizam. Among those that are part of world English are the following. Except where noted they are from Hindi-Urdu. bamboo (Kannada), bandicoot (Telugu), bangle, bungalow, catamaran (Tamil), cheetah, chutney, cot, curry (Tamil), dinghy, ghee, gunny (sack), gymkhana, jodhpurs, juggernaut, jungle, khaki, loot, maharaja, pariah (Tamil, Malayalam), punch, pundit, pukka, pyjamas, shampoo4 The British have been in South Africa since the beginning of the nineteenth century, but the Dutch were there before them, from the middle of the seventeenth century in fact, and English borrowed a number of words from Cape Dutch, which developed separately from Netherlands Dutch and came to be known as Afrikaans. A number of Dutch/Afrikaans terms were borrowed to describe landforms. Veld ‘open country’ is well known, though used only of southern Africa. Other borrowings include nek, a ridge connecting two hills and koppie, a small hill. Some names for animals were borrowed including aardvark, meerkat and wildebeest. Springbok is another fauna term, originally for a kind of antelope; it has come to refer to South Africans representing their country in the armed forces or in sport. Cape Dutch/Afrikaans has contributed two well-known words to English. One is trek, originally a long journey by ox-wagon now any burdensome journey by foot. The other is Apartheid, the system of segregating Europeans and non-whites that existed from 1948 until 1994. It is now sometimes used for alleged cases of segregation in other parts of the world with the term carrying connotations of serious racism. Words borrowed from indigenous languages in southern Africa include gnu (Khoekhoe and San) ‘wildebeest’, mamba ‘a type of snake’ (Zulu), impala ‘a type of antelope’ (Zulu) and tsetse, usually tsetse fly, (Setswana). Safari was borrowed from Swahili, but it is an Arabic word.

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The British were the most successful coloniser in North America and the Spanish in Central and South America. Brazil fell to the Portuguese and around the Caribbean all the major colonial powers had possessions. American English acquired hundreds of new words in the Americas, mainly for fauna, flora and food. In the far north a few words were borrowed from the people formerly known as Eskimos, but now known by various ethnonyms such as Inuit and Yupik. These include anorak (Greenlandic-Inuit), igloo (Inuktitut) and kayak (Inuktitut).5 Borrowings from other parts of North America include the following: chipmunk (Odawa), hickory (Powhatan), moccasin (perhaps Powhatan), moose (Eastern Abenaki), opossum (Powhatan), pecan (Illinois), raccoon (Powhatan), skunk (Massachusett), toboggan (Mikmaq), wigwam (Eastern Abenaki). In Canada the French were a competing colonial power and the province of Quebec is predominantly French-speaking. A few words have been borrowed from Canadian French including dé panneur or simply dep ‘a convenience store’, poutine, ‘a dish of potato chips/fries topped with cheese curds and gravy’ and toque/touque/tuque ‘a close-fitting knitted cap or bonnet’, what is known as a beanie in the United States and Australia. In Central America and South America words borrowed into Spanish found their way into English. In Mexico chilli, coyote and tomato were borrowed, although the exact source is not known. Cocoa, earlier cacao, and chocolate were borrowed from Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec people, as was avocado. This word underwent a folk-etymology type reshaping in Spanish from ahuacatl ‘testicle’ to Spanish abogado ‘lawyer’. The origin is not hard to understand since the fruit has a scrotum-like appearance, but the connection with lawyers is perhaps accidental, the result of people turning an unfamiliar word shape into a familiar one. Here are some other borrowings that came into English from New World Spanish. barbecue (an Arawakan language of Haiti), cannibal (a Carib language), canoe (Taino), cashew (Tupi), cocaine (Quechua), cougar (Guarani), guano (Quechua), hammock (Taino), hurricane (Taino), jaguar (Tupinamba), llama (Quechua), maize (Taino), potato (a Carib language of Haiti), puma (Quechua), quinine (Quechua), quinoa (Quechua), tapioca (Tupinamba), tobacco (an Arawakan language). Some words were borrowed in the United States from Spanish speakers in southern states such as Texas and New Mexico and from Mexico itself. A number of these words, including bronco, lasso and vamoose, will be familiar to many around the world from westerns. bonanza ‘fair weather, prosperity’, bronco ‘rough, unruly’, cafeteria, corral ‘yard’, lariat (la reata), lasso (lazo ‘loop’, ‘snare’), marijuana, rumba (from Cuban Spanish), stampede (estampida), vamoose (vamos ‘let’s go’), vigilante ‘vigilant’

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Some of the original meanings in Spanish have been given above. Bonanza has come to mean something like a windfall, such as winning a lottery. Bronco originally applied to a wild horse but came to mean any horse. Vigilantes in English are unofficial guardians of the law, ‘people who take the law into their own hands’. Nada ‘nothing’ is another nineteenth-century borrowing, but probably reinforced by current contact with Spanish speakers in the United States. Anyone who watches American crime movies and TV programmes will be familiar with cojones ‘balls’ (anatomical and metaphorical). Portuguese supplied a handful of words. Since Spanish and Portuguese are so similar, a few words could have come from either, e.g. albino and caste. Some words come from languages of colonised areas, words such as jacaranda from TupiGuarani, mandarin from Malay menteri, ultimately Sanskrit mantri, and pagoda, probably from Tamil. Some words of Portuguese origin developed in the colonial context. Amah ‘wet nurse’, for instance, came into English via India, Ceylon and South-East Asia. Emu is the name of a cassowary-like bird found in Australia and lambada is the name of a Brazilian dance. Palaver and piccaninny came into English via Portuguese-based pidgin.6 In Australia well over 300 words have been borrowed from Australian Aboriginal languages. At least two belong to English in general, namely kangaroo, which was collected from the Guugu-Yimidhirr in north Queensland by Captain Cook in 1870, before European settlement, and boomerang, collected from the Dharuk language of the Sydney area shortly after the first permanent European settlement in 1788. Kangaroo originally referred to a specific species of macropod, but in English and other languages it refers to any large macropod. Boomerang referred to a crescent-shaped wooden weapon used as a club or as a missile, a small variety of which could be thrown in a such a way as to return to the thrower. In English boomerang is used only for the returning boomerang and it is this sense that is the basis for metaphorical usage, e.g. boomerang children, those ‘who leave home, encounter the reality of high rents and washing-up and flee back to the nest.’ (Australian National Dictionary). About 50 or so borrowings are in common use, mostly for animals such as dingo, koala and wombat and birds such as kookaburra and galah, the latter also used as a term of abuse just as one might use bird-brain. In New Zealand the word kiwi was borrowed from Maori for a flightless bird and has come to be a term for New Zealander. A few hundred words have been borrowed from Maori, mostly for flora. Examples include kauri (pine), kauri gum ‘a fossilised resin’, pohutukawa (known as New Zealand Christmas Bush in Australia), rimu ‘red pine’, kumara ‘sweet potato’, katipo ‘a type of spider’ and tuatara ‘a lizard-like creature’ (Bauer 1994b, Orsman 1995).

12.4 Immigration into English-speaking areas Large-scale migration of substantial numbers of people has been common since World War II and this has introduced new cultures and languages into

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English-speaking countries. In the United States large-scale immigration goes back to the early nineteenth century with millions of immigrants from Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Poland settling in the country as well as people from Britain and Ireland. Spanish has long been established in southern states such as New Mexico and Texas and has been reinforced by immigration. In Britain there has been large-scale immigration from former colonies, especially from South Asia. In the decades after World War II Australia took in people from almost all European countries, especially Greece and Italy, and more recently from Asia, the Middle East and to a lesser extent Africa. The contribution to the English language from immigration has been mainly in eating and drinking. It is not just the introduction of new words that is involved, but often the popularisation of established words. Some of the words for different forms of pasta such as macaroni, spaghetti and ravioli have been in English for centuries, but they are best considered reborrowings popularised in the twentieth century. Ravioli, for instance, is recorded from the fifteenth century (as rafiole), but its existence in English was tenuous before the twentieth century. Quinoa, a Quechua word that came into English via Spanish is an even better example of this phenomenon. It has become fashionable recently and has been referred to derisively as ‘hipster rice’ and ’yuppie grain’, yet it was known in the English-speaking world in Shakespeare’s day. Italian immigrants have introduced a few score of words connected with eating and drinking including the following: al dente, antipasto, barista, bistro, bruschetta, cannelloni, cappuccino, ciabatta, espresso, gnocchi, lasagne, latte (caffè  latte), macaroni, minestrone, mozzarella, pasta, penne, pesto, pizza, ravioli, risotto, salami, spaghetti, trattoria, vermicelli Spanish has given us tapas, chorizo and paella, but Mexican Spanish has made a bigger contribution with words such as burrito, enchilada, fajita, guacamole, jalapeñ o, nacho, quesadilla, salsa, taco and tortilla, all of which can be accompanied by a margarita cocktail made with tequila. Chinese cuisine has been established in various parts of the English-speaking part of the world for some time. The borrowings are almost all from Cantonese and include bok choy, chop suey, dim sim, dim sum, wonton and wok, which we would naturally associate with Chinese food, plus some others that are not so obviously of Chinese origin, words such as ketchup, kumquat and lychee. Tea and cha, both long established, are two forms of the same root. Tea comes from the Amoy form and cha from the Cantonese or Mandarin form. The Mandarin term dà igò u is sometimes encountered in the media. It means ‘buying on behalf of ’ and applies to the common practice of people buying luxury goods on behalf of people in China. Japanese has contributed miso soup, ramen noodles, saké , sashimi, soy, sushi, tofu and tempura. Ramen, tofu and soy are ultimately Chinese and tempura is probably from Portuguese tempé ro.

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The presence of people from South Asia in English-speaking countries, especially Britain, has made some elements of their culture familiar, particularly cuisine. This is usually referred to as Indian cuisine, though not all elements are exclusive to India. These include basmati, dhal, pappadum (Tamil), roti, samosa and tandoori (origin uncertain). As mentioned in § 12.2 above, English has imported quite a number of Arabic words over the last millennium, words such as algebra, orange, cotton and sugar. Moslem communities in English-speaking countries have brought into public perception terms for female dress such as burkha, chador, hijab and niqab. Other terms frequently encountered are fatwa ‘a ruling on moral questions by an accepted Moslem authority’, halal ‘food prepared in accordance with Islamic law’, jihad ‘holy war’, mufti ‘an Islamic scholar’ and Ramadan ‘month of fasting’ and Eid, a sacred festival at the end of Ramadan. German-speaking migrants have been going to the United States in substantial numbers since the nineteenth century. The Germans introduced some colloquial words such as bummer (Bummler ‘idler’) and nix (nichts ‘nothing’) and some words for food and drink such as delicatessen, lager and pretzel. These added to those like sauerkraut borrowed from the Continent into British English and they have spread across the English-speaking world. Jewish immigrants into the United States mostly spoke Yiddish, a form of High German containing a number of Hebrew words and written in Hebrew script. The Yiddish contribution to the English cuisine lexicon does not extend much beyond bagel, blintz and the generic slang term nosh. Kosher, a Hebrew word referring to food prepared in accordance with Jewish law, is not only well known, but has become a general colloquial term for ‘genuine’. Most of their input to English as been in colloquial terms such as klutz, putz, schlemiel, schlimazel, schlong and schmo/schmuck, and most of these are confined to the United States. Substantial Jewish communities have been established in Britain since the 1930s and they have contributed a couple of well-known colloquial terms to British English, namely schlep and shtoom. Schlep is a burdensome task or more often a burdensome journey.The expression to keep shtoom is like the older keep mum and means to keep silent, especially not to talk to authorities. The Dutch had colonies in North America in the seventeenth century and the Dutch presence has contributed a few words including cole-slaw, cookie, spook and stoop, a US term for a veranda. Cookie appears in a number of idiomatic expressions such as a smart cookie or a tough cookie, that’s how the cookie crumbles and to toss one’s cookies, which is ‘to vomit’. Some borrowings from Asia stem partly from immigrants and partly from people in the West becoming interested in Eastern culture. An interest in martial arts has led to the adoption of judo, ju-jitsu and karate (and karate chop) from Japan, taekwondo from Korean and kung fu and t’ai chi from Chinese. People are generally familiar with Japanese sumo wrestling, though I doubt if it is practised in the West. Shiatsu massage is from Japanese though ultimately from Chinese.

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Chinese feng shui is becoming known through life-style magazines and television programmes. It is a belief that spirit influences inhabit the landscape and that an auspicious alignment of houses and furniture must be chosen. The Chinese game mah-jong has been in English for a century now and Japanese Sudoku puzzles for nearly as long. Zen, referring to a school of Buddhism, came into English from Japan, but was earlier in China and the word is ultimately from Sanskrit. Manga for a genre of cartoons and comic books is from Japan, but ultimately Chinese. Directly from Sanskrit come ashram, avatar, guru, karma, mantra, nirvana, swami and yoga (and, of course, yogi, someone who practises yoga). These words are not new in English but have become widespread recently. Avatar, originally a deity incarnate, is now used for a computer-generated representation of a person or other creature, and karma, originally the notion that one’s actions in life affect one’s lot when reincarnated in the next, has now come into general colloquial use for ‘fortune’ or ‘luck’.

Notes 1 In Britain au pair is common for a young woman from abroad hired to carry out domestic duties. 2 Mange-tout (eat-all) peas are so named because you eat the whole pea including the pod. They are called snow peas in Australia and the United States. 3 All of these would be written with initial capitals in German since in that language the convention is to use capitals for all nouns. Kindergarten was coined by a German educationist Friedrich Froebel in 1840 and used in English shortly afterwards. Froebel’s name came into common use in English: Froebel method, Froebel education, etc. 4 There is a tendency to use the spelling pandit in the sense of a wise or learned person, specially an Indian one, and pundit for someone promoted as an expert as in pundits of the press, television pundit. 5 For practical purposes anorak and parka have the same referent. Parka is from Nenets, the language of the Nenets people in Arctic Russia. On the term Eskimo see §  13.5. Inuktitut is an Inuit language of Canada. 6 Piccaninny referred to the dark-skinned children of colonised areas. It can hardly be any longer used since it has a strong association of the colonial past and one wonders why a special word was needed for non-European children. It was also used in phrases such as piccaninny dawn for first light in the morning.

13 INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE

13.1 A changed world Until around the middle of the twentieth century life was controlled by men. In Europe and in its colonies and former colonies, which together accounted for most of the world, it was controlled by white men. Politicians, administrators, leading military personnel and business executives were almost all male. The news could be read only by white men. Heroes were white men and heroines were passive creatures regularly needing to be rescued by heroes. The status of the white hero was often emphasised by his having an ethnic sidekick who spoke broken English.1 Since the middle of the twentieth century colonies have gained independence and non-white people have fought for and won equality before the law. Women have moved from being housewives, secretaries, typists and shop assistants to occupying a wide range of careers. They are doctors, lawyers, politicians, executives and scientists. They are playing a growing variety of sports including tough sports like long-distance running and rough, body-contact games like football. In most of the English-speaking world laws banning male homosexual practices have been repealed and there is growing recognition that not everyone is a heterosexual male or heterosexual female. Today it is becoming standard to make buildings and transport wheelchair-accessible and this reflects an awareness on the part of local, state and federal governments of the difficulties facing people with disabilities. Corporal punishment has been eliminated in Western countries and there is a recognition that sexual abuse needs to be stamped out. People question the rights of humans to mistreat animals and lobby against cruelty in training animals and their close confinement in circuses and zoos. More and more people are uncomfortable about killing animals for human consumption.

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In general people question traditional restrictions on what they can and cannot do. They are less inclined to accept government decisions and frequently organise protests, variously described as demonstrations, rallies, street marches and walks. Religion no longer has the influence it once had.2 Gone are Sundays where businesses and entertainment centres were closed. There are fewer legal restrictions on the traditional vices of liquor and gambling. Pornography is freely available on the Web, cohabitation common and phrases such as ‘living in sin’ now sound quaint and old-fashioned. The censorship of taboo words and sexually explicit material has been reduced, a trend still in progress. Society is less formal. In business given names rather than surnames are used in dealings with customers, clients and patients. In general, Western society is more inclusive, more accepting of minorities, their interests and needs. There are different attitudes from those that prevailed at the end of World War II and all these changes in society are reflected in language.

13.2 The discourse of inclusion With these trends towards inclusion, certain words have come to prominence with a different emphasis. Consider discriminate and discrimination. Discrimination has been in English since the early seventeenth century mainly with reference to the ability to make distinctions: I love training my dogs in scent discrimination (2006), Maze learning and visual discrimination learning are complex tasks (2009), young woman of discrimination (2010). However, it has now become very prominent with reference to the unfavourable treatment of people because of their race or nationality, sex, sexual orientation, age or disability. This usage has been recorded in the United States since the early nineteenth century but became prominent in the 1960s. Where favourable treatment is given to a group traditionally discriminated against, this is positive discrimination. In connection with each form of discrimination there is now an ism and a corresponding ist. Discrimination on the basis of race or nationality is racism and a person who discriminates on this basis is called racist. Analogous pairs include the familiar pair sexism/sexist and the not so well known heterosexism/heterosexist, ageism/ageist and ableism/ableist. Speciesism refers to favouring one species over another, in particular favouring humans over animals. In the nineteenth century the verb marginalise meant ‘to make notes in the margin’. Today it is in regular use in claims that a social group has been neglected, depreciated or discounted in political discussion and policy. The word empower has been in regular use since the seventeenth century with reference to giving someone or some group authority or power to act: They were empowered … to levy troops (1860). It is now in common use for giving a group or individual the power to determine their treatment. There are references in the media on an almost daily basis to empowering women, empowering indigenous

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peoples, empowering workers and so on. Words can be empowering or disempowering. A cancer sufferer interviewed on television objected to the word suffer used to describe her condition because ‘Suffer is such a disempowering, victimising word’, and the UK Government website on inclusive language advises against the term suffering. Groups who once were never given a chance to air their point of view are now given voice, given an opportunity to reach an audience by speech or in writing: The president fervently believed in the Democratic Party’s heritage as the party that gave voice to the powerless (2003).This is not a new expression, but previously it was more literal and simply meant ‘utter’: I but speake Her thoughts, my Lord, and what her modesty Refuses to give voyce to (1637). English has over 500 words for types of phobia including acrophobia ‘fear of heights’ (1888), agoraphobia ‘fear of outdoors’ (1871) and arachnophobia ‘fear of spiders’ (1925). The combining form -phobia is from the Greek phobos ‘fear’, ‘terror’. In the twentieth century there have been a number of political additions to the list. From the early twentieth century we have had xenophobia, literally ‘fear of strangers’, based on xenos ‘foreign’. Islamophobia is described in OED as ‘intense dislike or fear of Islam … hostility or prejudice towards Muslims’. It has been in the language since 1923, but it has come into common use only in the last few decades. A more recent addition to the language is homophobia (1969), which combines the homo- of homosexual with -phobia and is given in OED as ‘fear or hatred of homosexuals and homosexuality’, but in practice extends to antipathy to homosexuality. Transphobia (1993) is defined in OED as ‘fear or hatred of transsexual or transgender people’. Again ‘fear or hatred’ is too strong, and one might consider phobia inappropriate. Against this one could argue that phobia is also used loosely with traditional terms like arachnophobia.The strict meaning is an irrational fear of spiders, but people who are wary of big, black spiders are likely to say they suffer from arachnophobia.

13.3 Politically correct English Over the last few decades it has become the norm for progressively-minded people to be sensitive to the disadvantage traditionally suffered by anyone who wasn’t a healthy, heterosexual male of British descent, in other words a woman, a foreigner, a coloured person, a gay, a lesbian, a transsexual or anyone without full physical or mental capacity.  This has led to policies aimed at avoiding discrimination. In language this has involved seeking to ban terms that denigrate people on the basis of sex, race, sexual orientation or disability, to avoid traditional terminology with its connotations of disrespect, and to introduce alternative non-­discriminatory terms. The movement, particularly as it involves language, is known as political correctness (abbreviated pc), though the term is mainly used by the unsympathetic.3

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The progressive view is enshrined in the policy of government bodies and the media. Race is a sensitive issue and colloquial words such as dago or spick to describe a racial group are not acceptable in public discourse and the use of a word like nigger by a non-black person against a black person would be subject to legal penalty as a racial slur. Today we find that a great range of traditional nicknames and epithets are banned from public discourse, along with colloquial words for women such as chicks and birds, colloquial terms for homosexual men such as faggot and poofter, and colloquial terms for those with disabilities such as spaso and retard. However, they live on in a good deal of everyday use and surface in the anonymity of graffiti and social media. From time to time someone interviewed on radio or television lets slip a currently tabooed term. In 2016 tennis player Bernard Tomic spoke of himself as ’walking around like a retard’ and was chastised in the media for using the word even though he was not applying it to anyone other than himself. Some words that have been used pejoratively have been taken up by the people against whom the words were used. For instance, the word queer has been taken up by those abused for being homosexual, transsexual or the like and the word is said to have been reclaimed. However, it is doubtful whether this is widely known in the larger population for whom the word queer is just a word for anyone odd in any way. Among African-Americans, the word nigger, often with the spelling nigga, is used to refer to other African-Americans, with the controversial hip-hop group Niggaz wit Attitude (NWA) being a notable example. In Australia a play written by two Greeks and an Italian was called Wogs out of Work. It was followed by comedies such as Wog-A-Rama, Wogboys and the film The Wog Boy. These reclamations defuse some of the hostility, but a word like wog remains a racial slur. The terms deaf, dumb and blind have come up for comment in the context of political correctness. Part of the problem is that these words are used in expressions such as, ’Are you deaf, dumb and blind?’ and ‘Blind Freddie could see that was a goal.’ Dumb also has negative connotations because it is used for ‘ignorant’ or ‘stupid’, reflecting a belief that dumbness reflects lack of intelligence.The terms hearing impaired, speech impaired and vision impaired have come into use, but these are not suitable as replacements for deaf, dumb and blind since they are useful to cover a range of hearing loss, articulation difficulty and degrees of sight loss respectively. A problem with replacing words like deaf, dumb and blind is that they are basic, monosyllabic words. This is even more apparent with black, which in its literal sense is fundamental. However, given current sensitivity about race it is not surprising that people would hesitate about using the term. Jewish people have been derided and persecuted throughout the Christian Era, and the term Jew has certainly been used derisively and also extended to non-Jewish people who are considered mean. In the Jewish stereotype Jews are mean and grasping. However, Jew survives.

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13.4 Talking about women What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice And everything nice, That’s what little girls are made of. Traditional rhyme In the wake of the rise of feminism it has become commonplace to point out there is a bias against females built into English and many other languages. In English the pronoun he contrasts with she, but up till a few decades or so ago we would write sentences such as If a student has to go to the toilet during an exam, he must be accompanied by an invigilator, where he was used to cover both sexes. In this particular example, people might have realised this use of he was a bit odd, since by convention females have to go to a female toilet and they would have to have been accompanied by a female invigilator. However, in many contexts there was nothing to highlight the oddity, and generations of English speakers and writers were happy to use the ‘generic he’. The word man or Man was frequently used to cover both sexes. In discussions of the evolution of humans we find references to Early Man, Cro-Magnon Man and cave man, and I think it is fair to say that the image that comes to mind is of a male. Nowadays, discussions of the development of our race use the term humans and humankind, though the term cave man lives on, and in an increasingly vegetarian age we talk about the cave man diet (though paleo diet is an alternative). It is now widely recognised that the use of the generic ‘he’ and the generic ‘man’ not only reflected culture but influenced our perception and perpetuated a notion that males were normal, unmarked humans and females a special marked category. Some names of occupations contained the generic ‘man’, e.g. policeman, fireman, which was presumably appropriate enough when all personnel in these services were male, but as females began to be employed terms such as police officer and firefighter were introduced. Man lives on manslaughter and perhaps in compounds such as gamesmanship, one-up-man-ship and yachtsmanship. I have seen an advertisement for a course in yachtpersonship, but person is cumbersome in these compounds. Some terms such as doctor, lawyer and engineer had never acquired a feminine form, but when females began to appear in these professions, they were often referred to as a ‘lady doctor’ or ‘woman lawyer’. This raised objections in that it continued the notion of markedness. English traditionally made a sex-distinction in the titles of various occupations and the term for the female is the marked one: actor/actress, usher/usherette and waiter/waitress (though widow (female) and widower (male) shows the male as marked). Over the last few decades it has become majority usage to use basic terms such as actor and usher for females as well as males, though the feminine suffix lives on in titles such as baroness, countess, duchess and princess and also in heiress.The  -ette in usherette is

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not only marked but has connotations of inferiority when you consider a kitchenette is barely a kitchen, flannelette is imitation flannel and leatherette is imitation leather. Here are some terms that have come into use to avoid reference to a person’s sex. traditional

sexneutral alternative

actor, actress businessman chairman fireman foreman headmaster, headmistress man, to man-hours mankind manmade manpower policeman, police woman postman salesman spokesman stewardess waiter, waitress

actor business person, executive chair, chairperson firefighter supervisor head, principal to staff work hours humanity, humankind synthetic employees, personnel, staff police officer postal worker4 salesperson, sales rep(resentative) spokesperson flight attendant, cabin crew (for group) waiter, server US

The language abounds with words and phrases for females classifying them on the basis of their appearance (a good sort), sexual performance (good lay) or record of alleged sexual activity (easy lay). If a woman is deemed not to have sufficient interest in sex with men she is frigid or a lez, if she shows too much interest she is a nympho. A young attractive female is a babe or a dish.Young women in general are birds or chicks. None of these is over-respectful, but there are worse: bit of fluff, piece of ass and bit of skirt. Even where the term is nominally non-offensive as with dame, there are negative connotations derived from the traditional attitude expected of men by men. It was part of the expected behaviour of a man to be constantly appraising females for their sexual potential. A middle-aged woman seen as a sex object is a milf, and if she is interested in younger men she is a cougar.5 An older unattractive woman is dowdy, a frump or a hag and even if she scrubs up well she is likely to be described as mutton dressed as lamb. As for sexual history, at one extreme was the woman who remained unmarried. She was a spinster, an old maid or left on the shelf. At the other extreme we find that over the course of Modern English the language has had scores of words for a woman who makes herself available for sex on an amateur or professional basis, words such as harlot, hooker, moll, prostitute, streetwalker, strumpet, trollop, trull and whore (with its variant ho). There are also more-or-less euphemistic terms such as ladies of the night and slang terms such as bike, screw, tail and tom, some of which can be found in Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785–1811).

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Just as revealing is the fact that a number of words for females take on a sexual sense. Hussy is a good example. It started life in Modern English as housewife and by regular sound changes came to be pronounced hussif with a variant hussy. The modern pronunciation of housewife has been restored on the basis of the spelling just as with midwife, which was once pronounced middif. The hussif pronunciation lived into the twentieth century for a needle-and-thread repair kit. The variant hussy ranged from cheeky young woman to an immoral one. Wench was earlier a young woman in a menial position but took on the sense of ‘a wanton woman’ (OED). It is now archaic but revived by some venues offering saucy medieval entertainment. Tramp was and still is an itinerant but has come to mean a woman of undesirable social habits or a prostitute. Minx was once ‘a pert, sly, or boldly flirtatious young woman’ according to OED, and to some extent it can still be used in this sense, but it also extends to a ‘lewd or wanton woman, a prostitute’. Drab, slattern and slut all once referred to a woman of dirty or slovenly habits, but all came to cover the sense of a sexually promiscuous woman. Slut is often used loosely, and sometimes sympathetically, for a woman who ‘sleeps around’, but it is also used for a woman of coarse or gross sexual habits.6 Offhand terms for women such as baggage (a word Henry Higgins uses of Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion), floozy, tart and the US term broad, all extend to cover promiscuous woman. Skank is currently popular. It refers to a low-class, scrawny, scruffy woman, and like the others often implies promiscuity. Bimbo is a good example of what can easily happen with words for females. It came into American English in the early twentieth century from Italian where it means ‘baby’. It is the male form and it was applied to males in a somewhat derogatory way, and, according to some sources, effeminate males. It was then applied to females, despite being a masculine gender form, and is probably definable as a female valued more for her appearance than her professional capacity, but a survey of students and acquaintances suggest it has connotations of moral laxity, and of course the term ‘moral laxity’ itself is more often applied to women than to men. There were asymmetries in the fate of what were once parallel terms for men and women respectively. A mature male had the title Mr, but females were Miss if unmarried and Mrs if married until the introduction of Ms. A married woman assumed the surname of the husband, which is still pretty much true, and even the given name (e.g. Mrs John Smith), at least in correspondence, official documents and publications. Consider the pairs of address terms sir and madam. Sir and madam are respectful term of address, but madam is also the word for a woman in charge of a brothel. Take master and mistress. Master is a word of power and control. Think of master control, master copy, master plan and master switch. In real estate ads the main bedroom has until recently been the master bedroom. Master also denotes skill in master craftsman, mastermind and master’s degree. Mistress on the other hand is a paid sex companion for a man. Wizard and witch are traditional terms for a male and female respectively who dealt in the occult and were thought to be able to do magic by the power of the Devil. Wizard, once spelt wisard, is wise plus the suffix -ard

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and originally referred to men of learning before being associated with the black arts. It survives as a term of approbation. We can talk of a wizard at maths or a wizard with computers. Witch in Old and Middle English referred to both males and females who dealt in the occult.The three wise men of the nativity story could be called witches as in the following example from the turn of the fifteenth century: The paynyms …  cleped thes iij kyngis Magos, that is to seye wicchis (The pagans …  called these three kings Magos (Magi), that is to say ‘witches’). In Modern English the term tended to apply only to women and in Present-day English it lives on as a contemptuous term for a woman alleged to behave badly, particularly if she is old. The word closely resembles bitch, perhaps one reinforcing the other. It is interesting to note that the double standard that condemns women’s sexual activity while lauding men’s is not only seen in the large number of terms for promiscuous women, but in the fact that some words have negative connotations when applied to women, but not so negative when applied to men. A fast woman is a promiscuous one, but a fast man is a good sprinter, and if he is a fast worker, then he is good at attracting females. A loose woman is promiscuous, but a loose man, at least in Australian football, is one who has managed to get free of any opponent. A fallen woman is one who has turned to prostitution, but a fallen soldier is one who has died for his country. A woman who is spirited is often described as feisty. The term can be applied to males, but is more often applied to females, who are not supposed to be aggressive. Similarly, the term bossy is not used much for men. An aggressive or demanding woman is a ball-breaker or ball-buster, the implication being that she destroys a man’s confidence, which of course comes from his testicles. The term bitch can apply to a spiteful female but is used loosely for any aggressive female or indeed any female one has a disagreement with. An older, aggressive woman is a battle-axe.

13.5 Language and race Racist language is language that denigrates, shows contempt for or prejudice towards people of a certain race. In English the term typically applies to people of English descent using language that discriminates against all others, whether they be Welsh, Irish or German, or more particularly, anyone who is not white. Opposition to racism or racist behaviour is a major issue in the world today, and that is something new. Reading history or anthropology reveals that societies have regularly discriminated between an in-group such as a group of families, a clan, a tribe, a race or a nation and an out-group consisting of everybody else. It has been common to give negative names to ‘others’ and to attribute undesirable cultural practices to them. The Greeks called non-Greeks barbaroi, generally thought to be a derogatory reference to those who didn’t speak Greek, those who said bar bar. The Romans adopted the term for those outside the Roman Empire, those who did not speak Greek or Latin, and of course the duplicated root barbar survives in our words barbarian, barbarous and barbaric.

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Since people tend to talk disparagingly of other races and nations, the colloquial terms used for peoples come to have negative connotations. It is no longer acceptable to use terms such as frog (French person), chink (Chinese person), dago (southern European), kraut (German person), spic or spick (Hispanic person) or wog.7 Abbreviations such as Jap and Paki take on racist connotations. The latter is an abbreviation of Pakistani and has been used in Britain for people from South Asia.8 All these terms are colloquial or slang and do not find their way into formal usage, though Jap was popular in headlines during WWII and for some time after. But even standard labels can be tainted with attitudes of the past and demands made for them to be replaced. Negro in North America has been replaced by African-American and in Canada Indian has been replaced by First Nations. Around the world people of colour is replacing coloured peoples. The native people of northern Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Eastern Siberia are seen as a distinct group and traditionally known as Eskimos. The term Eskimo has come to be regarded as pejorative, not because of any inherent meaning, but because it is felt to be associated with discrimination. There are two main groups of Eskimo people, the Inuit who live in Canada, northern Alaska and Greenland, and the Yupik who live in Eastern Siberia and Alaska. Inuit and Yupik have now come into use as the preferred terms and the hypernym Eskimo needs to be avoided in most contexts. However, it does appear in the name World Eskimo Indian Olympics, an annual sporting and cultural event held annually in Alaska, and it does live on in the term Eskimo-Aleut for the language family that takes in Inuit,Yupik and Aleut. In literature and in film and television drama set in the past, including the notso-distant past, we find regular use of terminology for race that would be considered racist today or involving racial slurs. The native people of North America were redskins or injuns. In the 1953 musical Calamity Jane, set in the ‘Wild West’, Doris Day calls them ‘painted heathen varmints’ (vermin). This is doubtlessly authentic for the nineteenth century, but with current sensitivity about race, a contemporary screenwriter might be reluctant to put such words into the mouth of a sympathetic character. Nowadays, it is obligatory for sympathetic characters to be non-racist and heroes in movies set in the past are often shown somewhat anachronistically as having an advanced belief in racial equality. Usage can change quickly. In the 1936 film version of Showboat Paul Robeson, an activist before his time, was able to sing ‘niggers all work on the Mississippi’, but in the 1951 remake William Warfield sang ‘darkies all work on the Mississippi’. Today nigger is doubtless the most inflammatory racial slur and there have even been several approaches to Merriam-Webster to remove the word from Webster’s Dictionary.9 Some words and expressions incorporate views that nowadays would be considered racist. At the not-too-serious end of the scale we find the French being identified with sexual activity. Think of French kiss, French letter (condom) and French disease.10 The Dutch are not treated in a very complimentary way in the

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expressions Dutch courage, Dutch gold (imitation gold) and Dutch uncle, someone forever offering harsh criticism. More serious is the verb gyp meaning to dupe or deceive. It derives from Gypsy and embodies the view that Gypsies are dishonest. Gypsy itself derives from Egyptian and is a misnomer. Gypsies have no connection with Egypt but come ultimately from India and their language belongs to the Indic branch of Indo-European and is called Romani, which is also the name these people call themselves. The term Indian giver refers to people who give a gift and then change their mind and want the gift back. It originated in America and refers to Indians and is probably based on cross-cultural misunderstandings relating to gift-giving. It is clearly offensive, though outside America it is not generally known whether the term applies to people from the South Asia or from North America. In the past, notions of racial superiority led to the denigration of people of mixed race, and this was compounded by the fact that people of mixed race were often conceived outside the bonds of respectable marriage. In the Englishspeaking world the mixed unions that were the subject of prejudice were those between whites and non-whites and the children of such unions were always considered to belong to the non-white race. They were called half castes or half breeds, terms originally just descriptive, but eventually pejorative. There were also terms such as mulatto (half non-white), quadroon (a quarter non-white) and octoroon (an eighth non-white).Today it is common to be proud of non-white ancestry and to identify with such heritage.

13.6 Heterosexism Heterosexism can be used to apply to opposition to non-mainstream sexuality manifest in the use of terms such as deviant, perverted or unnatural for such orientation. It can also be manifest in heteronormative behaviour such as assuming that a male’s partner is female or a female’s partner is male. Until the 1960s the world appeared to be heterosexual. You could go through life hardly aware that there were people who were not fully heterosexual. Male homosexual practices were illegal and such activity had to be concealed. Today the media is full of references to people who do not fit the heterosexual prototype. We see and hear frequent references to LGBTI, that is, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual or transgender and intersex people, or more recently LGBTIQ with the addition of Q for queer. Gay and lesbian people put on parades to show they exist and they demonstrate for rights such as the right for persons of the same sex to marry. Over the last 50 years or so it has become widely recognised that a person who is born biologically male may be uncomfortable with the behaviour expected of a male. Likewise, a person with female genitalia may be uncomfortable with the female role and identify with males. In conjunction with this there has arisen a distinction between sex and gender. Sex is biological, but gender

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relates to one’s sexual identity. A biological male can feel there is a discrepancy between his sex and what he feels he is. He may undergo surgery to align his sex with his gender. Likewise, a female may identify with male behavioural norms and seek to transition to being a male. Some people experience leanings towards both gender norms. They are sometimes described as gender fluid. The dating site Tinder has recently been updated to allow more options than just male and female. They include agender, androgynous, gender fluid, gender queer, gender questioning, non-binary gender, pangender, transgender, transgender female, transgender male, transsexual, transsexual female and transsexual male. Somewhat apart from discrepancies between sex and gender is bisexuality, and a bisexual is someone attracted to both sexes. This is a traditional and well-known term, but recently the term pansexual has come into use for people who are attracted to people of any presentation or inclination. In Chapter 5 I mentioned the popularity of expressions of the pattern ‘That doesn’t define me’, usually used by people arguing there was more to them than what you might think from knowing that they had been, for example, in jail, or cashiered. There are also analogous declarations from people who are not mainstream ‘straight’. On the Web I find the following: My sexuality doesn’t define me. My gender identity doesn’t define me. My race doesn’t define me. Stop trying to put me in some box. My genitals do not define my gender. My body doesn’t define me. Some interested parties have raised the problem of the pronouns he and she. Some suggest they as a gender-neutral (and number-neutral) pronoun. Some languages do not have a sex-distinction in pronouns. Thai is one, appropriate one might think when one considers the prominence of kathoey ‘lady boys’ in Thai culture, at least in the culture presented to tourists. Toilet choice can be a problem for transgender or transsexual people. Some have claimed that the binary division ‘ladies’ and ‘gents’ is discriminatory and in various parts of the world there are moves to install transgender toilets. There is also a verb to gender used with the representation of people. For instance, we can talk about the way a Renaissance painter gendered the images of people in paintings.There is also a verb-derived adjective gendered. One document about introducing ‘gender literacy’ in schools mentions children having ‘gendered expectations’ by the time they reach kindergarten. The word is also used with reference to the notion of gendered space. This can apply to space literally as with bars, which were in the past often exclusively for men, or to the notion that the domain of a woman’s working life was inside the home and the man’s outside. It can apply more abstractly to spheres of activity, men playing baseball, but women softball or to the practice in hunter–gatherer societies of hunting being solely the province of men.

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The head of LGBTIQ youth support group Minus 18, commenting on the case of a girl in a girls’ school who felt she was a boy, said that, ‘Teachers need to avoid gendered language like ‘good morning girls’.11 If one should avoid ‘good morning girls’ in a girls’ school, and presumably ‘good morning boys’ in a boys’ school, for fear of excluding someone who didn’t fit the majority profile, then it would be politically incorrect ever to say ‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen’ because in any audience there could be a transgender, transsexual or intersex persons present. As mentioned in Chapter 8, the term cisgendered has come into use as opposed to transgendered. Cisgendered people are the vast majority where sex and gender match and who would never thought of having a term for themselves. There is also a verb to misgender for using he for someone who identifies as a female or for using she for someone who identifies as a male. The problem arises only where there is a mismatch between appearance and claimed gender. The use of the term gender naturally causes some confusion outside the circle of interested parties. Traditionally, it was a term used in grammar for classes of nouns that were linked to male, female or neither. In Latin, for instance, there were masculine nouns such as filius ‘son’, feminine nouns such as filia ‘daughter’ and neuter nouns such as bellum ‘war’. Numerous inanimate nouns were masculine such as hortus ‘a garden’ or feminine as mensa ‘table’, so gender was not just a matter of sex. Gender was also used as a euphemism to avoid using the word sex. One would talk about ‘people of the opposite gender’. Nowadays, the average person is confronted with forms where you have to tick your gender where previously one was asked to specify one’s sex. I imagine this is done in ignorance by people using a term that seems to be fashionable and when form-writers really want to know what sex you are. On the other hand, they may also want to know your gender. Some forms now include a third box ‘other’. Where once it was standard to refer to male homosexuals as faggots, poofters or fruits (or fruitcakes) and female homosexuals as dykes, these terms are now considered derogatory and their use could render one liable to prosecution under anti-discrimination legislation. The abbreviation homo has ceased to be acceptable, another example of a term that has no negative meaning but one that has acquired negative connotations. Even the word homosexual carries some negative connotations since it was the standard term when homosexuality was hardly ever presented in a good light. Tranny is used for people who are transgender or transsexual and sometimes for people who are transvestites (cross-dressers). It seems an innocuous abbreviation but some in the LGBTIQ world consider it pejorative. It is clear that attitudes to sexuality are changing. Activists have succeeded to the point where the media avoids discriminatory attitudes, and sympathetic characters in films and TV programmes must have an accepting attitude to gender diversity and non-traditional families. On the other hand, the news still carries stories of the bullying and harassment of people who do not fit the ‘straight’ norm.

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13.7 Disability In the past people with a physical disability, people of exceptional size or shape and people with mental disabilities have been neglected in government policy and often mocked by the public in general, particularly those with a mental disability (see also Chapter 17). It is hard to believe now that up to the 1960s people with unusual physical characteristics were exhibited at fairs and shows as freaks or geeks. For instance, there would be the world’s smallest man, or tallest man, the world’s fattest lady and so on. In nineteenth-century London a man with severe deformities was frequently exhibited.12 But attitudes are changing and are being changed by disability activists. There has been progress in making buildings and transport wheelchair-accessible, and since 1988 we have had the Paralympic Games for athletes with physical disabilities, and more recently the Warrior Games and Invictus Games for disabled personnel and veterans of the armed services. Traditionally people were given nicknames based on their physical appearance, abilities or lack of abilities. An overweight person was fatso or fatty, a person with glasses was four-eyes, and a small person was titch. A person with red hair was carrots, carrot-top or ginger. Today all these epithets are considered derogatory and education authorities discourage their use, though in Australia there has been a recent addition to terms for redhead, namely ranga, which is from Malay orangutan and was sometimes applied to Julia Gillard, Australian prime minister from 2010 to 2013. Over the last few years there have been Ginger Pride rallies in various parts of the English-speaking world demonstrating against gingerism, the practice of teasing, ridiculing or bullying redheads. Not only have colloquial words been banned there have also been strong moves to replace standard terms thought to have negative associations. One approach has been to introduce terms such as physically challenged to replace terms like handicapped or crippled and mentally challenged to replace terms such as retarded. Unfortunately for the promoters of terms like these the pattern has been used for analogous formations such as vertically challenged for ‘short’, socially challenged for a ‘recluse’, ethically challenged for ‘dishonest’, economically challenged for ‘poor’ and so on, most of which mock the euphemistic use of challenged. In another approach disabled has emerged as a preferred term with alternatives such as differently abled and people with special needs having some currency. People with mental disability are nowadays referred to as people with learning difficulties, people with a learning disability, cognitively disabled or intellectually disabled. Some sources would make a distinction between the cognitively disabled and cognitively disabled people and between the intellectually disabled and intellectually disabled people, and recommend the latter form. People with any form of physical or mental impairment can be described by the cover term people with special needs or people with health conditions or impairments. Guidelines advise against spastic for someone with cerebral palsy. Unfortunately, the colloquial variations spaso and spaz are in frequent use, often applied loosely

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to anyone who shows some awkwardness.This usage is part of a general tendency to use words for shortcomings in allotting nicknames, in bantering and also in outright abusing, and it is this usage that provides some motivation for replacement terminology.

Notes 1 The Lone Ranger had an Indian companion, Tonto, Red Ryder had a very young Indian friend, Little Beaver, and Mandrake had a giant Nubian servant, Lothar. All spoke a kind of Pidgin English until Lothar was given a makeover in 1965. 2 The United States bucks the trend with 70% identifying as Christian and 41% attending religious services regularly against 10% in the United Kingdom and 7.5% in Australia. 3 See Allan and Burridge 2006: 90–111. 4 Colloquial postie is sex-neutral. 5 Milf is an acronym based on ‘mother I’d like to fuck’. 6 Minette Walters uses slut in The Breaker with reference to women having left the kitchen in a dirty state: ‘You think we’re a couple of sluts, don’t you?’ 7 In Britain wog tends to be used for people from the Middle East or South Asia. This is also true in Australia, but earlier it was used mainly for people from southern Europe and this is still the case. 8 In Australia the abbreviation Pak is used in headlines for the Pakistan cricketers. 9 Lynch 2009: 249. 10 France is regularly depicted in literature as a place of lax morals. When Jack in The Importance of being Earnest says his late brother expressed a desire to be buried in Paris, the Reverend Chasuble remarks, ‘I fear that hardly points to any very serious state of mind at the last.’ In Patience W. S. Gilbert allows that a young man aspiring to be a member of the aesthetic movement may be allowed ‘a passion à  la Plato for a bashful young potato or a not-too-French French bean.’ 11 The Sunday Age, 29 May 2016, p. 3. 12 Joseph Merrick (1862–90) was known as the Elephant Man and is the subject of a play and film The Elephant Man.

14 WHEN SOUND ECHOES SENSE

Up to this point I have written about the number of words we have in English, their meaning, how they are formed and how they have been imported from other languages. In these contexts it did not matter what the form of words was, their shape, or their component sounds. In this and the next chapter the actual form of words is the subject.

14.1 Onomatopoeia It is a generally accepted principle of language that the relationship between the form of words and their meaning is arbitrary. Since words almost all consist of sequences of sounds, which are themselves meaningless, how could it be otherwise? But some speech sounds echo sounds we encounter outside language, so it is to be expected that some words will incorporate sounds appropriate to their meaning. In the words buzz and buzzer, for instance, the z-sound resembles the sound made by bees or blowflies or the sound of an electric buzzer. This is onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeia is probably universal, though the possibilities differ from language to language. Languages differ in the set of speech sounds they have. English, for instance, has fricatives such as those represented by s, sh and z, which echo everyday sounds, but these speech sounds are by no means universal. Languages also differ in the word shapes they allow. In some languages words must end in a vowel. This is pretty much true of Italian, but English allows final consonants, which can be used in echoic words such as click, fizz and puff.

14.2 Vowels Words are made up of syllables. Syllables are the smallest units a person would normally break a word up into in giving slow dictation.Words like pie, spry and asp

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have only one syllable, words like de-fer and in-deed have two syllables and words like ab-a-cus and de-fer-ment have three. A syllable has a vowel as its nucleus and the nucleus may be preceded by one or more consonants (the onset) as in ray, pray and spray or followed by one or more consonants (the coda) as in clam, clamp and clamps. The nucleus, and coda where there is one, make up the rhyme as in past, blast and ma and pa. All vowel sounds are made by vibrating the vocal cords in the larynx (the voice box) and allowing the sound so produced to pass unimpeded through the mouth. One vowel differs from another from the position of the tongue and to some extent the rounding of the lips. The vowel in words like me, meet and meat is made with the humped back of the tongue raised near the roof of the mouth or the hard palate. It is a high-front vowel.The shorter vowel in words like bit and pit is made similarly. The vowel in words like boot and lute is made with the humped back of the tongue close to the velum or soft palate, and with the lips rounded. It is a high-back vowel. The shorter vowel in words like foot and soot are similar. The vowel in words like baa and balm is made with the mouth wide open and the tongue low in the mouth. It is a low vowel.The various vowel sounds in word like gas, must, cot and caught are also low vowels. The distinction between high-front vowels and low vowels is easy to appreciate.We can feel the tongue up close to the palate with high-front vowels and the openness of the mouth with low vowels. We know why doctors ask us to say ‘aa’ when they want to examine our mouth. High-front vowels have a prominent resonance band at a relatively high frequency (over 2000 hertz). They can be found in words expressing high-pitched sounds such as cheep, tweet, twitter, peep (of small birds) and pip, as in the time pips on the radio, and a loudspeaker designed to reproduce frequencies above 2000 hertz is appropriately called a tweeter. High-back vowels have a prominent resonance band at a relatively low frequency (below 1000 hertz). They can be found in words expressing a relatively low-pitched sound and are found appropriately in moo (of cows), coo (of doves), hoot (of owls and foghorns and the like) and mew (of gulls). The high-back vowel also figures in oompah, a comparatively recent word made up to capture the sound of deep-toned brass instruments in a band.The high-back vowel is onomatopoeic in woof for the bark a big dog and appropriate in woofer, a speaker designed to reproduce low frequencies. The low aa-vowel, perhaps better described as the most open vowel, is found appropriately in the bark of dogs and in baa for the characteristic cry of sheep, and a low-back vowel is found in caw for the sound of crows.1 The word crow itself was an onomatopoeic crā wa in Old English, but regular sound change that raised the vowel has reduced the echoic properties of the word. The word roar was rarian in Old English with a low vowel. Today it has a low-back vowel, both of which are appropriate for roaring which is done with a wide-open mouth. There is an association between high-front vowels with smallness and low vowels with largeness, or more accurately, a correlation between a small sound

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source and high-front vowels on the one hand and a large sound source and low vowels on the other. Consider the words given above with a high-front vowel, words such as peep and tweet. They emanate from a small source. Or consider a word like tinkle. It is onomatopoeic, but onomatopoeic of a sound made by something small such as a small hand-held bell or a bell attached to a cat to warn birds. It is similar with jingle. Small bells can jingle, as can coins or other small, metal objects. It contrasts with jangle. Sources of any size can jangle, if discordant. Another contrast can be found with clink, clank and clunk. Small metal objects clink, heavy chains and the like clank, and car doors clunk.

14.3 Consonants Consonants fall into various types according to how they are produced. There are stops, fricatives, nasals and liquids.2 The sounds [p], [t], [k], [b], [d] and [g] are stops, that is, they are made by stopping off the breath stream, with the lips in the case of [p] and [b], with the tongue against the gum ridge for [t] and [d] and with the back of the tongue against the soft palate for [k] and [g] (I use square brackets to enclose phonetic symbols). When the stops occur at the beginning of a stressed syllable as in pin, tin and kin, or repeat, return and rekindle, there is a little puff of pent up air. In fact, stops are also called plosives. The puff of air is most obvious with [p] since the blocking of the breath stream and release are made with the lips, and it is not surprising to find an initial [p] in words such as pop, plop and puff. There is a weaker plosion with [b] as in burp and belch. In Ode to a Nightingale Keats describes a drink as having ‘beaded bubbles winking at the brim’. The alliteration of [b] neatly captures the plosion of bubbles. When [p], [t] and [k] occur at the end of a syllable, the whole syllable is expressed by a relatively tense, brisk articulation. It is notable that a large number of words relating to brief action ending with a very short burst of noise are expressed with a short vowel followed by one of these stops.The list includes chop, click, clap, clip, crack, flip, hack, lop, peck, pop, plop, slap, smack, snip, snap, tap, whack, zip and zap.3 Fricative sounds are made by squeezing the breath stream through a narrow opening and producing noise. Two fricatives, the [s] sound and [š ], the sh-sound, echo sounds frequently heard outside language. The s-sound can be heard if a gas under pressure escapes through a narrow hole and the sh-sound if it escapes through a larger hole. Badly tuned radios produce a sh-sound and some kettles are designed to produce this sound as they approach boiling point. Snakes and cats when cornered emit an s-sound and it is perhaps this that has led to the emission of a prolonged s-sound being a signal of disapproval, particularly of actors who do not meet expectations or villains in pantomimes or melodramas. Words with [s] having some claims to onomatopoeia include sip, slurp, hiss and piss. Onomatopoeic words with the sh-sound include crush, gush, hush, shush, slosh

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(around in the mud) swish, whish (past) and whoosh. Most of the monosyllabic words with the rhyme -ash that have been in use at one time or another in the Modern Period express something to do with a forceful movement ending in a non-momentary noise. Examples still current include: bash, clash, crash, dash (against), gash (verb), gnash, hash (up), lash (against), mash, plash, slash, smash, splash, thrash, trash This set illustrates the part onomatopoeia can play in word formation in the fact that the set has been augmented considerably in the Modern Period. Gash, in noun and verb form, is recorded from the sixteenth century, the form deriving from garse.The change is rather ad hoc in phonetic terms and would appear to be a case of the word being modified to fit the ash set. Bash (up) is first recorded in the eighteenth century and is probably a blend of beat or bang with words like dash or smash. Similarly, blash ‘to dash with liquid’, a word first recorded in the eighteenth century but now confined to dialect, seems to have taken its initial cluster from blow or blaze. Plash in various senses to do with breaking the surface of water is first recorded in the sixteenth century, splash, perhaps formed on plash, is recorded from the seventeenth century, and smash is first recorded in the eighteenth century. As mentioned above, [z] is onomatopoeic in buzz and buzzer. It is also onomatopoeic in sizzle, zyzzyx (a type of sand wasp) and zip. Zip is recorded from the nineteenth century with reference to the sound of bullets passing through the air or the ripping of cloth. It is now the name of the zip fastener. The [z] sound captures the sound of the fastener passing through the teeth and the final [p] captures the end of the zipping. The [f] sound is a weak fricative and can capture soft, extended noise as in huff and puff and a variety of obviously echoic forms spelled phut, phfft or pfft. The f-sound is also onomatopoeic along with [z] in fizz and fizzle, which captures the sound of effervescence. These echoic forms are often used in metaphorical expressions such as The scheme went phut and hopes soon fizzled. The digraph wh traditionally represented a fricative made with the lips. Most English speakers have replaced this sound with a w-sound, though it is retained in whew! used to express astonishment or relief. The widespread replacement of this sound by a w-sound has reduced the onomatopoeia of words like whisper or whip. Whip, if pronounced with the fricative, captures the sound of the whip whistling through the air and the final p-sound captures the impact. The sounds [m], [n] and [ŋ ], the ng-sound, are nasal sounds in that the breath stream is blocked in the mouth and allowed to pass out through the nose. The nasals are sonorants, harmonic sounds rather than noise sounds, and therefore suitable for capturing sounds that are harmonic rather than noise-like. An [m] is made with closed lips and the word hum is onomatopoeic in that it refers to singing with closed lips, or, of course, to various low-pitched continuous sounds from electrical equipment or motors.

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The word gong has been borrowed into English from Malay. It is onomatopoeic since the ng-sound, if prolonged, bears a resemblance to the sound of a gong vibrating. The ng-sound also appears in a number of other words with a ringing sound including ding(ding), sing (sang, sung, song), ping, ring (rang, rung) and twang. The sound represented by letter r, particularly if rolled or trilled, can capture repetition as in throb, and in conjunction with an [m] in the coda it can capture repeated, low-pitched sounds. Consider, for instance, strum and two words obviously made up to capture sounds, namely brum/broom/brrm and thrum. Purr was once onomatopoeic and still is among most speakers in the United States, but in mainstream British English and many other varieties the r-sound has been lost.

14.4 Sound symbolism Some words with the rhyme -ump refer to an impact involving solid masses, a collision involving a dull, low sound: bump, crump, dump, flump, plump, slump, thump, whump Crump refers to the sound of an exploding shell or bomb, as does the lesserknown whump or wump: ‘Wump’ fell a second bomb (1930). Dump, flump, plump and slump all refer to the downward movement of something substantial, a movement ending in a collision. Flump, verb and noun, is not common. It has the sense of fall heavily or set down heavily: She flumped herself down in the car (1866). Plump is better known as an adjective, but there is also a verb first recorded in 1400, meaning ‘land with a splash, to plunge into water’ or ‘to land with a thud, to drop heavily on to a surface or into a chair’. There is also an associated adverb: … fell plump on the deck and broke his neck (1929). The verb slump had the sense of ‘fall into water, plump down or collapse heavily’ in the seventeenth century, a sense that lives on in something like He slumped down into an armchair. There are also words with the -ump rhyme that refer to solid masses: chump, clump, hump, lump, mump(s), plump, rump, stump Chump once referred to a lump or stump, a sense that lives on in chump-chop. Nowadays, it is chiefly known as a colloquial term of derision implying stupidity or naivete, probably a metaphorical extension as with thick and blockhead. Clump refers to an aggregate of separate objects forming a compact cluster, but it formerly referred to a lump. Dr Johnson in his Dictionary of the English Language (1755) defined it as ‘a shapeless piece of wood or other matter, nearly equal in its dimensions’. Mumps, a disease involving swelling around the mouth and throat, is the plural of mump meaning a stump or lump. With words like hump, lump and rump there is no sound involved and no possibility of onomatopoeia, yet there is a regular correspondence between form

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and meaning. This phenomenon is call sound symbolism. The -ump words are interesting in that they cover onomatopoeic words like crump and thump, which refer to solid bodies in collision, and words like hump, lump and rump, which refer to solid bodies. Moreover, there are forms that cover both senses. Bump can refer to a swelling from a blow as well as the blow itself. Plump can be a verb as in ‘to plump down’ and an adjective meaning ‘fat’. These words with the -ump rhyme provide a good illustration of how sound symbolism can play a part in word formation. Not all of these words have a long history in English. In Middle English we had the nouns lump, rump and stump, the verb dump along with plump, which occurred as a noun referring to a clump or cluster (a plump of spears) and as a verb meaning ‘land with a splash, to plunge into water’ or ‘to land with a thud, to drop heavily on to a surface or into a chair’. There was doubtless some onomatopoeia involved, especially when you consider the rhyme would have had an [u] vowel. Imagine these words as doomp, ploomp and so on. But perhaps it was just chance this rhyme formed the basis for an expanding set, for that is what happened. Mumps, thump and tump were added in the sixteenth century, bump, chump, clump and crump in the seventeenth, flump and hump in the eighteenth, and whump in the nineteenth. Hardly any of these newcomers has a clear etymology and OED regards them as ‘echoic’. Chump may be a blend of chunk and lump, or a modification of chunk to assimilate to the group lump, stump, etc. Whump may blend the wh- of words like whack and whip with the -ump rhyme.4 Some words with the rhyme -ump refer to low spirits or a sulky, uncooperative attitude. Think of the phrase down in the dumps or the phrase an old grump or the adjective grumpy. The form mump, given above for a solid mass or swelling, is also recorded from the sixteenth century as a noun and verb meaning ‘moue’ or ‘grimace’, later ‘to sulk’ or ‘grumble’, a sense that lives on in the phrase to mump and moan. Frump, a word that now refers to a woman who dresses in an unfashionable manner, once referred to sulkiness: My wife frump’d all the while and did not say one word (1693). Most -ump words fit with the themes of mass, collision and low in spirits. Exceptions include to trump, which is from triumph, and ump, which is common in the United States and Australia. It is an abbreviation of umpire, earlier noumpere, a borrowing into Middle English from French, ultimately from Latin non par. Most of the onomatopoeia and sound symbolism described here is found in other Germanic languages, so it is not surprising that the noun schlump, a recent borrowing from Yiddish, fits in here. It means a person who is slovenly, lazy or perhaps overweight. Dwight Bolinger gives a nice example from Life magazine: ’A guy who waits outside a revolving door until some vigorous person comes along to push it, so that he can walk through with his hands still in his pocket.’5 There is also a verb. In the film The Princess Diaries Julie Andrews, imitating a girl who is walking in a rather droopy, round-shouldered way, says, ‘So we don’t schlump like this!’ The meaning is obvious and it fits in nicely with dump, flump and slump. The -ump rhyme plays a part in the name of several fictional characters. Think of the nursery-rhyme character, Humpty-Dumpty, who is normally interpreted as

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an egg personified. Forest Gump is well known as the fictional leading character in a 1994 film. Is the name arbitrary? The choice would appear to be influenced by sound symbolism. Forest Gump is not bulky, but he is slow. Dickens has a character Mr Pumblechook in Great Expectations. He is ‘a large hard-breathing, middleaged slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes and sandy hair standing upright on his head, so that he looked as if he had just been all but choked.’ Now consider the following words with the sequence -umb: bumble (bee), drumble (drone), grumble, humble, lumber, mumble and rumble bumble ‘flounder’, crumble, drumble, fumble, jumble, stumble and tumble Since -ump is associated with a solid body and with dull sound of collisions with heavy bodies, one might wonder about -umb sequences. English does not allow -umb rhymes. The final [b] in words like climb, comb, dumb, lamb and womb was lost in Early Modern English and the b in crumb, numb and thumb is purely orthographic and has never been pronounced.6 Genuine sequences of -umb can be found in disyllabic words, and some of them do relate to a low noise such as bumble (as in bumble bee), drumble (as in drumble bee and drumble drone), grumble, mumble and rumble. The verb lumber can refer to moving heavily or clumsily because of unwieldy bulk, but it once covered the emitting of a low rumbling sound and still does in the United States. The noun lumber refers to heavy material especially big planks of timber. The verb encumber is from Old French encombre, ultimately Latin incombrare. While the meaning does not fit in the theme of emitting low sound, it does go with lumber in the sense of heavy, clumsy movement.7 Of other words with the sequence -umble most can be said to refer to lack of success: bumble ‘flounder’, crumble, fumble, jumble, stumble and tumble. The noun drumble refers to a dull-witted person and the verb means to talk monotonously or move sluggishly. The origin of the form is unclear, though it invites comparison with the echoic drumble mentioned in the previous paragraph. Drumble in the sense of to make a noise like a drum is recorded from the eighteenth century and OED suggests it is a blend of drum and rumble. If that is so, one might suggest that the blend was motivated by the earlier drumble. The two themes, namely emitting a low, dull sound and failing, typically because of clumsiness, are united by the words lumber, mumble and bumble. As noted above, lumber, which typically refers to moving heavily or clumsily because of unwieldy bulk, once covered the emitting of a low rumbling sound. Mumbling refers to the emission of low-pitched sound, but it also implies inefficiency. Speaking sotto voce is not mumbling. Bumble, which had referred to the emission of a buzzing sound from at least the fourteenth century, by the sixteenth century had come to mean bungle or flounder and more recently to mean ‘speak ramblingly, to drone on’: You can quite happily bumble on without too much trouble if that’s what you want (1969). The adjective humble was borrowed from French in the Middle English period. The root is Latin humil- and the b was added in Medieval French (compare

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humility). It is the one -umble word that does not belong with the set of symbolic words. There would appear to be a fairly obvious case for sound symbolism with the verbs chomp, clomp, romp, stomp and the not-so-well known tromp, since they all refer to vigorous movement and together they account for almost all the -omp words in the language. The examples of sound symbolism given to this point have all been of rhymes, but there are some involving onsets. A number of words with initial gl- refer to emitting or reflecting light: glare, gleam, glimmer, glint, glisten, glitter, gloaming, gloss, glow Glimpse once belonged here since it meant ‘emitting a flash of light’, but it has changed to ‘providing a brief view’. Glitz, a recent borrowing from Yiddish, can be added to the list. This is not surprising since the association of gl- with light is common to the Germanic languages. In German, for instance, we find Glanz ‘brightness’ and the verb glä nzen ‘to gleam’, glimmen ‘to gleam or glow’ with the corresponding noun Glimmer, and Glut ‘heat or glow’. Another example of an onset with sound symbolic value is sn- relating to the nose: snaffle, sneer, sneeze, sniffle, snore, snort, snout, snuff, snuffle Snaffle today means ‘to steal’, but it formerly referred to a kind of bit for a horse and to utter through the nose. Snuff, known today as a substance one might sniff, formerly occurred as a transitive verb meaning ‘to sniff ’. This sound symbolic onset in found in all the Germanic languages. In German the cluster has the form schn- as in schnauben ‘to snort’, schnaufen ‘to breathe hard’, Schnauze ‘nose’, schnupfen ‘to take snuff ’, etc. Schnozz ‘nose’ is a borrowing from Yiddish. It is more often than not adapted to English sound patterns as snozz, and men with large noses are likely to be given the nickname Snozz. Schnozz has variants schnozzle and schnozzola, both nicknames for Jimmy Durante (1893–1980), a once-prominent US entertainer with a large nose. One example of sound symbolism frequently quoted is the onset fl relating to sudden, short bursts of movement, mostly repeated movement. Here are examples from Present-day English: flame, flap, flare, flash, flicker, flimmer, flip, flit, flitter, flop, flurry, flush, flutter There are others that are now obsolete or confined to dialect such as flack, flacker, flaw and flurr. One might be sceptical of the claim that these words represent a sound symbolic set, since there are plenty of words with initial fl- that do not express rapid bursts of movement and the like, words such as flat, flimsy, flood, flint and fluff. However, there is evidence that such an association must have

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been perceived, presumably subconsciously, since the set has been considerably augmented over the last 500 years. One addition is flurry, which appeared in the seventeenth century. OED takes it to be onomatopoeic and draws a comparison with hurry and flaw, in the sense of gust or squall, which suggests it may have arisen as a blend. In the nineteenth century flimmer appeared, possibly a blend of flicker and glimmer. As an example of how a feature common to a group of words, even a minority, can be perceived, I cite my experience with the expression to be chuffed. When I first came across the expression, I had difficulty believing it meant ‘delighted’, since the form of the word suggested to me something negative. I wondered why. Then I thought of words like bluffed, cuffed, fluffed, muffed, scuffed, snuffed and especially the colloquial stuffed. I would not have been in a hurry to put this set forward as an example of sound symbolism, but it seems these words did influence my expectation that chuffed would have a negative meaning. Curiously OED gives ‘displeased, disgruntled’ as an alternative meaning, so it would seem chuffed is a contronym (as noted in §  6.5).8

14.5 Names There is a form of sound symbolism associated with names, mainly given names, but here it is a matter of word shape as a whole rather than particular onsets or rhymes. People often say things like, ‘Mark, that’s a strong name.’ They also say it of names like Brad, John, Luke, Scott and Zac. Can you imagine them saying it about Amanda, Melinda or Melanie? You might object, ‘Ah, but they are names for females!’ Yes, they are, but that is not coincidental. There is a tendency for girls’ names to be polysyllabic and to end in a vowel. Names that conform to this pattern include Angela, Anna, Barbara, Cecilia, Emma, Emily, Julia/Julie, Laura, Linda, Maria/Marie, Melania, Mia, Olivia, Patricia, Rebecca, Rhonda, Sophia/Sophie, Vera and Wendy. Where they do end in a consonant, the consonant is usually a liquid (Abigail, Annabelle, Gabrielle, Isabel/Isabelle, Michelle) or a nasal (Catherine/Kathryn, Kathleen, Kaitlyn). Names such as Brigid, Charlotte and Grace are a minority. With boys’ names there are more monosyllabic names such as Charles, Frank, George, James/Jim, John/Jack, Luke and Mark and commonly abbreviated names such as Bill (William), Dave (David) and Joe (Joseph). And boys’ names can end in stop consonants as in David, Craig, Mark and Philip or fricatives as in Bruce, Ralph and Thomas or both as in Max [ks]. Judgements about ‘strong’ names seem to be based on these two properties. The tendency for girls’ names to end in a vowel, in particular -a, is a reflection of the fact that in Greek and Latin the great majority of feminine nouns ended in a, and there has been a marked preference for taking names for girls from the classical languages. There are a few from Greek such as Agatha, Angela, Rhonda and Sophia, and dozens from Latin such as Amanda and Patricia including some such as Anna and Rebecca, which are ultimately Hebrew. The incidence

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of final -a in girls’ names would have been even higher except for the fact that the final -a from Latin was reduced and then lost in French, e.g. Isabella became Isabelle. There is also a tendency for girls’ names to be stressed on a non-initial syllable reflecting a rule in Latin where the stress is on the penultimate syllable if strong as in Angelina and Marina or the antepenultimate if the penultimate is weak as in Cecilia, Patricia and Veronica. So with names the association of the form of the word and the sex of the referent arises largely from a preference for taking girls’ names from Latin. When girls’ names are abbreviated to a single syllable, they lose their ‘feminine’ qualities. Consider Barb(ara), Gab(rielle) and Pat(ricia). These generalisations apply to traditional European given names, but in the twenty-first century, at least in English, it has become common to give children non-traditional names, often surnames such as Madison for girls and Maddox for boys, and place names such as Paris and London for girls.

14.6 Overview As I stated at the beginning of the chapter, it is accepted that the relationship between the form of words and their meaning is arbitrary. Onomatopoeic words are exceptional. It is difficult to estimate the extent of onomatopoeia because it is a matter of degree and judgements are subjective. Take the word roar. Is it onomatopoeic? Certainly, the open vowel is not inappropriate, nor is the initial r-sound and the final r-sound where pronounced. Compare it with tinkle. Could you imagine tinkle being the word for roar? I would take roar to be somewhat onomatopoeic. Claims for sound symbolism likewise can be subjective. In most cases, as with initial fl- being associated with brief movement and gl- being associated with emitting or reflecting light, the claim rests on a minority of the relevant forms. Numerous sets of associations can be found between onsets or rhymes on the one hand and a thread of meaning on the other. The principal evidence, it seems to me, that a correlation between form and meaning is significant is to be found where sets are augmented comparatively rapidly, as happened with -ump rhymes and fl- onsets over the course of Modern English.The roots or bases of most words can be traced back through Old English or Latin or Greek, many to Indo-European, but many onomatopoeic words and some of the words that figure in putatively sound symbolic sets have no long history and no clear etymology. The effect of onomatopoeia can be seen in occasional cases where a word resists regular sound change. Cuckoo is clearly onomatopoeic and there are similar forms in other languages, for instance,Turkish guguk, Estonian kä gu. It presumably started life as a reduplicated coo-coo and has pretty much managed to retain that form despite the fact that the vowel [u] generally became a diphthong in Early Modern English with words such as house and mouse, which had the [u] vowel in Old and Middle English before acquiring their current pronunciation.

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Up to the fifteenth century words such as life, mine and ride were pronounced leef, meen and reed, but they gradually changed to their present pronunciation. Tiny followed the change, but the old pronunciation was retained as well and written teeny and is sometimes reinforced as in teeny-weeny. Middle English peep, in the sense of tweet, followed much the same path splitting into pipe, reflecting the vowel change, and peep, resisting the vowel change.9 Almost all the examples in this chapter are Germanic in origin or creations formed over the course of the history of the language. Germanic languages allow a variety of stops and fricatives in word-final position and this gives considerable scope for capturing noises. Onomatopoeia is not so common among words borrowed from Latin or from Latin via French. One reason is the fact that many of the borrowings are abstract, words like preface and compilation.The other is that the words almost all bear a derivational suffix, which means any onomatopoeia is muted. In sibilant and sibilance from Latin sibilantia, only the first syllable is onomatopoeic. Given the range of potentially onomatopoeic sounds available in English as onsets and codas, it is comparatively easy to come up with new examples. Comics are full of onomatopoeic words such as bam, boing, pow, wham and zing. Splut is a regular in Garfield comic strips. It is the sound of a pie hitting someone in the face. Marvel Comics have copyrighted two of their inventions, namely thwip, the sound of web material shooting from Spiderman’s web-producing gun, and snikt, the sound of Wolverine’s retractable claws emerging and locking into place. Onomatopoeia is a feature of advertising. Alka-Seltzer uses a slogan Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz, oh what a relief it is, where plop, plop captures the sound of tablets being dropped into water and fizz, fizz the effervescence. Schweppes, the soft-drink brand, has a vaguely onomatopoeic name just by chance. It gains a little more in the blend Schweppervessence. Kellogg’s markets its breakfast cereal Rice Crispies (Rice Bubbles in Australia) with the words snap, crackle, pop, appropriate enough since the cereal does make a salvo of small noises when milk is poured over it. A road safety campaign in the United Kingdom used the slogan Clunk, Click, every trip. The clunk referred to shutting the car door, the click to fastening the seat belt. In Australia the Cancer Council uses the slogan Slip, Slap, Slop! in advising people to protect their skin by applying sunscreen. This is a catchy slogan where the sloshy sound symbolism of sl- (slime, slobber, slosh, sludge, sluice, slurp, slurry, slush) and the onomatopoeia of the final p-sounds suggest you apply the sunscreen liberally and vigorously. It is interesting to look at the names of models of cars. Some are chosen for semantic reasons as with Ford Escape and Suzuki Swift. Among the others we find that about three quarters have a final vowel, none has a final stop, and none is monosyllabic. Examples include Ford Mondeo and Festiva, Kia Sorrento and Cerato, Toyota Corona and Corolla and Skoda Fabia and Octavia. It would seem car manufacturers think polysyllabic names with final vowels are thought to be attractive word patterns.

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Notes 1 In Old English the verb for the sound made by sheep was blæ tan with a low front vowel but the onomatopoeia has been lost in modern bleat by regular sound change. The Latin verb for ‘bleat’ is balare, probably an independent creation, where the vowel seems more appropriate. 2 The [y] of yonder and the [w] of win are glides. They are similar to high-front and high-back vowels respectively but occur on the margins of syllables as opposed to the nucleus. For more detailed information on speech sounds see Blake 2008: 125–42. 3 It is odd that examples with a final [t] are hard to find. The obviously onomatopoeic rat-a-tat-tat is one example. 4 Rump has also been used as a verb for ‘to have sexual intercourse’ since the seventeenth century and in the twentieth century the reduplicated derivative rumpy-pumpy appeared as a term for sexual intercourse. This is a clever creation where rump captures fleshy mass and pump captures injection or reciprocation in the mechanical sense, the latter also being captured by the near-reduplication. The -y suffix adds a colloquial flavour. 5 Bolinger 1950: 135, from Life magazine 15 March 1948, p. 23. 6 The learned word iamb, the root of iambic, is given in reference books with a final b, but this word is hardly used. 7 There are other forms from the same root such as cumber, possibly obsolete, and cumbrous. 8 For further examples of sound symbolism see Reay 2006. 9 Peep is also used in expressions such as ‘Not a peep out of you’, an admonition, usually to children, to make not even a small sound.

15 A FORM OF WORDS

Resemblances between words play a part in the development of vocabulary. This chapter is about how similar words can be confused, and how people make assumptions about relationships between words based on resemblances. I touch on the way we might avoid a word because it resembles a taboo word and how one word can influence another. I also note that we can play with resemblances between words just for fun.

15.1 Resemblances The problem of pairs or sometimes larger groups of words being alike is well known and there are textbooks and nowadays websites listing examples of pairs of words that are easily confused. Most of the pairs that figure in such lists are homophones such as discreet/discrete, meter/metre and principal/principle or pairs that could be homophonous in a not-to-careful pronunciation, pairs such as affect/effect, amend/emend, allusion/illusion and ensure/insure. Some pairs bear just a partial resemblance as with definite/definitive, flaunt/flout, sceptic/septic and tortuous/torturous. In some instance the meanings are similar as with affect/effect and in others quite different as with sceptic/septic.

15.2 Malapropisms Sometimes people inadvertently substitute a similar sounding word for the word that fits the context. These mistakes are known as malapropisms after Mrs Malaprop, a character in Sheridan’s eighteenth-century play The Rivals, who, in aiming to use certain words, particularly learned ones, frequently uses an inappropriate or malapropos substitute (hence the name Sheridan has given her, which

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is from the French mal à  propos). At one point she describes someone as ‘the very pineapple of politeness’ when she presumably means ‘the very pinnacle of politeness’, and a young woman is said to be ‘as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of Nile’, presumably meaning ‘alligator’. Sheridan introduces these malapropisms for comic effect, but he was not the first to do so. Shakespeare, for instance, has a character Dogberry, who is given to confusing similar words: One word, sir: our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended two aspicious persons, and we would have them this morning examined before your worship. Act III, Scene V The practice continues. Stan Laurel of Laurel-and-Hardy fame used malapropisms such as exhausted ruler for ‘exalted ruler’, and Carroll O’Connor, playing Archie Bunker in the TV comedy series All in the Family, would refer to the Women’s Lubrication Movement (Liberation), an error reflecting his lack of sympathy for feminism. The suburban housewives in the Australian TV series Kath and Kim are always striving to be effluent (affluent). Malapropisms are not found exclusively in comic literature. They occur in real life. Former US president George W. Bush is noted for frequent lapses in grammar and logic. His repertoire of errors also included the odd malapropism. We have enough coal to last for 250 years, yet coal also prevents (presents) an environmental challenge. Washington, D.C., April 20, 2005 We’ll let our friends be the peacekeepers and the great country called America will be the pacemakers (peacemakers). Houston,Texas, Sept. 6, 2000 Tony Abbott, Australian prime minister (2013-15), is recorded as saying that, ‘No one, however smart, however well-educated, however experienced is the suppository (repository) of all wisdom.’1 The substitution of flaunt for flout is a recurring phenomenon. In an article in The Sydney Morning Herald someone wrote, ‘No European company with operations in the US would dare flout the US Treasury.’ When this was quoted a few days later in the Melbourne Age, it became, ‘No European company with operations in the US would dare flaunt the US Treasury.’2 Other genuine examples of malapropisms include the church that offers immorality (immortality), a self-infected wound (self-inflicted), Christ dying on cavalry (Calvary), inflammatory liquid (‘inflammable’ or nowadays ‘flammable’), marital arts (martial arts), to not augment well (augur), the student who thought he was illegitimate (ineligible), the footballer who said he wouldn’t be resting on his morals (laurels), an

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osculating fan (oscillating), someone wiping the condescension (condensation) off the window, ethic (ethnic) communities and storekeepers taking infantry (inventory). Some malapropisms recur. The phrase mitigate against in place of militate against is common and men are frequently described as having prostrate cancer or being prostate with grief.

15.3 Words similar in form and meaning While malapropism substitutions are based on similarity of sound and make no sense, there is also confusion between words that are similar in both form and meaning. Again, let me cite George W. Bush: I’m going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there’s an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened. Calgary, Canada, March 17, 2009 This could be just a slip of the tongue, but it may be that the president was not clear about the difference between an authoritative voice (one of acknowledged reliability) and an authoritarian one (dictatorial). Ignorance is more likely in the case of the international beauty contestant who claimed, ‘America is the land of opportunism.’ Fortuitous means ‘by chance’ and fortunate means ‘by good luck’, but it is common to hear sentences such as, ‘It was fortuitous that you won the lottery.’ In theory this makes no sense. If it is a lottery, one would hope that all results are fortuitous. However, in this and in a number of other cases, the theoretically incorrect usage threatens to become the norm. It is common to hear people say to hone in on for to home in on and both appear in OED. The hone version appears to be a substitution for home and speakers who use hone in this phrase presumably think it makes sense, perhaps along the lines of narrowing the focus on a target. Dan Quale, US vice-president 1989–93, is reported to have said, ‘Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child.’ He presumably intended to say bonding, an emotional binding, but came out with a word for physical binding, an unfortunate lapse since bondage is associated with kinky sex.

15.4 Folk etymology If people write auger (tool for boring holes) for augur (prophet), they are presumably making a spelling error since they are unlikely to associate boring tools with prophets (though prophets can be boring in another sense). The same thing applies with compliment for complement, an error frequent in real estate advertisements, which sometimes claim ‘that the garden compliments the house.’ However, writing pour over a map, a document or whatever for pore over suggests that the writer associates careful scanning or scrutinising with covering with a liquid.

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Misspelling of this type which involves misidentification falls under the rubric of folk etymology.The term suggests ordinary folk giving an opinion about the etymology of words and indeed people do do this from time to time, but more often the evidence of folk etymology is indirect and comes from spelling. If people spell surname as sirname, it suggests they have associated the first formative with sir, not an unreasonable suggestion. In fact, surname is from the French surnom, literally ‘on-name’. In borrowing this word from French the English have changed nom to name, but left sur. Sirloin is from Old French sur-longe, but here English disguises sur by respelling it sir. Minuscule meaning ‘small’ is sometimes misspelled as miniscule identifying the first two syllables with the prefix mini-, which of course also means small. The origin is Latin minus-culus, a diminutive of minus ‘less’. Where words are encountered in speech rather than writing, there is sometimes no compelling reason to make one identification rather than another. Hair lip and hare lip provide a potential dilemma.The latter term is the correct one and it is motivated by a resemblance between the split in the upper lip and the cleft lip of a hare, but not everyone is familiar with hares. Straitlaced and straightlaced are a tricky pair. Apparently, it is the former that is correct, but the latter makes plausible sense. Imagine a woman of yesteryear tightly laced up in a corset so she cannot bend over.There is a proverb When all fruit fails, welcome the haws. The word haw, meaning the seed pod of hawthorn or roses, is not common, so the idea of haws being a source of food in famine is often lost, and in my experience, people interpret the proverb as When all fruit fails, welcome the whores.With the substitution, one can make some sense of the proverb along the lines of, ‘When times are tough and decent women in short supply, a professional woman is acceptable.’ Note that in a language with a good correspondence between sound and spelling these mistaken identifications would not be detected. Although most of the evidence for folk-etymology misidentifications comes from spelling, there is some that comes from mispronunciation. Laxadaisical for lackadaisical is an interesting case. OED gives the meaning as, ‘Resembling one who is given to crying “Lackaday!”; full of vapid feeling or sentiment; affectedly languishing. Said of persons, their behaviour, manners, and utterances.’ In practice it is generally taken to mean ‘careless, slipshod or lazy’ and the substitution of lax for lack is associated with this meaning. The pronunciation of strenuous as strenguous would appear to be motivated by an association with strong, though curiously strength is often pronounced strenth, which weakens a genuine etymological connection. Religious texts, which often contain unusual words and phrases, can easily give rise to misidentifications: Harald is thy name. (hallowed) He has spoken through the profits. (prophets) Everlasting is thy rain (reign) Blessed art thou monks swimmin’. (amongst women)

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The last of these is what has recently come to be called a mondegreen, that is, a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase or short passage. The term mondegreen was coined by Sylvia Wright who wrote that she once misheard the line ‘… and laid him on the green’ as ‘Lady Mondegreen’.3 Here is another example, of which I have two tokens: They missed out by a hare’s breath (hair’s breadth). Some folk etymologies are enshrined in the spelling. Female came into English from French as femelle, a diminutive of femme ‘woman’. On the basis of an accidental resemblance with male, the word was altered in pronunciation and respelled giving the impression that female is derived from male by the addition of a prefix. The word crayfish is interesting in this regard. It came into English from French as crevasse but was altered to crayfish. A crayfish is not a fish, but the flesh of the crayfish is fish-like. Fishmongers used to sell what is now called seafood, not just fish, and in the fish-on-Friday Christian tradition crayfish counted as fish. One feature of folk etymology is to replace an unfamiliar word with a familiar one. Bridegroom was originally bridegoom, where goom meant ‘man’. Goom fell into disuse and was therefore unfamiliar. It was changed to the more familiar groom, which perhaps makes some sense if one thinks of groom being an attendant to the bride. A more recent example is the expression to give somebody short shrift, which often comes out as to give somebody short shift. Again, shrift is unfamiliar, so it gets replaced by shift, despite the fact that shift does not make any sense. Shrift is a noun from the verb to shrive which meant ‘to forgive formally as in confession’ and the expression to give short shrift originally referred to the brief time allowed to a criminal for confession before execution. OED gives the derived meaning of the phrase as ‘to make short work of ’.That may be so for some speakers, but the generally acknowledged meaning is to give a short, peremptory hearing, an unsympathetic hearing. Unfamiliar forms from other languages are often turned into familiar forms, even if the familiar form makes no sense. The word orangutan is a Malay/ Indonesian word for a member of the ape family. It is literally ‘person-forest’. It is commonly pronounced in English as ará ng-atá ng distorted to a reduplicated form. Sockeye, as in sockeye salmon, is a folk-etymology reworking of suk-kegh, a word from Halkomelem, one of the Salishan languages of British Columbia. Speakers can not only make false associations between words, they can also fail to identify words and parts of words. Experience with students suggests not everyone connects graze with grass and glaze with glass.

15.5 Avoidance In most if not all societies some activities and some words are taboo. For us taboos are associated with sex and bodily functions and in the past there have been taboos to do with religion. In fact, taboos on the names of gods and other supernatural figures are quite common across cultures as are taboos to do with one’s in-laws.

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Where a word is taboo, the taboo normally extends to words homophonous with the forbidden word. In English donkey has replaced ass and rooster has largely replaced cock, and cock has been removed from cockroach in the United States. The taboo can also extend to words that partly resemble the forbidden word. Among the Kambaata of Ethiopia a woman was not allowed to use the name of her in-laws or any word beginning with the same syllable (Treis 2005). Among the Zulu and Xhosa people of southern Africa a woman could not use the name of her in-laws or any word having a syllable in common with the names of her in-laws’ (Herbert 1990a, b). There is something of this in English where African-Americans have made formal complaints against the use of the word niggardly, taking it to be a racial slur. In fact, niggardly is not related to nigger, but one can see how the word can cause offence just the same, particularly as it has a negative meaning. It is likely that niggardly will drop out of use, at least while the taboo on nigger lasts. Other words that exhibited a partial resemblance to restricted words and need to be avoided in some circumstances include mastication, mensuration and tampion. Mensuration was once in regular use in mathematics. It refers to problems of determining areas and volumes. It dropped out when menstruation emerged from ‘taboo’ to ‘restricted’. Tampion refers to a plug for the muzzle of a gun or an organ pipe. Words that have a sexually related sense are problematic. The sexual sense of ejaculation has driven out the sense of hurling and of uttering very short prayers. The penile sense of erection can make one hesitate to use it for ‘building’. After intercourse became a euphemism for copulation (another euphemism), one hesitated to use it in other contexts such as Intercourse between the settlers and natives was not infrequent since it might be misunderstood (or misinterpreted on purpose as sexual intercourse to make a joke).

15.6 Interference It can happen that the meaning of a word can change as a result of a perceived connection with another word. The words fruit and fruition obviously resemble one another, and it is not surprising that the meaning of fruit has brought about a change in the meaning of fruition. Fruition is from Latin fructio(n) via French and it is a noun based on frui ‘to enjoy’. In Latin, French and also in English from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century it meant ‘enjoyment’ or ‘the pleasure arising from possession’ as in An Object of Desire placed out of the possibility of Fruition (1711). However, a false association with fruit led to it being reinterpreted as the state or process of bearing fruit, usually metaphorical fruit, as in phrases such as come to fruition and reach full fruition.4 The origin of fulsome is what you might expect, namely full + some, and in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it meant ‘abundant’. However, it developed a number of negative senses such as ‘satiating’, ‘nauseous’, ‘foul-smelling’, ‘repulsive’ and ‘in bad taste’. By the nineteenth century it had come mainly to be used of insincere or excessive flattery and this was taught to be the correct meaning,

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which was probably justified by usage at that time. Today it is still used mainly of flattery but in a positive sense. In the media there are frequent sincere references to ‘fulsome praise’. How did these changes come about? The development of the negative senses appears to have been influenced by the word foul, which in Early Modern English was pronounced like fool and when in combination with some was pronounced like full so that full-some could have been taken to be foul-some as well as full-some. In Present-day English there is no clear resemblance with foul, but there is still a resemblance with full, so it is not surprising that a positive sense re-emerges. Climactic, the adjective derived from climax, is sometimes written or pronounced as climatic. Here the interference is probably from the more common -atic ending in aromatic, dogmatic, dramatic, ecstatic and operatic.

15.7 Word play Manipulating language for fun or for some aesthetic end is universal. Traditional verse with its rhythm and rhyme along with alliteration and assonance is a genre where aesthetic considerations predominate. And a lot of light-hearted word formation uses alliteration as in bible-basher or rhyme as in easy-peasy. So-called ‘secret languages’ like Back Slang and Rhyming Slang represent another systematic form of word play. These are described briefly in Chapter 17. The most common form of word play in everyday life is the pun. I would imagine all languages give opportunity for puns, but English seems particularly well placed in this regard. I estimate there are over 4000 possibilities with homophonous pairs such as dye and die and another 4000 between substantially different senses of words such as shady ‘dark’ and shady ‘dishonest’. If you consider homophony or near homophony between words and phrases (euthanasia/youth in Asia, I lean/Eileen) the total is substantially greater. Over the last 50 years or so it has become commonplace for journalists to come up with clever headlines and captions containing puns. A newspaper article about a man stabbing his son was headed a sworded tale, one on higher prices being charged at football matches was headed Fare go at footy and one on slimming read Waist disposal. A news item about a golf shot hitting a bird was headed Karrie scores birdie.5 One form of language play that has become common is to supply a missing antonym, mainly for words that have a negative prefix. Uncouth is a well-established word, but couth, originally ‘known’, then ‘well known’ and later ‘affable’ became obsolete but has been revived as a back-formation. Kempt probably deserves a mention here. Technically it has never been obsolete, but its current popularity suggests it is a back-formation from unkempt. Overwhelm has now been joined by the forms underwhelmed and underwhelming, mainly for results that are unspectacular or below expectations. In The Code of the Woosters PG Wodehouse removes the dis- from disgruntled: ‘I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.’

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As mentioned earlier, English has borrowed a large percentage of its vocabulary from Latin and Greek, some directly, some via French. These borrowings are concentrated in serious texts on weighty subjects and they can be somewhat opaque to the layperson. Some use these learned words in a mock-serious style for comic effect. The music-hall compere of yesteryear would introduce acts ‘for your enjoyment and edification’ and the yellow press would call barbers ‘masters of the tonsorial art’, heavy rain ‘significant precipitation’ and jockeys ’postillions of the pigskin’. Misunderstanding learned words can also be a source of humour. In the tele-movie Wit the patient, Emma Thompson, asks the nurse who is preparing to give her an injection, ‘Is it soporific?’ The nurse replies, ‘I don’t know about that, but it will sure put you to sleep.’ Besides the accidental folk-etymology errors illustrated in § 15.4 above there are deliberate distortions for comic effect as in cast nasturtiums for cast aspersions, dash hound (dachshund), desecrated coconut (desiccated coconut), fox paw (faux pas), what are you incinerating (insinuating), since time immoral (since time immemorial), sympathy orchestra (symphony) and trick cyclist for psychiatrist. Alzheimer’s is sometimes called Oldtimers. This is a humorous distortion or an example of folk etymology promoted by the fact that Alzheimer’s disease occurs mainly in old people. Some distortions become accepted. Obstropolous is a humorous variant of obstreperous and has given rise to the colloquial form stroppy. Newspapers generally carry crosswords, of which there are two types. In the simpler type the clues are synonyms of the required answers. In the more difficult cryptic type the clues are deliberately obscure. One strategy is to give a folk-etymology type meaning to a word.The clue might be ‘standoff with old partner’ and the answer stalemate. Words are also deliberately misanalysed. The clue might be ‘His risibility is killing’ and the answer manslaughter misanalysed as ‘man’s laughter’. Recently it has become popular to make humorous suggestions as to what a word might mean judging from its appearance. For instance, chinchilla has been assigned the meaning ‘aftershave’ and innuendo ‘suppository’. It is also popular nowadays to make up ‘imaginary words’ that resemble real words in order to be amusing. Catterpallor is defined as the colour you turn after finding you have accidentally eaten a grub. This form of word play is made popular through the internet, one of a number of language activities facilitated by the new medium (see also Chapter 19).

Notes 1 The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 August 2014 and on YouTube. 2 The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 May 2018, The Age, 14 May 2018. 3 Harper’s Magazine, November 1954. 4 Fruit is from Latin fructus, ultimately from the same root as in frui ‘to enjoy’. 5 For numerous examples, see Blake 2007.

16 ALLUSION

When James Joyce writes snot-green sea in Ulysses the reader is meant to be reminded of the epithet wine-dark sea in Homer. This is an allusion, a literary allusion. An allusion differs from a quotation in that it is worked into the text without any indication that it is taken from or modelled on a source.The hearer or reader can grasp the meaning without knowing the source of the allusion, without even knowing that the phrase is an allusion. Suppose I am thinking of taking my neighbour to court for regularly chipping golf balls through my back window. A friend might advise me against this because lawyers are expensive and it will take a long time to get a court date. I might remark, ‘The law’s delay, eh?’ This phrase fits the context and one could believe that I just happened to come up with it. But it is from the to-be-or-not-to-be speech in Hamlet. Many set phrases, some sentences and the odd stretch of text are part of the mental lexicon; recognising which ones come from a particular source can be important, particularly as allusions have become very popular recently in headlines in newspapers and magazines and in the titles of literary works ranging from novels, plays, films and articles to academic papers. Sometimes a phrase from literature will just happen to come into one’s head, but often a speaker or writer chooses the phrase to show off. To take another example, this one from Ian Rankin’s novel Black and Blue (1997: 459), ‘And don’t think a reprimand is going to be the end of the affair.’ ‘Not such much as the end of the affair,’ Rebus told him, ‘more like the heart of the matter.’ ‘The end of the affair’, meaning the end of the business in this instance, is a common expression and it fits in naturally in the context, but it happens to be the

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name of a well-known novel by Graham Greene, so Rebus picks up on this and introduces the title of another well-known Greene novel The Heart of the Matter.1 Not all allusions are to literature. A news report on the licensing of drones pointed out the threat to privacy that drones pose and it ended with the words, ‘This drone could be coming to a beach near you.’ Here there is a play on a cliché  used in advertising forthcoming movies, which are often said to be coming to a cinema near you. An article on the success of racing-car driver Lewis Hamilton in Spain was titled ‘Hamilton reigns in Spain’, a punning allusion to a catchy song ‘The rain in Spain’ from My Fair Lady. Our mental lexicon contains proper names and these can be the subject of allusion. If someone shows exceptional intelligence, I might say, ‘She’s another Einstein’ or if I think my friend is too finicky about details of the house he is building, I might say, ‘You’re not building the flaming Parthenon!’ Proper names make up a substantial part of the personal lexicon, but a general dictionary can only record widely-known names. Language expresses culture and our culture encompasses religion, history, including recent history or current affairs, literature in the form of novels, poems, plays and films, sports and other leisure activities. In a language spoken among a people whose whole world is a remote valley we can expect to find a single culture shared by all, a common mythology and practically no variety of occupation or leisure pursuits. Even larger societies of the past had a common mythology and history. The pre-Christian Vikings, for instance, had a common mythology with gods such as Odin and Thor, and Norse literature is replete with allusions to these figures and their exploits. But the speakers of English do not share a single culture. There is no common religion, though in past centuries some knowledge of the Bible must have been nearly universal.There might be a common history, but it is not known to all speakers. English speakers share one or more subcultures. Some follow cricket, others baseball. Some like classical music, others popular music. Different people have different interests and how old you are and where you live are big factors in determining what is familiar to you, as is your occupation. An allusion in English therefore can be esoteric, directed to a selected audience. On the one hand it may pass unrecognised, but on the other it can be a source of embarrassment to someone who realises they have not picked up on an allusion, more so if they realise they are missing a whole class of allusions. In Chapter four of Thomas Hardy’s The Woodlanders Mr Melbury recounts how as a boy he failed to pick up on a reference to the Iliad and was laughed at by other boys and was so shamed that he made sure his daughter would be educated and never suffer the same fate. An allusion is like a clue in a cryptic crossword or a quiz question.Those making the allusion get some satisfaction from exercising their knowledge and testing the knowledge of their audience and the audience gets satisfaction from picking up on the reference. As mentioned above, allusions are usually aimed at a select audience, not the whole populace. A good example of the spirit of allusion can be

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found in the film Love the Coopers. A young woman says to a young man, ‘You’re like Clarence sent down to save my wonderful life.’ Most viewers would be left wondering who Clarence was and the phrase ‘wonderful life’ suggests perhaps a reference to the classic film A Wonderful Life in which an angel comes to the aid of James Stewart’s character. In the last few minutes of the movie a dog looking out the window sees a black-and-white movie playing in the house next door and for three seconds we see James Stewart. To the average viewer it could have been a glimpse of any movie. To those familiar with the classic movie it confirms the suspected allusion and gives a glow of self-satisfaction. Over the last 50 years or so it has become the norm for the titles of articles in newspapers and magazines, other than those reporting serious news, to incorporate some attempt at being catchy or clever by the use of a pun or an allusion. For example, an article about the armed robbery squad of the police force is headed The Force is with them, which plays on the words May the force be with you featured in the popular movie Star Wars. An article about immigration into Britain from former colonies was titled The Empire Strikes Back using the title of another movie in the Star Wars series. A review of a film starring Marion Cotillard was headed Made for Marion. This combines pun and allusion and the allusion is to Maid Marion, Robin’s Hood’s girlfriend. It is a curious quirk of our culture that Robin Hood, his girlfriend and some of his band of ‘merry men’ such as Friar Tuck, Little John and Will Scarlet, are so well known that they can all serve as a basis of allusion. Literary works, including films, often have allusive titles. The film The Usual Suspects takes its title from another film, namely Claude Rains’ instruction ‘Round up the usual suspects’ in Casablanca. James Fox’s novel White Mischief, probably better known from the 1987 film, plays on Black Mischief, an earlier novel by Evelyn Waugh. Ideally, an allusion has to be original, but some allusions are in danger of becoming cliché s. The phrase ‘winter of discontent’ from the opening lines of Richard III, ‘Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this son of York’ has been so much used by journalists writing about miserable winters that there are no brownie points for using it. There are even occasional references to cricketers having a ‘summer of discontent’. At one extreme are words and phrases that are allusive in their origin, but which have become part of the lexicon. A few come from Greek mythology, Greek legend and Greek history. The expression a herculean task is well known and it refers to the twelve labours of Herakles (Hercules) in Greek mythology. Whoever used it first was making an allusion, but for subsequent users it is just a synonym for a task so difficult it needs heroic effort. It is the same with Achilles’ heel. It refers to Achilles having been dipped into the River Styx to make him invulnerable, but since he was held by his heel this was not covered by the water.We use Achilles heel for someone’s weak spot, literally, or more often, figuratively. It is just part of the language. The Trojan that invades our computer is named after the Trojan horse. The Greeks besieging

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Troy built a large wooden horse ‘pregnant with armed men’, as Virgil puts it. The Trojans took the horse into their city and during the night the armed Greeks emerged from the horse, opened the city gates and allowed the rest of the Greeks to come in and sack the city. While Trojan in the computer sense is part of the lexicon, one can still apply the phrase Trojan horse to any new piece of equipment or indeed any innovation deemed to be dangerous. There is a 1950 British film about prisoners-of-war who hide men inside a vaulting horse with solid sides in an attempt to build an escape tunnel. It has the appropriate allusive title The Wooden Horse. An allusive phrase can be used without the users knowing its origin. The phrase ‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts’ or the closer-to-original ‘I fear Greeks bearing gifts’ is from Virgil’s Aeneid (II, 49) and it is part of a warning about the Horse. This phrase has spawned variants such as, ‘I come bearing gifts’ often said by someone bringing a present. The unusual wording indicates it comes from a text, but the Greeks have been lost along with any insinuation of hidden danger.2 In some instances it seems the allusive potential of a name is completely lost. There are girls called Jezebel, after the infamous bad woman of the Bible (I Kings 16:31) and boys called Tarquin, which surely brings to mind Sextus Tarquinius, who raped Lucrece.3 He is known as Tarquin in English and well known at that since the rape story has been a popular theme in European art and literature including Shakespeare’s poem The Rape of Lucrece. For centuries the main source of allusion has been the Bible, and this is true not just for English but for the whole of Christendom. From the Old Testament we can make reference to the Garden of Eden, the Ten Commandments and a David-and-Goliath contest. From the New Testament we can call someone a Judas, a Doubting Thomas or a Good Samaritan. Sporting scribes often refer to a player or a team as staging the greatest comeback since Lazarus. Many well-known expressions owe their popularity to the phrasing of the Authorised Version of the Bible. These include escape by the skin of one’s teeth, give up the ghost and go from strength to strength. These do not count as allusions. They are just part of the language and only a handful know they are to be found in the Good Book.4 On the other hand there are expressions such as the writing on the wall which many would understand to relate to an incident recounted in the Book of Daniel (5.5). Belshazzar, king of Babylon, is hosting a feast when a detached hand appears: In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace, and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. The Jewish prophet Daniel interprets the writing as foretelling the fall of Babylon to the Medes and Persians so the expression the writing on the wall is used with reference to some event that signals inevitable disaster, for example: When several members crossed the floor and voted with the opposition, the writing was on the wall for the

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government. There is clear evidence that the phrase the writing on the wall, or slight variations of it, is seen as allusive since it is extremely popular and has been used in the title of eleven literary works, six hit albums, thirty songs and one band. In its literal sense it has been used for several articles about graffiti.5 Shakespeare looms large as a source of allusion since some of his plays are widely studied. An article about a rise in the price of men’s haircuts was headed Unkindest cut of all straight from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in which Mark Antony describes the stabbing of Caesar by his friend, Brutus, as the most unkindest cut of all. The to-be-or-not-to-be soliloquy in Hamlet has been plucked for the titles of numerous literary works ranging from newspaper articles to novels and plays. Here are examples from the first five lines: To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them. To be or not to be has been the title of several articles, sometimes written 2B or not 2B with a punning allusion to pencils. There is a Canadian TV series called Slings and Arrows, and Outrageous Fortune is the title of a movie as well as having been used for articles on subjects such as executive salaries and price gouging. Sea of Troubles is the title of a short story by P. G. Wodehouse and of an article in The Economist about China’s claim to islands in the South China Sea. Shakespeare has given us a few characters that we can allude to. We can call someone a Lady Macbeth or a Shylock, and if someone demands full payment of a debt we can say he is after his pound of flesh. Romeo is a generic name for a ladies’ man and Juliet is enshrined in the architectural term Juliet balcony for a shallow balcony that is little more than a railing outside an upper storey French window. A number of everyday phrases are recorded in Shakespeare’s plays. They are not distinctive enough to be considered as allusions nowadays, but they may have become familiar and owe their endurance to those texts. the be-all and end-all (Macbeth), break the ice (The Taming of the Shrew), dead as a doornail (Henry VI, Part II), forever and a day (As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet), forgone conclusion (Othello), laughing stock (The Merry Wives of Windsor), wild-goose chase (Romeo and Juliet), one fell swoop (Macbeth)6 The title of Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities has been used numerous times for articles comparing two cities, and some of his characters have become well known and a source of allusion. A mean person can be called a scrooge after Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. Someone asking for a second helping sometimes elicits a reference to Oliver Twist wanting more and a recent article on moves to

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introduce penalties for those getting teenagers to carry out crimes was headed ‘Fagin’s Law’. Dickens’ world is a source of allusion when we talk of workers enduring Dickensian conditions or read an ad for a dilapidated cottage that is described as having Dickensian charm. In 1919 Yeats wrote a poem The Second Coming, the title alluding to the Christian belief that Christ will come again at the end of the world: And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead, as it says in the older version of the Nicene Creed. Here is the first stanza and the last two lines of the poem: Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? The theme is despair at the anarchy of his time and a foreboding of an apocalyptic future. This combined with its memorable phrasing has made it a favourite source of allusion and quotation. A number of books have taken Things Fall Apart as their title starting with a novel by Chinua Achebe. The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey through Madness is the title of an autobiographical work by Elyn Saks and Slouching towards Bethlehem the title of an essay collection by Joan Didion. Gerald Astor’s history of a WW II battle is A Blood-dimmed Tide:The Battle of the Bulge by the Men who Fought it. Robert Parker has written a detective novel The Widening Gyre. There are also songs, albums and TV episodes with titles taken from the poem. The phrase slouches towards Bethlehem has been a template for variations in allusive headlines such as Slouching towards Gomorrah. Cormac McCarthy’s novel (and subsequent film) No Country for Old Men takes its title from the opening line of another of Yeats’ poems, Sailing to Byzantium. T.S. Eliot, whose poems abound with esoteric allusions, is himself a source of allusion, particularly since for a generation or so he was a set text for English 101 around the English-speaking world. In an episode of the Miss Marple TV series The Blue Geranium, a troubled young man tells Miss Marple he is ‘going to force the moment to its crisis.’ This is from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock ‘Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?’, but it fits in naturally in context and there’s no reason to suspect a quote. The last line of this poem, ‘Till human voices wake us and we drown’, has twice yielded the title of a movie, Till human voices wake us, in 2002 and 2015.

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Allusive Titles Arms and the Man. Play by George Bernard Shaw (1894) First words of Virgil’s Aeneid: Arma virumque cano ‘Arms and the man I sing’ Devices and Desires. Crime fiction by P.D. James (1989) ‘We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.’ General Confession in The Book of Common Prayer. Eyeless in Gaza. Novel by Aldous Huxley (1936) ‘Promise was that I Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver! Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves.’ Milton: Samson Agonistes Far from the Madding Crowd. Novel by Thomas Hardy (1874) and films (1967), (2015) ‘Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife’ Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard One Fine Day. Film with George Clooney and Michelle Pfeiffer (1966) Un bel di ‘one fine day’, aria from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly The Painted Veil. Novel by W. Somerset Maugham (1925) and film (2006). Lift not the painted veil which those who live Call life Opening line of sonnet by Shelley A Price Above Rubies. Film starring Renee Zellweger (1998) ‘Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies.’ Proverbs 31, 10. Tender is the Night. Novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934)   ‘Tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne.’ Keats: Ode to a Nightingale

Notes 1 For further examples see Blake 2012, chapter 10. 2 There is a film entitled Beware of Greeks Bearing Guns (2000). 3 The original source for the Lucrece story is Livy Ab urbe condita, libri 1:60. 4 See David Crystal’s Begat, a comprehensive guide to passages from translations of the Bible that are used in Present-day English. 5 Data from the Wikipedia disambiguation Web entry. 6 One fell swoop has spawned a folk etymology variant one foul swoop.

17 SLANG

17.1 Slang in general In speaking and writing we have a choice between being formal or informal. For example, I received your letter is formal, but I got your letter is informal or colloquial. Overlapping with the term ‘colloquial’ is the term ‘slang’ and the difference is not clear-cut. While ‘colloquial’ has positive or at least neutral connotations, the word ‘slang’ is often used negatively. For many people slang words are not seen as respectable or legitimate. If someone tries to use nix in Scrabble, particularly if they want to use the ‘x’ on a triple-score square, they are likely to be told that nix is not a ‘real word’. What is it about nix that would lead some to question its legitimacy? Well, it is restricted as to when and where it can be used. If I ask my bank manager for a loan to build a swimming pool in my backyard and he thinks this is not a project he can support, he is not likely to say ‘Nix’ or ‘I’m sorry. I’ll have to nix that request.’ Nix is very informal. It is, however, in wide circulation, particularly as an interjection.1 Some words merit the label slang in that they are restricted to a stratum of society, an area or institution. Slang can be peculiar to a particular trade, profession or sport and here it can be difficult to distinguish slang from jargon, the necessary vocabulary of these pursuits. Slang is the language of the in-group, but the in-group can be very large. Some slang circulates among the youth of the world and is part of youth culture. Recent examples include amazeballs, beige ‘run-of-the-mill’, ‘lacking distinctiveness’, cray-cray ‘crazy’, hench ‘muscly’, lit ‘good’, peng ‘good’ and salty ‘being rude or bitter’.2 Slang is also frowned upon as being low-class, and while it is true that slang is prominent among those low on the socio-economic scale and secret slang is used by those who live outside the law, slang is not the preserve of the lower classes. There is upper class slang too. In the Britain of early twentieth century the upper

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classes were full of bounders, cads and rotters. If they drank too much, they were lathered, squiffy, tanked or woozled. In the ‘best’ schools and universities there was slang in which Latin was a major source. A leave of absence was an exeat ‘he may leave’, a note excusing absence due to illness was an aeger ‘ill’, and an oral exam was a viva.This is short for viva voce ‘with living voice’. It is interesting to note that OED defines slang as, ‘The special vocabulary used by any set of persons of a low or disreputable character; language of a low and vulgar type.’ However, it then adds ‘now merged in sense 1c’ and 1c reads as follows: ‘language of a highly colloquial type, considered as below the level of standard educated speech, and consisting either of new words or of current words employed in some special sense.’ Because slang tends to be restricted to areas or classes, and because it tends to be ephemeral (see § 17.4), only the most widespread slang can be included in a general dictionary. But most people know a lot of slang, so a substantial part of the personal lexicon will be missing from the dictionary.

17.2 The inventiveness of slang Some slang words are just different words from their mainstream counterparts and there is no particular motivation for the choice. Keen readers may remember from the passage given in Chapter 1 to illustrate Old English that Euphrosyne nam mid hir fiftig mancsas ‘took with her 50 mancuses’. Nam was the past tense of niman ‘to take’. The word take was borrowed from Old Norse and the nim and take became competing terms. By the seventeenth century, while take remained standard, nim became colloquial or slang and lived on as such into the twentieth century: And the last of them nimmed the clouts that lay a-bleaching on the bushes! (1937). While a lot of slang is like this, simply different from the standard in an arbitrary way, many slang expressions are composed by compounding or affixation and tend to be descriptive. An old slang term for clerk is the compound ink-spiller, which refers to an aspect of this particular occupation. Similarly, bread-basket for ‘stomach’ picks out an aspect of the stomach, namely that it is a repository for bread, and coffin-nail for ‘cigarette’ refers obliquely to the medical opinion that smoking shortens one’s lifespan. Alliteration, as in the examples bible-basher and greedy guts, is frequently used to create catchy slang expressions, as is rhyme. Most of the rhyming compounds listed in § 11.3 are colloquial if not slang: barber starver ‘a man who lets his hair grow long’, bum chum ‘male homosexual’, chick flick ‘a movie aimed at female audiences’, fake bake ‘suntan achieved by lamp or bottle’, gender-bender ‘person with characteristics of both sexes’, mop chop ‘haircut’, pooper scooper ‘a tool for picking up doggy doings’ and rugger bugger ‘macho young man’. As mentioned in §  8.1 English has suffixes that lend a colloquial flavour, such as -ie in softie or sweetie or -o as in cheapo or the pseudo-Spanish el cheapo.These naturally figure prominently in slang. Slang makes use of the plural marker as a derivational suffix. This is a feature of baby talk as in dindins and poosies but is also used in slang terms.Young people have adorbs for ‘adorable’, feels as a noun for ‘feeling,

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strong emotion’ and totes for ‘totally’. In Australia to be on the turps (turpentine) is ‘to be drunk’.The -er suffix is used in some descriptive formations such as kisser for ‘mouth’ and ‘face’ and dishlicker for ‘dog’ and in UK and Australian slang the plural suffix is used in conjunction with -er. Chockers is from chock-a-block and means ‘full’, and brekkers is based on brekker, an old-fashioned derivative of breakfast. The -ers combination is also found in champers (champagne), frangers (French letters, i.e. condoms), Honkers (Hong Kong), preggers (pregnant) and starkers (stark naked). In Australia quinces are quangers, though the word is not heard often now since this particular fruit is no longer a common feature of the suburban back garden. Though abbreviation is not confined to informal language, there is probably greater use of abbreviation of various kinds in slang than in formal language since abbreviation adds a layer of obscurity and a prime motivation for slang is to create an in-group variety of language. Recent examples include: awse (awesome), jelli (jealous), obvi (obvious), ridic (ridiculous), suss (suspect, mainly as an adjective) and suss out (discover the truth about).There is also vaca (vacation) as well as the older vac. Metaphor plays a big part in slang. The motor car been a popular source of metaphor with expressions such as to be in overdrive, to blow a gasket, to be (really) motoring (along) and to be sparking on all four (cylinders). And electricity has provided a number of examples such as to be ac/dc, to light up (to show a brighter expression), to press the right switches, to be switched on and to turn someone on or off.Various sports have contributed metaphors. From boxing we have below the belt, knockout and throw in the towel, from fishing there is to cut somebody some slack and to reel somebody in and from yacht racing there is to take the wind out of someone’s sails. Cricket has probably been the main source of metaphor in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth: to bat for the other side, to be clean bowled, to have had a good innings, to be hit for six, let one go through to the keeper, to play it with a straight bat, to be on a sticky wicket These are matched in the United States by an impressive list of baseball metaphors: be in the (same) ballpark, a ballpark figure, a brand/whole new ballgame, throw a curveball, not even get to first base, (hit a) home run, out of left field, play ball, strike out, switch-hitter, touch base There are also clever comparisons.Watery tea is weak as nun’s wee and an ugly face is like a blind cobbler’s thumb. In Australia a man’s close-fitting bathers are called budgie-smugglers, the bulge being likened to the bulge in the trousers of a wouldbe parrot smuggler. This is too fancy, too smart even for a colloquialism. It is a kind of joke and indeed there is an overlap between the circulation of jokes and jokey slang expressions. Striking similes include to have more push than a revolving door said of someone forceful or pushy, and others such as to be flat out like a lizard drinking said of someone having to work hard and to charge like a wounded bull said

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of someone demanding high prices. Note that these involve two different senses of the key words, one literal and the other metaphorical. The deliberate distortion of words mentioned in § 15.7 is also an example of a sort of linguistic ingenuity, malformations such as picture-askew for ‘picturesque’ and trick cyclist for ‘psychiatrist’. There is also the formation of pseudo-learned words as in obstropolous, and its abbreviation stroppy for obstreperous, and rumbumptious with its echoes of the rhyming rum bum.

17.3 The attitude of slang As noted above, slang is by definition informal, but it is also often irreverent, as with (cat)gut scraper for ‘violinist’, scandal broth for ‘tea’ and louse trap or flea rake for ‘comb’. There is also a streak of dysphemism as in terms like floating coffin, meaning an ‘unseaworthy boat’. There is a clear aim to be crude with the eighteenth-century expression fart catcher for an attendant who walks a few paces behind his master, and cock-rag has a crude transparency lacking in the anthropologist’s phallocrypt, as does limp dick for penile dysfunction. Similarly off-putting are terms such as brown nose or brown tongue for a sycophant (or ‘crawler’), flies cemetery (currant cake), frog spawn (sago), snot block (vanilla slice), snot rag (hanky) and nun’s fart (cream puff ).3 As mentioned in the previous chapter, there is a strong move in society to do away with terms for mental and physical disability since they are thought to be insulting. Slang abounds with terms for those who do not meet exacting physical and mental standards. An overweight person is fatty or fatso or even two-seats-inthe-plane fat. A person who is socially awkward might be called an aspy/aspie (from Asperger syndrome), someone who is confused or erratic might be called schizo (schizophrenic) and someone clumsy might be dubbed spastic, spazo or spaz (from spasticity, cerebral palsy). There is a welter of terms for mental deficiency or insanity. This is not unexpected in that we are likely to use expressions such as You must be mad, That’s a crazy idea, What a fool! and Don’t be stupid when we don’t agree with someone. Expressions descriptive of someone allegedly not up to par mentally include the following. I have included the marginally slang terms previously listed in §  6.2. barmy, bats (in the belfry), batty, birdbrain, blockhead, bonehead, bonkers, boofhead, clot, cracked, crackers, crackpot, cranky, crazy, cretin, daft, deadhead, dense, dill, dim, dimwit, dippy, dolt, dope, donkey, dope, dotty, drip, drongo, dull, dullard, dumb, dumbbell, dummkopf, dummy, dunce, dunderhead, fathead, featherbrain, goofy, halfwit, head-case, idiot, idiotic, ignoramus, imbecile, knucklehead, lamebrain, looney, loopy, lost his/her marbles, lunatic, mad, mad as a hatter, mad as a two-bob watch, moron, moronic, mug, not all there, nincompoop, nong, numbskull, nut-case, nuthead, nuts, nutty as a fruitcake, potty, psycho, sap, saphead, scatter-brain, a screw loose, a shingle short, simple, simpleton, slow, stupid, thick (as two planks), two bob short in the pound, two sandwiches short of a picnic, veg, whacko

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In general slang is on the side of the underdog, but it does have some unsympathetic terms for poor people such as povo (from the first syllable of poverty plus -o) and prol (proletariat). There is also a deliberate insensitivity in the use of light-hearted, off-hand expressions for serious conditions. A diseased penis is said to have knob rot and even death can be treated lightly as with expressions such as kick the bucket or fall off the perch, or lead poisoning for someone who has been shot. These light-hearted expressions for death are similar to the use of humour in the face of tragedy, and, as mentioned above, slang and humour often go hand-in-hand. It almost goes without saying that there will be numerous words for the sex organs and the uses to which they can be put. A survey of English slang over the centuries reveals that there are or have been many hundreds of slang terms for penis and vagina used somewhere in the English-speaking world at one time or another, with words for sexual acts, excretion and bodily effluvia also rating highly.4 Alcohol, money and drugs also give rise to numerous slang terms. There are numerous imperatives advising someone to depart: bugger off, buzz off, fuck off, hop it, make yourself scarce, nick off, piss off, rack off, scat, scram and vamoose. Closely related are other dismissive imperatives such as Get stuffed! Go to blazes! and Go to hell! Slang is also rich in exclamatory words and phrases like Beauty! What the blazes?! Stiff cheese! Blow me down! and My oath!

17.4 Is slang ephemeral? Some dictionaries include ‘ephemeral’ in their definition of slang, and it is certainly true that most slang is short-lived. Fashion is a big factor, particularly in young people’s slang, and there is regular turnover with some expressions lasting only a few years. But while it is true that most slang is short-lived, many slang words endure for centuries. To lift ‘to steal’ has been around since the sixteenth century. Interestingly the compounds shoplifter and shoplifting are not slang, but standard terms. The verb to puke has been recorded from the turn of the seventeenth century and can be found in Shakespeare and Webster. The police have been called pigs since the late seventeenth century and booze, which was borrowed into Middle English from Middle Dutch bū sen ‘to drink’, has been around as a noun as well as a verb ever since, and it has spawned other slang expressions such as boozer ‘pub’ or ‘heavy drinker’, a booze-up ‘drinking spree’ and booze artist ‘heavy drinker’. The terms Grose lists in his 1785/1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue include the following that still have some currency: bum fodder ‘toilet paper’, claret ‘blood’, clink ‘jail’, clod hopper ‘country bumpkin’, crocodile tears ‘insincere tears’, duds ‘clothes’, elbow grease ‘hard work’, flabby, French leave, gob, guts, hick, to hump ‘copulate with’, nix, in queer street ‘bankrupt’, riff raff, to pump (somebody for information). Others such as physog (from physiognomy) ‘face’ and to plant ‘hide’ (intransitive and transitive) lasted into the twentieth century but are perhaps obsolete now.

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Words may change their status over time. Some words that began their life in English as slang achieved respectability. A recent example is skyscraper. It is a clever, light-hearted word that has become the standard name for very tall buildings. Other examples include bamboozle, banter, bus, an abbreviation of the Latin omnibus ‘for all’, carouse, from the German (trinken) gar aus ‘drink right out’, frisk, hoax, from the pseudo-Latin phrase hocus pocus, mob, an abbreviation of the Latin phrase mobile vulgus ‘the fickle common people’, shabby, sham and tandem, which is a Latin adverb meaning ‘at length’. In the nineteenth century tandem was a colloquial term for a vehicle pulled by two horses one behind the other. It was later applied to ‘a bicycle built for two’, but in this context it is the only term for such a bicycle and a technical term rather than slang.5 Pal came into English slang from Romani (Romany), the language of the Romani people (Gypsies), and today is in general use, albeit slightly colloquial.

17.5 Local nature of slang Some definitions of slang include reference to its esoteric character and it is that aspect that figures in the terms ‘back slang’ and ‘rhyming slang’, both of which are treated below. To ‘esoteric’ we could add ‘socially and geographically restricted’. It has been characteristic of slang over the centuries that it has been confined to particular areas, to particular strata in society, and to particular interest groups. At one extreme it may be peculiar to a particular factory, university or school. At the other extreme it may cover a whole country as with New Zealand slang or South African slang. To the extent that it is restricted it is unsuitable for formal purposes, which often involves communication with the language community at large. Part of the attraction of slang lies in its esoteric character. It is a good marker of identity, a language of the in-group, a language of solidarity. Groups of slang users from particular areas, including particular countries, are usually proud of their slang. They consider it smart and colourful and use it self-consciously, with the more imaginative speakers contributing new terms. It is interesting to note the large number of publications and even larger number of Web postings there are listing slang terms, many of which have been put together by amateurs who are motivated by interest in, if not pride in, the variety of slang they are recording. Nowadays, American slang is propagated via pop music, films, television and the internet. It permeates the English-speaking world and spreads into other languages. In German, for instance, one can ausflippen ‘flip out’ or ‘freak out’, or auschecken ‘check out’ (something or someone). Such widespread slang can still serve as a marker of identity. As particular terms are spread, they are largely picked up by the young, and a knowledge of the latest American slang can mark you as ‘with it’ or ‘cool’. This is particularly true of the current slang of young African Americans. However, many of these words are ephemeral because when they are picked up by young whites who are up with what is ‘hip and happening’, they lose their value for the black community, and when they are then

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picked up by the wider white community, they cease to be hip. Words such as bling ‘jewellery’, bootie ‘bottom’, to chill, chill out, funky ‘cool, but a bit offbeat or a bit odd’, (main) squeeze ‘the person you have your main relationship with’, threads ‘clothing’ and throw shade (on) ‘be negative about’ are in general circulation. Some words such as ancient meaning ‘no longer fashionable’ and basic meaning among other things ‘too mainstream, conventional’ have spread from African American vernacular, but are so close to their ordinary meaning, they can go unnoticed. Diss for ‘to disrespect’ is very common in movies and TV programmes and is catching on. Another type of slang that is not restricted to an area is cyber-slang, the form of language described in §  10.3 under the name textese, language full of abbreviations of various kinds. It is in wide use around the world among internet users. But though it is not restricted geographically, it is peculiar to internet users and the abbreviations are by their nature relatively obscure. Cyber-slang is very much an in-group language.

17.6 Slang and jargon Since slang is restricted to a class, an area, an occupation or area of activity, it overlaps with jargon. In any area of specialisation there is vocabulary peculiar to the field whether it be a sport, a hobby or an occupation. In tennis such terms as deuce, fault, love, serve and tie-breaker are part of the indispensable vocabulary of the sport. If you are a stamp collector you will need to be familiar with terms such as cancellation, commemorative, first-day cover and mint (condition). A motor mechanic will use terms such as camshaft, firing order, piston ring, stroke and tappet. These terms which are essential for a particular activity are jargon. However, one might hesitate to call specialised vocabulary ‘jargon’ since jargon has become a ‘dirty word’. Jargon originally referred to the twittering or chattering of birds and was then applied to talk or writing regarded as nonsense and to ‘debased’ or ‘mixed language’ including pidgin forms of language, which were traditionally looked down on. It is more often used contemptuously for speech unnecessarily full of words and phrases obscure to the audience. If a motor mechanic were to use a lot of technical terms to a customer who had little knowledge of car engines, we might say he or she was using too much jargon. While many slang terms in general circulation are synonyms of standard terms, the esoteric slang terms of many occupations have few standard equivalents. They are the technical vocabulary of the occupation. Take surfing terminology, for instance.Words such as grubbing ‘falling off the board’, hanging ten ‘having both feet on the nose of the surfboard’, mullering ‘a bad wipeout’ and quiver ‘one’s collection of surfboards’.These are often described as ‘surfing slang’, but this misses the point that these words and phrases are technical terms. They are slang and at the same time jargon. The same applies with the vocabulary of skating, with terms like ollie ‘to use your back foot to smack the tail of your board against the ground while your front foot pulls the board up into the air’, tic-tac ‘to pivot left and right on

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your back wheels’ and varial ‘spinning the board along its vertical axis, without popping the board in the air’. Some terms are common to surfing and skating such as bail ‘to jump off when an accident is imminent’ and goofy ‘surfing or skating with the right foot forward’. The word jargon is often used for wording that is seen to be new and replacing familiar terminology or seen to be pretentious, vague or euphemistic. Consider the language of business, sometimes referred to as ‘corporate speak’. Corporations might recognise there has been a paradigm shift and that there’s a need to reposition themselves, to adopt a holistic approach, to follow best practice with cutting-edge technology. They might need to assess the value of their intellectual capital in the age of the knowledge economy. Successful businesses have to be sustainable. They need to do some benchmarking from time to time, comparing their performance against that of their competitors. Perhaps the Human Resources Department might need to headhunt a game-changer. They may also need to do some rightsizing, which involves restructuring upper-level management, downsizing the workforce and out-sourcing the cleaning and catering.6 This is the jargon of business where the emphasis is on profit. Most of the terms are formal, but they are often accompanied by colloquial expressions that run along the same lines. Staff are encouraged to think outside the box, to push the envelope and to bring a fresh approach to the table to achieve a win-win result by the close of business or the close of play. Here jargon and slang come together. Incidentally in the last example one would not use at the end of the day or at day’s end, since these phrases are used metaphorically for something like ‘in the final analysis’.

17.7 Argots and ‘secret languages’ The tendency for slang to be associated with an area or an interest group is epitomised in argot, which is a body of non-standard vocabulary used by a group bound by common interest, by isolation or by their opposition to authority. The word ‘argot’ is traditionally associated with those who live outside the law: burglars, cardsharps, confidence tricksters, drug-dealers, pickpockets, racketeers, swindlers, thieves and the like, as well as the inmates of prisons, and it is sometimes referred to as ‘thieves’ slang’. But argots have also been in use among other groups whose activities have been the subject of police attention, sex workers, for instance, and gays, and itinerant people such as beggars, entertainers and circus folk. Gypsies have their own argot, which includes words from Romani, the traditional language of the Romani people. Those who supply goods or services without having a shop are traditional users of an argot, people such as street vendors or market stall-holders. Part of the motivation for argot is to maintain in-group solidarity, and part is to provide a secret code that will not be understood by victims or authorities. Some of this secrecy is achieved via a special vocabulary, and some by means of systematic phonological distortion of the Pig Latin type (See § 17.7.3).

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Since an argot is generally found among those whose activities come under the notice of the law, it is not surprising that there are numerous terms for authorities (the old bill, coppers, the filth, pigs) and prison guards (screws) and time in prison (bird), for evading authorities (to scarper, to do a runner, to be on the lam) and for types of crime. These include serving up gear ‘distributing drugs’, twocking ‘stealing’, an acronym of ‘take without owner’s consent’, snowdropping ‘stealing washing from clotheslines’ and the modern shoulder-surfing, which is observing someone’s pinnumber at an ATM or cash point for future use. Some of the argot passes into mainstream usage when an activity comes to the attention of a wider public as has happened with pimp and supergrass.

17.7.1 Back slang In Britain there has been a form of secret language called back slang since at least the early nineteenth century. It is reported to have been in use in England among food vendors such as butchers and greengrocers, and among street sellers, those who sold goods from barrows or stalls, especially the coster-mongers who sold fruit, vegetables and ‘fish’ (‘seafood’ in current terminology). It is said that it allowed dodgy vendors to converse in front of unwary customers, but back slang must have been known to at least some of the regular clientele. It is essentially a system of enciphering words by taking the written forms and pronouncing them backwards. Here are some straightforward examples. fish→ shif look→ kool market→ tekram no good→ on doog Various problems arise with this process. For instance, reversing cold would give dloc with an unfamiliar dl cluster, so an unstressed e is inserted to yield deloc. Another possibility is to pronounce the name of a letter, so that, for instance, the final l in girl is pronounced el to give elrig. The word yob (with its derivative yobbo), a back-slang form of boy has moved into wider currency as a well-known colloquialism for ‘undesirable or rough young man’. Today back slang seems to be dying, as are many other forms of secret communication. Oddly, the principle lives on in joke-names for properties and businesses such as renroc ‘corner’ and emoh ruo ‘our home’ (also the name of a 1985 satirical film).

17.7.2 Rhyming slang A form of in-group communication that is traditional with Cockneys, at least since the nineteenth century, is rhyming slang. Rhyming slang is not confined

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to Cockneys and there are sporadic reports of its use from various parts of the English-speaking world. It has had a certain social stigma attached to it, and has been associated with the criminal classes, but it is in fact used across a wide social spectrum, though mainly by males. Basically it consists of a rhyming phrase substituted for a word so that, for instance, ‘eyes’ becomes mince pies, ‘mouth’ becomes north and south and ‘nose’ becomes I suppose. It becomes something of a secret code when the rhyming element is omitted. In the British television series Minder dodgy used-car dealer Arthur Daley used to talk about getting on the dog.The dog is the dog and bone, that is, the phone. When we talk about someone rabbiting on, we are using a word derived from rhyming slang. Rabbit is short for rabbit and pork, rhyming slang for ‘talk’. If someone is rabbiting on, they are talking at length. Other examples of expressions that started off life as rhyming slang, but which have come into more general use, include brass tacks for ‘facts’, chew the fat for ‘chat’ and Dutch treat. Dutch treat was originally rhyming slang for ‘eat’ but has come to mean a meal in a café  or restaurant where two or more persons pay their own share, i.e. they go Dutch. Berk is a common term of abuse directed at males. It is an abbreviation of Berkeley Hunt, rhyming slang for cunt. In Australia there is an alternative drop-kick from the phrase drop-kick and punt.

alone arse balls bottle dead eyes face facts fart feet hair hat look mate missus mouth nose pinch (steal) pissed (drunk) pub sleep snake stairs thief Yank

Rhyming Slang

Reduced Form

Pat Malone Khyber Pass cobbler’s awls Aristotle brown bread mince pies boat race, Chevy Chase brass tacks raspberry tart plates o’ meat Barnet Fair tit for tat butcher’s hook China (plate) cheese and kisses north and south I suppose half-inch, ‘alf inch Brahms and Liszt, Schindler’s List rub-a-dub, rubbity-dub Bo Peep Joe Blake apples and pears tea leaf septic tank, army tank

pat, as in ‘on your pat’ Khyber cobblers, as in ‘a load of cobblers’

minces

raspberry plates barnet titfer butcher’s china

rubbidy

septic

156  Slang

Some terms have had different meanings at different times. Rory o’More, as in the expression Shut the Rory O’More, is ‘door’, but at one time was rhyming slang for ‘floor’, and at another time ‘whore’. Conversely, some referents have been allotted different rhymes at different times. In the nineteenth century mouth was east and south but has long been replaced by north and south. There are local variants in various parts of the world. In Australia ‘Give us a look’ is Give us a Captain Cook or just Give us a Captain and ‘trouble’ is froth and bubble.

17.7.3 Pig Latin In many languages there are special forms of language that are nominally secret. Almost all these special forms of language employ some systematic means of phonological distortion such as transposing syllables or inserting extra syllables. They are mostly used by older children and early teenagers as much for fun as for real secrecy; they are sometimes referred to as play languages, but they are also used somewhat less systematically in various argots in languages around the world. Play languages were once popular among young English speakers, but they have fallen from use over the last few decades. The best-known play language is Pig Latin and it involves transposition. There are a number of varieties. In most of them one takes any consonants that precede the first vowel of a word and puts them at the end of the word followed by -ay. If there is no such consonant or consonant cluster, that is, if the word begins with a vowel, then one adds -way or -yay, or just -ay at the end of the word. Here is an example where -way is used: I will now give you an example of Pig Latin. Iway illway ownay ivegay ouyay anway exampleway ofway Igpay Atinlay Pig Latin is used just for fun or so that kids can talk in front of outsiders (e.g. their parents or other children) without the outsiders understanding them. However, outsiders are likely to cotton on after a bit of exposure, but Pig Latin still serves to mark the in-group from the out-group. Pig Latin has been featured in a number of movies and television programmes. In the animated film The Lion King there is the following exchange featuring Simba, the lion cub, Zazu, a hornbill, and Banzai, one of three, threatening hyenas: Simba:

But, Zazu, you said they [the hyenas] are nothing but slobbery, mangy, stupid poachers. Zazu: Ixnay on the upidstay. Banzai: Who you callin’ ‘upidstay’?

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Notes 1 Nix is from Yiddish nichts ‘nothing’ 2 See also Blake 2010, chapter 8. 3 Compare French pet de nonne. 4 See Fryer 1964: 69–85, Allan and Burridge 1991: 52–116, Allan and Burridge 2006: 144–74. 5 The phrase ‘a bicycle built for two’ comes from a popular song Daisy, Daisy. 6 The term paradigm shift comes from Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962, 4th ed. 2012). I would be surprised if many of those who use the term have read the book.

18 ENGLISH EXPORTED

While English has always imported words from other languages, over the last 70 years or so it has become a leading exporter. The borrowing of English words is concentrated in what we might broadly call lifestyle, that is, clothing, food, entertainment and sex. This has been largely due to the dominance of the United States and to a lesser extent Britain in popular culture, including music, movies, television and online activities. The dominance of the United States is even more evident in electronic products especially the computer and associated technology where the relevant terminology has been borrowed wholesale into numerous languages. Curiously, the names of sports and the word sport itself have been adopted in numerous other languages for over a century. Sport is not exclusive to the English-speaking world, though it is true that sports such as cricket, football, golf, hockey and tennis have been played in Britain for centuries and were codified into their present form in the nineteenth century.1 Sport is a shortened form of disport and is first recorded in the fourteenth century in the sense of games and diversions. By the sixteenth century it was applied to organised, competitive, physical activities such as the ancient Olympic Games. The word comes from French disport/desport, so when the French borrow English sport, they are borrowing back a word they had a thousand years or more ago. Another area where English spread its terminology before the current boom was with toilets. The term water closet, usually abbreviated to wc, is found all over Europe, even in France, which has given us our toilet. Borrowing words from English is a recognised phenomenon. The practice of using English words in German is known as Denglisch (Deutsch–Englisch) and the parallel practice in French is Franglais (Franç ais–Anglais). Some of the recent borrowings into Franglais are like sport mentioned above in that they were

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159

borrowed from French in centuries past, words such as budget (bougette ‘wallet’), challenge, fuel, gay, humour, jury, mess, pedigree, record, squat, standard, suspense, ticket, toast, tunnel and vintage. The practice of mixing English with Hindi and other related languages such as Marathi in India is called Hinglish.This is partly a matter of sprinkling Hindi with English words as in Time kya hua hai? ‘What time is it right now?’, partly a matter of Hindi words in English as in I have hazaar things to do ‘I have thousands of things to do’, and partly a matter of switching between the two languages in conversation.2 The forms that are borrowed from English are often ones that are not familiar to native English speakers or are used in senses unfamiliar to English speakers. The term footing is found in a number of languages including French, Spanish and Italian for what in English is called jogging. In French le footing is just one of a number of -ing forms that seem strange to speakers of English. Le dancing is where you dance, le dressing is a dressing room or walk-in wardrobe, le camping is where you camp, le parking is where you park and le relooking is a makeover.3 In French and in a number of other languages a dinner jacket (American tuxedo) is le smoking (el smoking, der Smoking, etc.), derived from smoking jacket, a term not much used in English, for which OED gives only one citation from 1878: Appearing in a radiant smoking-jacket that matched the cigar-case.4 In Hindi would-be is used for ‘fiancé ’ or ‘fiancé e’, opticals for ‘glasses’, time-pass for ‘pastime’ and air-dash for ‘air travel’. In Korean window shopping is eye-shopping. In Iraqi Arabic the word shoe has been borrowed from the Americans, but it covers boots as well as shoes. In Thailand the upper classes are hiso, from English ‘high society’. The sounds and shapes of many English words do not fit the norms of the borrowing language. In Thai a syllable cannot end in [s] and in this position [s] is converted to [t] so that bus is pronounced like English but. In Japan the only permissible syllable-final consonant is n as in pasokon ‘personal computer’ and vowels are usually added to avoid unfamiliar final consonants as in hotto doggu ‘hot dog’, rokku ‘rock (music)’ and kakuteru ‘cocktail’ with substitution of r for l. Besides the borrowing of words there is in some cases the borrowing of a pattern. Transparent compounds are often copied from one language to another. The clever English formation skyscraper is gratte-ciel in French, grattacielo in Italian and Wolkenkratzer in German, where these languages use their own roots for ‘scrape’ and ‘sky’.These formations are loan translations or calques (See § 12.1). Italian aria condizionata is a calque of air-conditioned and Spanish tarjeta de cré dito is a calque of credit card. In Mandarin Chinese ‘hot dog’ is calqued as rè  gǒ u (hot dog) and ‘honeymoon’ as mì  yuè  (honey moon). There can also be semantic calquing. The Mandarin term jià o fù  is used for ‘godfather’. It is a calque, literally ‘religion father’, but the term was used to translate Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, better known from the movie, and the word has taken on an additional sense, something like ‘powerful businessman’. With computers and associated technology and activities there has been wholesale exporting of the relevant terminology including the word computer

160  English exported

itself. In Italian you will find terms such as il pc, il monitor, il link, la mail and un click sul sito ‘a click on the site’. Japanese has intā netto ‘internet’, mausu ‘mouse’, monitā ‘monitor’, rinku ‘link’ and webbusaito ‘website’. German has imported a lot of English terms such as der Bug, bloggen ‘to blog’, der Email, googlen ‘to google’, das Internet, das Web and die Webcam. However, on the whole it tends to use its own resources. Besides der Computer there is der Rechner, besides der Cursor there is der Mauszeiger ‘mouse pointer’ and besides der Monitor there is der Bildschirm ‘picturescreen’. There are a number of calques, some of which seem minimally different from English since the forms match. Examples include die Netzwerkkarte ‘network card’ and doppelklicken ‘to double click’. In a number of languages English chat has become the word for conversing online. In German there is chatten ‘to chat online’ and der Chat ‘the chat, chatroom’; Japanese has chatto and in Italian there is chattare ‘to chat’ and video chat. Telephone is composed in English from Greek roots. It is a well-established loan into numerous languages. The modern version, which is called a mobile phone in British English and a cell phone in American English, is das Handy in German. Not surprisingly, forms of social media carry their brand names around the world with their associated terminology, Twitter with its tweets, and Facebook with its friends and likes. With clothing jeans has found its way around the world, which is not surprising. In Italian il pullover competes with il maglione. The Italians also have il top, i leggings, la zip and under il jeans a man might wear i boxer or gli shorts (both ‘boxer shorts’), and a man or a woman might wear lo slip (plural gli slip) meaning ‘briefs’. With food and drink sandwich and beefsteak have been well established in a large number of languages for some time, the latter for what is generally just called steak in English. Hot dog, hamburger and popcorn have spread more recently.You can buy a coffee or a cocktail in a bar or club almost anywhere, and cafe is widespread, originally French of course, but spread via English. Drug terminology has spread, including the word drug itself, which has been borrowed in Japanese as doraggu. In German you can buy das Crack from der Dealer. In Italy you can inalare popper ‘inhale a popper’, but you need to be careful not to overdose. With popular music the term pop itself is found in numerous languages along with the names of types of music such as jazz, blues, hip hop and punk. In Germany you can hear die Top Ten and in Italy you can hear a DJ talk about number one (on the charts) as well as numero uno. In various countries people do the shopping, some have the party and may need to hire the catering. A number of terms to do with sex and relationships have been exported including the word sex itself and the adjective sexy. In Italy you can talk about il mio ex ‘my ex’, il partner or il boyfriend. In Thailand the English word fan covers boyfriend and girlfriend. Tom is a ‘tomboy’, but also a more masculine lesbian as opposed to a dee, from English ‘lady’, for a more feminine one. Gay and variations

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161

on transsexual such as trans and transex are widespread, as is the acronym AIDS. English-speaking monoglots in search of sex abroad need not turn to their bilingual guide book. In many cities they will find girls (sometimes with an apostrophe girl’s) on signs along with hostess club, lap dance, live peep show, sex shop, strip club and topless entertainment. In Thailand a hotel or motel where you pay by the hour is a show-up resort, show-up inn or curtain hotel. It is English, but the meaning is not immediately transparent. Outside the fields where English exports are concentrated there are numerous other borrowings. Weekend has been borrowed into French and Italian as has babysitter and snob, the latter also in Spanish as un esnob. German has das Baby along with babysitten ‘to babysit’. German has integrated a number of English words into its vocabulary with the addition of prefixes. So along with checken ‘check’ there is auschecken ‘check out’ and einchecken ‘check in’. Abgefukt contains a well-known English four-letter word and means what you might expect: ‘knackered’, ‘buggered’, ‘wasted’, etc. The vulgar shitstorm has also been borrowed and even used by Chancellor Angela Merkel (pronounced as shit-shturm). The English word look has been borrowed as a noun for the way something looks. In French un nouveau look is ‘a new look’ and in Spanish un look informal is ‘an informal look’. Feeling has been borrowed into Italian in the sense of romantic feeling. Today young people in Italy speak and write a language sprinkled with English words. In a quick survey of stories and postings on the Web I found expressions such as Aprì  il suo account ‘He opened his account’, il clic della macchina fotografica ‘the click of the camera’, la foto più  cliccata ‘the photo most clicked on’, interrompere la routine ‘to interrupt the routine’, lo stress del traffic ‘the stress of the traffic’, una location ‘location’, aver creato un team ‘to have created a team’ and temperature da record ‘record temperatures’. The concentration of borrowings in magazines is striking. A thumb-through of a recent issue of Chi, a celebrity magazine, contained fan (devotee), fashion star, film, follower, freezer, nuovo album, politically correct, pop, red carpet, selfie, sexy, society, superstar and top model. In light of all this borrowing it is worth noting that not so long ago, during the Fascist period (1922–43), using foreign words in Italian was frowned upon. In 1923 a tax was put on foreign words used in shop signs and in 1939 the government posted signs telling people to Boicottate le parole straniere ‘Boycott foreign words.’ They were apparently oblivious to the fact that boicottare was a borrowing from English (Lepschy and Lepschy 1977: 29). In fact boycott has been borrowed widely around the world. The influence of English goes beyond what I have indicated here. In some languages there is an anglicised genre of prose to be found in newspapers, magazines and perhaps more in amateur postings on the Web. This probably results partly from translating English material, e.g. news reports, and partly from people immersing themselves in material written in English.

162  English exported

Notes 1 Earliest dates in OED for these sports are cricket 1575, football 1409, golf 1457, hockey 1527, and tennis c1400. Baseball is later 1748, and ice-hockey later again, 1895 2 Kerry Maxwell in Med Magazine 32, July 2005. Med Magazine is the monthly webzine of the Macmillan English Dictionaries. 3 Spanish has un parking and un camping. 4 English jacket has been borrowed into a number of languages, including Indonesian, Japanese and Thai.

19 ENGLISH TODAY

In Chapter 1 I quoted a passage from John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, published in 1690, to illustrate that there is little difference between seventeenth century prose and contemporary prose. This is in stark contrast to developments in vocabulary. There are thousands of words in everyday use today which would be unknown to Locke if he were resurrected. He would be stumped by binge drinking, carjacking, ecotourism, gay marriage, skateboarding and speed dating, to say nothing of words connected with technology such as telephone and television and more esoteric terms such as Bluetooth, charging dock, iPod, memory card and microchip. He would recognise the familiar word-formation processes of compounding and affixation, but he would be intrigued by the popularity of blending in words like brunch and chugger, the frequency of abbreviations, alphabetisms and acronyms such as fan, tlc and radar, and by our readiness to switch a word from one part-of-speech to another as with to transition. In the fifth century the language of the Angles and Saxons was a language spoken, but not written, and limited to England. By the seventh century Christian missionaries had introduced the Roman alphabet and a written literature emerged. Over the following centuries English became dominant throughout the British Isles. From the seventeenth to the twentieth century Britain acquired a vast empire and English became a major international language. In the twentieth century, especially after World War II, English became the dominant language of the globe as the United States emerged as a world power with widespread military presence and dominance in science, technology, commerce, tourism, movies, television and popular music. English is the language most often taught as a second or third language and if we take into consideration the fact that English is taught to millions in Chinese schools and if we count those whose English just allows them to book a hotel

164  English today

room or read the directions on their latest device, we can say that perhaps half the people on the planet have some familiarity with English. English is a now a global lingua franca with non-native speakers far outnumbering native speakers. In the Old and Middle English periods century people wrote in their own dialect, but the dialect of London and the south-east acquired a certain prestige because the court was in London and London was the major centre of commerce. Moreover, the two most prestigious universities, Oxford and Cambridge, were in the south-east. By the sixteenth century, when printing came into general use, publication was only in the language of the south-east and this became a standard. Since the seventeenth century English has been spoken in different countries not in close contact with one another, and to a certain extent each went its own way with independent word formation and semantic change, especially in the colloquial language. Some differences arose from different preferences in food, clothing or leisure pursuits, others came about from differences in landscape and climate. When it came to naming landforms, English-speaking colonists adopted a number of different strategies that contributed to regional differences. First of all, they tended to drop lots of terms used in Britain, terms such as brook, copse, dell, glen, moor, stream and woods.1 Secondly, they borrowed terms such as veld from the Dutch in South Africa and prairie from the French in North America, both terms for extensive tracts of open country, something that was not a feature of the British landscape. Some words came to be used in different senses. Paddock in Britain is a small, enclosed field, but in Australia and New Zealand it replaced field as the general term. In New Zealand the bush refers to forest. In South Africa and Australia it can also refer to country that is not particularly wooded or to the country in general as opposed to the city. A creek in Britain is ‘a narrow recess or inlet in the coastline of the sea, or the tidal estuary of a river; an armlet of the sea’. In America, Australia and New Zealand a creek is a small river. One source of regional difference has been the influence of other languages. Besides the borrowings listed in Chapter 12, there are numerous borrowings that are more or less confined to particular countries. In South African English there are numerous borrowings from Dutch/Afrikaans such as ouma ‘grandma’ and oupa ‘grandpa’ and a few from African languages such as dagga ‘cannabis’, which is from Khoekhoe dachab (Branford 1994). In South Asia there are numerous words from local languages, mainly from Hindi-Urdu. Examples include durza ‘tailor’, janta ‘people’, brinjal ‘egg-plant’, as well as calques from local languages such as cousinsister and cousin-brother for female and male cousin.2 In the Caribbean there is a continuum between standard English and a creole, which developed from pidgin spoken among slaves of African origin. In Jamaican English, for instance, there are a number of distinctive words including labrish ‘idle talk, gossip’, merrywing ‘any small biting insect’, natty ‘wearing one’s hair in dreadlocks’ and jonga/jangga ‘a type of shrimp’, one of a number of words of African origin.

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165

Borrowed words are usually easy to recognise by their distinctive shape, but their contribution to regional differences is small in proportion to differences resulting from the extension of words to cover new referents, an extension that tends to go unnoticed. As mentioned in Chapter 4, with fauna and flora there has been large-scale extension resulting in a word covering more than one species of creature or plant and potentially giving rise to confusion. A striking example is tiger, which traditionally and predominantly refers to a large striped animal of the cat family, but in America was sometimes applied to pumas, and in South Africa to leopards and panthers (OED). The word cedar originally applied trees of the Cedrus genus such as the Cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani), a large conifer which is the national symbol of modern Lebanon and appears on the Lebanese flag. However, the term cedar has been extended to various other trees. In New South Wales it refers to Toona ciliata, a tree of the Mahogany family. Some regional differences arise from general terms surviving in one area, but not another. The word fall was once the standard term for the season between summer and winter, but it was replaced in Britain by autumn at the turn of the eighteenth century but lived on in North America. The term traffic robot or just robot for traffic lights was used around the English-speaking world in the early twentieth century, but it survived only in South Africa. Likewise, the term bioscope, a word that originally referred to a type of moving picture projector but came to be used as a term for cinema, lived on in South Africa until recently. Although different colonies developed differences in vocabulary, they accepted British English as a standard, and this standard was taught in schools around the British Empire; of course, it was not just a standard in vocabulary – it was also a standard in grammar and pronunciation. America declared its political independence in 1776 and not long after it became linguistically independent with Noah Webster as its leading light. He rejected the notion of accepting a British standard and argued for an American standard as can be seen in his publications such as American Spelling Book, American Grammar and An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). A major part of his legacy has been the adoption of some of his innovative spelling conventions in the United States. The linguistic independence of America from Britain meant that over the nineteenth and early twentieth century a dichotomy developed between the two.Take the motor car, for instance. It was developed pretty much independently in Europe and America and America came up with one set of terminology and Britain with another, including the name of the invention itself, motor car or just car in Britain, and automobile as well as car in the United States. Other British/American differences connected with the car include bonnet/hood, boot/trunk, silencer/muffler and windscreen/windshield. Altogether there are over 500 hundred differences in everyday vocabulary between British and American English including chemist/drugstore, draughts/checkers, hoarding/billboard, lift/elevator, nappy/diaper and petrol/gas or gasoline. And since the Empire, later the Commonwealth, followed British practice, most of these differences can be described as Commonwealth/US differences.

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Against the forces that have caused English to split up into regional varieties, there are counter influences that foster uniformity. The twentieth century saw the advent of radio, cinema and television, all of which gave the English-speaking world exposure to the everyday language of Britain and the United States. Before television became dominant in the 1950s there were what we might broadly call dramas broadcast around the world on radio, or what was wireless in the United Kingdom. The BBC broadcast serials such as Dick Barton and soaps such as The Archers. From America there was Dragnet, a police drama, and The Lone Ranger, a western.With radio the bulk of the material broadcast nowadays is news, news commentary, talk-back, interviews and the like and it is local or national. Only popular music can now be truly considered international, and this mostly comes from Britain or America. The chanted lyrics of rap carry street vernacular with a strong African-American flavour. With television, numerous dramas, panel shows, quizzes, sitcoms and soaps have been transmitted around the world from Britain and America, mainly from the latter, as well as talk shows like The Oprah Winfrey Show from America. With movies , the same pattern emerges again, but with America much more dominant. Almost all the most popular movies are American, or international with a strong American flavour. Presenters or ‘personalities’ on radio and television and journalists, whether on the air or in print, have access to large audiences typically tens of thousands, sometimes millions.They tend to be alive to fashion including fashion in language and they are in a position to spread what is trending. They are a conduit through which change takes place, on the one hand spreading buzz words and idioms, on the other hastening to be politically correct, using euphemisms and inclusive, non-discriminatory language. The prestige of US culture in the eyes of the media hastens the spread of American terms around the rest of the English-speaking world and, as mentioned in the previous chapter, to some extent the spread of American vocabulary to other languages. Sports commentary, whether live or post-performance, has been local or at most national in the past; now, however, sports programmes are broadcast internationally on cable TV, and American sports, such as baseball, netball, softball and volleyball, are becoming popular around the world, with each bringing its own vocabulary. Exposure to these sports not only spreads the relevant terminology, but it reinforces colloquial expressions based on the terminology such as slam dunk ‘a sure thing’ from basketball and step up to the plate ‘take responsibility’ from baseball. America has long been an exporter of words. Beeline, belittle, blizzard, seafood and swamp, for instance, spread around the English-speaking world in the nineteenth century and are no longer considered Americanisms. Over the course of the twentieth century, particularly since the end of World War II in 1945, there has been a noticeable spread of US terminology. For instance, American truck has replaced British lorry in Commonwealth countries, kerosene has replaced paraffin,

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muffler (on cars) has replaced silencer, can is replacing tin around the world (although the flattish container for sardines remains a tin), and movie is competing with film, apartment with flat, mail with post and wrench with spanner. American-based corporations introduce American usage in advertising and in the names of products, for instance, cookie for biscuit, corn-flour for maize flour or maizena, cup-cake for patty cake or fairy cake, flashlight for torch, French fries for potato chips and potato chips for potato crisps. In McDonalds you put your rubbish into the trash. There is a certain amount of resistance to the spread of American vocabulary and American culture in general. In Australia and New Zealand the advance of American vocabulary is decried in letters to the editor and on talk-back radio, though it needs to be remembered that almost all letters to the editor on matters of language are conservative. But even those on the left of politics, who tend to be opposed to American foreign policy and snobbish about American popular culture and who sometimes demonstrate against the opening of new McDonalds outlets, seem unable to stop themselves from using train stations for railway stations, lines for queues and on such-and-such a street for in such-and-such a street. By the beginning of the twenty-first century the digital age had arrived. This had ramifications for language. For a start, it made digitised text possible. Anyone who uses the Web will know there is a vast amount of digitised text available, not just of famous works and not just in English. This makes it much easier than before to find citations, in particular to trace earlier usages and earlier senses than what has been recorded in OED. It promises to revolutionise dictionary making and it also opens up more opportunities for amateur lexicographers to put together their own glossaries of dialect, slang or specialised vocabulary. Modern technology enables reference works to be updated regularly and accessed in new ways. OED, for instance, is available online and is searchable. You can search for words introduced in a particular period, words first found in a particular source such as Milton or the Daily Telegraph or words borrowed from a certain language. There are subject categories such as religion and law and language categories such as allusive, archaic and euphemistic. The environment in which English is used has changed dramatically over the last 20 years with the emergence of online culture. A lot more people are composing text now that electronic media is available. Many people in the past learned to write at school, but hardly ever found occasion to use that skill thereafter, perhaps an odd job application or an occasional letter to a distant relative. It is probably still true for a lot of people, particularly older people who are not ‘into’ computers, but millions use email to ‘message’ friends and acquaintances and use social media such as Facebook and Twitter.They subscribe to chat rooms, set up web pages and write blogs (web-logs) consisting of diary-like entries or opinion pieces, and they contribute to online forums. A lot of material on the Web comes from fandoms, particularly those based on movie franchises such as Star Wars and Harry Potter or television series such as Star Trek and Dr Who. Most of the material on the Web is in English and much of it reaches an international audience and facilitates the

168  English today

further spread of English. The material runs from formal through colloquial to textese with its scores of abbreviations, use of the odd rebus such as 8 for ‘ate’ and neglect of capitals and niceties of punctuation. In discussions of this new world public attention has been focussed on the use of these abbreviations, mainly in the form of negative comment, but only a small proportion of the material on the Web is in textese. The internet gives millions access to millions, anyone with a computer can disseminate ideas and opinions to a potentially vast audience in a very short time. Anyone with a computer can post information on any topic. There is a free online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia, which receives contributions from the public and it epitomises the way things are going, a sort of democratisation with mass participation. It is common to find people writing about words online, particularly about new words. This activity is not only commentary but a means by which new words are spread. Quite a few people post wordlists, particularly of slang and jargon. Slang has always been a problem for dictionaries because words can come and go quite quickly and lexicographers relied on printed sources. In the past the only chance for the average person to comment on language to a wide readership was via ‘letters to the editor’ in newspapers. But it is pretty much true that the only people who availed themselves of the opportunity were conservatives. Almost all letters to the editor on matters of language complain about alleged falling standards or express their displeasure at lexical innovations. With the Web large numbers of people are writing about language, expressing a variety of points of view. A lot of the comment is political, but language is political. It can be the basis of discrimination and it is the basis of identification. A good example of the attention paid to the colloquial language online is the Urban Dictionary. It receives contributions from anyone who wants to submit their views on language and is edited by volunteer editors. It deals mainly but not exclusively with slang.The size of the dictionary is enormous. At the start of 2014, the dictionary featured over seven million definitions. Definition is used loosely here. It covers actual definitions as well as comments. Here is an entry for air quote, which combines definition and comment: In conversation, the dual flexing of the index and middle finger of both hands, to signify the presence of scare quotes. Used ad nauseam by ‘pretentious’ and ostensibly ‘intelligent’ university students, to advertise their ‘superior morals’ and ‘erudition’. The first sentence gives a definition, but the second is a personal comment. Normally, a dictionary maintains a neutral stance, although Doctor Johnson in his Dictionary of the English language (1755) frequently added comments reflecting his own views. The entry for lexicographer reads: ‘a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.’

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The Urban Dictionary is hardly scientific. It is uneven in its coverage, occasionally inaccurate in its part-of-speech labelling and given to using the odd greengrocer’s apostrophe. However, for many words, particularly recent slang, the accumulation of comments from subscribers gives the user a good impression of how people see the words. Take fleek, for instance. It is said to mean ‘on point’ and on point is defined as ‘excellent’ and similar. But it is the comments that are revealing: Dumbest word to ever surface used by stupid dumb fucks, an annoying term used by annoying teenagers meant to be ‘on point’, A neologism that means ‘on point’, but needs to never be used in any language ever, a silly word used by frivolous teens to mean any number of things, including phrases that already have definitions like ‘on point’. This is a book and a book must have an end. But the story of English is ongoing. I come across a new word or two every few weeks and I read about a new trend every few months. The vocabulary of a language reflects the culture of its speakers. The culture of the English-speaking world has changed substantially over the last 70 years or so with progress towards equality of opportunity, recognition of diversity, large-scale immigration of non-English speakers into English-speaking countries and developments in the technology of communication. Presumably, change will continue, and English at the end of the twenty-first century will have a vocabulary quite different from that of today.

Notes 1 Stream is little used in Australia and brook only in Western Australia. 2 Brinjal is from Portuguese bringella, bringiela, though ultimately from Sanskrit vatin-gaņ a.

FURTHER READING

Introduction For the extent of the use of English around the world see Crystal English as a Global Language and Ostler The Last Lingua Franca: English Until the Return of Babel.

Chapter 1: A brief history There are numerous histories on the English language. For a brief overview see Horobin How English Became English. For a more detailed account see Pyles and Algeo The Origins and Development of the English Language. For an attractive, illustrated history and description of English there is Crystal’s The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language.

Chapter 2: The dictionary Information on the size of English can be googled at various sites. Try Harvard–Google quantitative analysis. For an overview of recent developments in English there is a useful article on the Web by John Ayto Twentieth Century English: An Overview. For detailed data there is Twentieth Century Words (1999) and Movers and Shakers: A Chronology of Words that Shaped Our Age (2006) both by John Ayto.

Chapter 3: The mental lexicon Jean Aitchison Words in the Mind: An Introduction to the Mental Lexicon.

172 Further reading

Chapter 4: Extension Lakoff and Johnson Metaphors We Live By. Coulson Metaphor and Conceptual Blending

Chapter 5: Change of meaning Semantic change in English is treated in histories of English such as Pyles and Algeo. For euphemism there is a wealth of examples in Allan and Burridge Euphemism and Dysphemism: Language Used as Shield and Weapon. Burridge and Bergs Understanding Language Change provides an up-to-date readable overview.

Chapter 6: Meaningful relations Chapter three of Allan Linguistic Meaning.

Chapters 7–10: Compounds and blends; Affixes; Zero derivation; Shortening, alphabetisms and acronyms Algeo’s article Vocabulary is a good starting point as is Laurie Bauer’s chapter Watching English Change:An Introduction to the Study of Linguistic Change in Standard Englishes in the Twentieth Century. Lexical Word-formation by Bauer and Huddleston is a compact and comprehensive coverage. For more detail there is Bauer English Word-formation.

Chapter 11: Reduplication Benczes Just a Load of Hibber-gibber? Making Sense of English Rhyming Compounds.

Chapter 12: Imports The best source of examples is Durkin 2014. There is also the Wikipedia entry Lists of English words by country or language of origin.

Chapter 13: Inclusive language On gender Cameron’s article Gender is a good starting point. There are a number of readers and book-length studies such as Eckert and McConnell-Ginet Language and Gender. On heterosexism there is Queen Heterosexism in Language. For race the Wikipedia article Linguistic discrimination covers most of the ground.

Chapter 14: When sound echoes sense Blake Sound Symbolism in English: Weighing the Evidence; Bolinger Rime, Assonance, and Morphemic Analysis.

Further reading 

173

Chapter 15: A form of words For sets of words easily confused the Web is the best source. Folk etymology is covered briefly in histories of the English language including Pyles and Algeo. Avoidance is a theme of Allan and Burridge Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language. For humorous uses of English there is Blake Playing with Words: Humour in the English Language.

Chapter 16: Allusion For the Bible as a source of quotation and allusion there is Crystal Begat:The King James Bible and the English Language. Further examples of allusion can be found in Chapter ten of Blake Secret Language.

Chapter 17: Slang Chapter three of Allan and Burridge Forbidden Words and chapter eight of Blake Secret language. For examples of all types of slang and secret language the Web is the best source.

REFERENCES

Aitchison, J. 1987 (4th edition 2012). Words in the Mind: An Introduction to the Mental Lexicon. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Algeo, J. 1998. ‘Vocabulary’ in S. Romaine ed. The Cambridge History of the English Language, volume 4. Cambridge: CUP, 57–91. Allan, K. 2014. (1st edition 1986). Linguistic Meaning. Routledge: Abingdon (Oxford) and New York. Allan, K. and Burridge, K. 1991. Euphemism and Dysphemism: Language Used as Shield and Weapon. New York: Oxford University Press. Allan, K. and Burridge, K. 2006. Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ayto, J. 1999. Twentieth Century Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ayto, J. 2006. Movers and Shakers: A Chronology of Words that Shaped Our Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ayto, J. 2016. Twentieth Century English: An Overview. Oxford University Press Web article. Bauer, L. 1983. English Word-formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bauer, L. 1994a. Watching English Change: An Introduction to the Study of Linguistic Change in Standard Englishes in the Twentieth Century. London: Addison, Wesley, Longman (republished by Routledge 2013). Bauer, L. 1994b. ‘English in New Zealand’, in Burchfield ed. 382–429. Bauer, L. and Huddleston, R. 2002. ‘Lexical Word-formation’, in R. Huddleston and G. K. Pullum The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1621–721. Benczes R. 2012. ‘Just a Load of Hibber-gibber? Making Sense of English Rhyming Compounds’ Australian Journal of Linguistics 32: 299–326. Blake, B. 2007. Playing with Words: Humour in the English Language. London: Equinox. Blake, B. 2008. All about Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Blake, B. 2010. Secret Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Blake, B. 2016. ‘Sound Symbolism in English: Weighing the Evidence’. Australian Journal of Linguistics 37.3: 286–313.

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Bolinger, D. 1950. ‘Rime, assonance and morphemic analysis.’ Word 6.2: 117–36. Branford, W. 1994. ‘English in South Africa’ in Burchfield ed. 430–96. Brown, K. ed. 2006. Elsevier Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd edition) Oxford: Elsevier. Burchfield, R. ed. 1994. The Cambridge History of the English Language, volume 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burridge, K. 2004. Blooming English: Observations on the Roots, Cultivation and Hybrids of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burridge, K and Bergs, A.2017. Understanding Language Change. Routledge: London. Cameron, D. 2006. ‘Gender’, in Brown ed. volume 4: 733–9. Coulson, S. 2006. ‘Metaphor and Conceptual Blending’, in Brown ed. volume 8: 32–9. Cruse, A. 2004. Meaning in Language: An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics (2nd edition). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Crystal, D. 1997. English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crystal, D. 2003. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (2nd edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crystal, D. 2006. Words,Words,Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Crystal, D. 2010. Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Durkin, P. 2014. Borrowed words: A history of loanwords in English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eckert, P. and McConnell-Ginet, S. 2003. Language and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fryer, P. 1964. Mrs Grundy: Studies in English Prudery. London: Dennis Dobson. Grose, F. 1811 (orig. 1785). Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. London: Chappel. Herbert, R. K. 1990a. ‘The Relative Markedness of Click Sounds: Evidence from Language Change, Acquisition and Avoidance.’ Anthropological Linguistics 32: 120–38. Herbert, R. K. 1990b. ‘The Sociohistory of Clicks in Southern Bantu’. Anthropological Linguistics 32: 295–315. Horobin, S. 2016. How English Became English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Huddleston, R. and Pullum, G. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Lepschy, A. L. and Lepschy, G. 1977. The Italian Language Today. London: Hutchinson. Lynch, J. 2009. The Lexicographer’s Dilemma. New York: Walker and Company. Maxwell, K. Med Magazine.Volume 32, July 2005. Michel, J-B. et al. 2011. ‘Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books.’ Science 331.6014: 176–82. Orsman, H. W. 1995. The Dictionary of New Zealand English. Auckland: New House Publishers. Ostler, N. 2010. The Last Lingua Franca: English Until the Return of Babel. New York: Walker and Company. Pyles,T. and Algeo, J. 1993. The Origins and Development of the English Language (4th edition). Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace. Queen, R. 2006. ‘Heterosexism in Language’ in Brown ed. volume 5: 289–92. Reay, I. E. 2006. ‘Sound Symbolism’, in Brown ed. volume 11: 531–9. Treis, Y. 2005. ‘Avoiding Their Names, Avoiding Their Eyes: How Kambaata Women Respect Their In-Laws.’ Anthropological Linguistics 47.3: 292–320. Winchester, S. 1998. The Surgeon of Crowthorne. London:Viking.

INDEX

Page numbers in bold refer to tables. a- 55 Abbott, Tony 132 abbreviations 82–7 Abenaki 100 accusative 7, 59 Ackerman, Diane 14 acronyms 4, 85–6 adjective to noun 79 adjective to verb 80 adjectives 17, 23 adverbs 17 Aeneid 9, 12, 142, 145 affixes 3, 68–73 Africa: African 1, 7, 98–9, 136, 164 African-American 4, 47, 62, 108, 113, 136, 151, 166 Afrikaans 99, 164 Aitchison, Jean 171, 174 Algeo, John 172, 174 Allan & Burridge 172–4 Allan, Keith 172, 174 alliteration 20, 63, 121, 137, 147 allusion 139–45 alphabetisms 4, 83–4 America: American 1–5, 13–14, 37, 44–5, 47, 49, 63, 77, 91–2, 95, 98–104, 106, 111, 114, 118, 123–5, 136, 148, 151–2, 158–60, 163–7 Angles 1, 6–8, 163 Anglo-Saxon see Old English

antonym 53–5, 137 application to new domain 47–48 Arabic 7, 98, 99, 103, 159 Arawakan 100 argot 153–6 attitude of slang 149–50 Australia 1, 28, 37, 48–9, 57, 62, 73, 81, 91, 93, 99, 101, 102, 104, 108, 112, 117–18, 124, 129, 132, 148, 155–6, 164–5, 167, 169 Australian Aboriginal languages 26 avoidance 135–6 Ayto, John 171, 174 Aztec see Nahuatl back formation 73, 137 back slang 154 Baltic: Balto-Slavic 11 Bangla: Bangladesh 1, 11, 12, 51, 99 Bauer & Huddleston 172, 174 Bauer, Laurie 5, 74, 101, 172, 174 Belgium 6, 99 Benczes, Réka 93, 172, 174 Bengali see Bangla Bible 25, 48, 56, 64, 142–3, 145 Blake, Barry 130, 138, 145, 157, 172–4 blends 3, 49, 65–7, 93, 122, 124–5, 127, 129, 163 Bolinger, Dwight 124, 130, 172, 175

Index 

borrowing 1, 8, 11–12, 21, 29, 34, 37, 41–2, 46, 52, 68, 89–90, 94–104, 123–6, 129, 134, 138, 147, 150, 158–62, 164–5, 167 Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian 98 Branford, William 164, 175 Breton 11 Britain 1–2, 6–8, 11, 37, 81, 89, 94, 98–99, 102–4, 113, 118, 146–7, 154–6, 158, 163–6 British Empire 2, 92, 164–5 British-US usage 165–6 Brittany 11 Brown, Keith 175 Burchfield, Robert 175 Burma 1, 99 Burridge and Bergs 172, 175 Burridge, Kate 58–9, 93, 118, 157, 172, 175 Bush, George W. 132–3 calque 95, 98, 159–60, 164 Cameron, Deborah 172, 175 Canada 57, 87, 91, 93, 100, 104, 113 Cantonese 102 Carib 30, 100 Caribbean 1, 99–100, 164 case forms 7 Caxton 9 Celtic: Celts 6, 11, 94, 98–9 Centlivre, Susanna 75 Central America 5, 100 China: Chinese 89, 102–4, 113, 143, 159, 163 cis- 72, 74 cliché 3, 20, 25, 48, 140–1 clipping 4, 77, 82–3 closed classes 18 coda 120, 123, 129 cognate 11–12, 34, 71 colloquial see slang colonialism 1, 5, 92, 95, 99–101, 104 colour spectrum 15, 27, 69 combining element 34, 65, 70–2, 107 complement 23 compounds 3, 60–5, 73, 75, 82–3, 91–3, 109, 147, 150, 159, 163 compounds: neo-classical 64–5 conjunction 17–18, 32, 56, 75, 80 connotation 24, 25, 36, 40–1, 46–7, 52, 71, 99, 107–8, 110–13, 116, 146 consonant 35, 96, 119–20, 121–3, 127, 156, 159 continua 15, 27–8, 69, 164

177

contronym 28, 57–8, 127 conversion 3, 19, 75–81 Cornish: Cornwall 6, 11 Coulson, Seana 172, 175 Cruse, Alan 175 Crystal, David 14, 145, 171, 173, 175 cyber slang 84–5, 152 Czech 11 Danish 1, 6, 11 dative 7 de- 69 definition 23 Denglisch 158 Denmark 1, 6, 8, 11 denotation 24 derivation 18–19, 29, 55, 60, 68, 129, 147 determiners 17–18 Dharuk 101 Dickens, Charles 125, 143–4 dictionaries 4, 13–21, 22–5, 29, 42, 51, 56, 58, 91, 95, 113, 123, 140, 147, 150, 165, 167–8 diminutive 72, 86, 134, 135 Dirkin, Philip 172, 175 dis- 34, 55, 137 disability 4, 47, 106–7, 117–8 discrimination 4, 106, 107, 112–13, 115–16, 166 disparagement 4, 92, 113 distortion of words 138, 149, 153, 156 Dravidian 12 Durkin, Philip 172, 175 Dutch: Cape Dutch 1, 6, 11, 52, 97, 99, 103, 113–14, 150, 164 dysphemism 4, 149 Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 172, 175 -ee 68 Eliot, T.S. 144 England 1, 6–8 English: speakers of 2, 140, 164 -er 17, 62, 68, 73, 75, 148 -ers 148 Eskimo see Inuit:Yupik -ess 4, 109 -ette 109 etymology 21, 124, 128, 133–5, 138, 145 euphemism 45–7, 98, 110, 116–17, 136, 153, 166–7 Euphrosyne: Life of 7–8, 59, 147 exporting English 5, 158–62 extension 29–35, 37, 39, 46, 63, 123, 165 extra- 74

178 Index

Facebook 3, 54, 66, 160, 167 Farsi 11 fashion in word choice 45 feminism 4, 109, 132 Fijian 26 Fitzgerald, Scott 145 folk classification 28 folk etymology 21, 92, 100, 133–5, 138, 145 Fox, James 141 France see French Franglais 158 French 1, 6, 8–9, 11–12, 94–5, 96–7, 100, 124–25, 128, 134–35, 157, 159–161, 164 frequency considerations 40–1 Fryer, Peter 175 -ful 55, 68 function words 17 Gaelic 11, 98 -gate 73 gay slurs 4, 108, 116 gender 109–12, 114–16 Genesis 25–6 genitive 7, 62 German: Germany 1, 3, 6, 11, 95, 97, 103–4, 126, 151, 159–61 Germanic 1, 6, 7, 11, 126 grammatical words 17 Gray’s Elegy 145 Greece: Greek 1, 3, 7, 9–12, 14, 33–4, 64, 69–72, 94, 127 Greek mythology 141 Greene, Graham 139–40 Grose, Francis 150, 175 Guarani 100–1 Guugu Yimidhirr 101 Gypsies see Romani Halkomelem 135 Hardy, Thomas 21, 140, 145 Harvard-Google 14, 171 Hebrew 103, 127 Hellenic 11–12 Herbert, Robert K. 175 heterosexism 4, 114–16 Hindi: Hindi-Urdu 11–12, 88, 99, 159, 164 Hinglish 159 Hittite 10 Homer 139 homograph 56

homonym 56–7 homophone 56–7, 131 Hong Kong 1, 99, 148 Horobin, Simon 171, 175 Huddleston & Pullum 175 humour 137–8, 150 Hungarian: Hungary 98 Huxley, Aldous 145 hyper- 71 hypernym 50 hypocoristic 72 hyponym 50 Icelandic 8, 11 -ie/-y 72, 86, 92, 147 Illinois 100 immigration 101–3 importing see borrowing inclusive language 105–7 India 1, 5, 10, 12, 51, 99, 103, 114, 159 Indic 11 Indo-European 10–12, 82, 114, 128 Indo-Iranian 11 Indonesian 27, 88, 162 inflection 8–9, 18–19 initialisms 4, 83–4 interference 136–7 interjections 18, 80, 89, 146 Internet see Web Inuit 100, 104 Inuktitut 100, 104 Iranian 11 Irish see Gaelic -ise 70 -ish 69 Islam 44, 98, 103, 107 -ism 106 -ist 106 Italian: Italy 1, 11–12, 15, 47, 72, 95–8, 102, 108, 111, 119, 159–61 Italic 11, 12 -ize 70 Jamaica 164 James, P.D. 145 Japanese 47, 85, 102–4, 159–60, 162 jargon 146, 152–3 Jews 103 Johnson, Dr 16, 123, 168 Joyce, James 139 Jutes 6 Kambaata 136

Index 

Kannada 99 Keats 121, 145 Kenya 1 Khoekhoe & San 99, 164 Korean 103, 159 Kuhn, Thomas 157 Lakoff & Johnson 171, 175 Latin 1, 3, 6–12, 14, 33–5, 64, 69–72, 88, 94–5, 124–5, 127–8, 130, 134, 138, 147, 151 Latvian 11 Lepschy & Lepschy 175 -less 55, 68 lexeme 18 lexical words 17 lexicon: mental 22–8 LGBTIQ 85, 114–16 -ling 68 lingua franca 2, 98, 164 Linnaean system 28 Lithuanian 11 LiveChat 87 Livy 145 loan translation 95, 159 loan words 5, 94–104 Locke, John 10, 163 Lynch, Jack 175 macro- 70 malapropism 131–3 Malawi (Nyasaland) 1 Malay: Malaysia 1, 27, 88, 99, 101, 117, 123, 135 Malayalam 99 Mandarin 102, 159 Mandinka 92 Manx 11 Maori 101 Marathi 159 Massachusett 100 Maugham, Somerset 145 maxi- 70 Maxwell, Kerry 175 meaning 24 meaning, change of 36–48 mega- 70–1 metaphor 29–31, 34, 38–9, 63, 90–1, 148 metonymy 29–31 Mexico 100 Michel, Jean-Baptiste 21, 175 micro- 70 Middle-English 9

Mikmaq 100 mini- 70 Minor, W.C. 21 mondegreen 135 Mosby’s Dictionary of medicine 13 Motu 88 multi- 71 multimedia 22 My Fair Lady 140 Nahuatl 100 names 127 Nenets 104 Netherlands 6 New Zealand 1, 25, 57, 91, 101, 164 Ngaanyatjarra 26 nicknames 108, 117 Nigeria 1 nominative 7 non- 54–5 nonce form 55, 59, 63, 68–71, 76 Normans 1, 8 Norway: Norwegian 1, 8, 11, 98 noun to adjective 78 noun to verb 76 nouns 3, 7, 16, 19, 23 -o 73 object 7 Odawa 100 OED 13 Old English 6, 7, 8–12, 33, 93–5, 139, 147 Old Irish 11 Old Norse 8–9, 12, 94, 147 onomatopoeia 89, 91, 93, 119–23, 128–30 onset 120, 126–9 open classes 18 Orsman, Harry 175 Ostler, Nicholas 171, 175 Pakistan 1, 12, 51, 99, 113, 118 parts-of-speech 16–19 Pashto 11 peri- 72 phobia words 107 phrase abbreviation 44 Pictish 6 pidgin 89, 101, 118, 152, 164 Pig Latin 156 play language 156 point of view 41–3

179

180 Index

Poland: Polish 11 politically correct 107–8 polysemy 56 portmanteau word 65–7 Portugal: Portuguese 1, 11, 99–102, 169 Powhatan 100 pre- 69 prefix 3, 29, 33–5, 54–5, 57, 65, 68–74, 95 preposition 3, 7–8, 18, 23, 31–4, 62–4, 68, 71–4, 80 pronouns 7, 17, 23 proper name to common noun 80 proverbs 20 Puccini 145 Pyles and Algeo 171, 172, 175 Quayle, Dan 133 Quebec 73, 100 Quechua 100, 102 Queen, Robin 172, 175 racist language 4, 47, 92, 99, 106, 108, 112–14, 136 Rankin, Ian 139 re- 70 Reay, I 175 reclaiming words 108 reduplication 88–93 referent: reference 24 reinterpretation 38–40 relics 48 Renaissance 1, 10, 94–6 resemblances between words 131–3 respelling 47–8 retronym 59 rhyme 63, 71, 91–2, 120, 122–7 rhyming reduplication 91–3 rhyming slang 154–6 Robin Hood 1, 141 Roman Empire 6 Romance languages 1, 98 Romani 11–12, 114, 151, 153 Romanian 11–12 Russian 11, 29, 88, 98 Samoan 88 Sanskrit 10–12, 101, 104, 169 Saxons 1, 6 Scotland 6, 25 secret language 146, 153–6 set phrases 19–20 Setswana 99 sexist language 48, 106, 109–12

Shakespeare 7, 36, 64, 75, 132, 139, 141–3 Shaw, G.B. 145 Shelley 145 Sheridan 131 shortening 82–3 Singapore 1, 67, 99 Skurnick 66–7 slang 4, 63, 146–57 Slavic 11 social media 3, 76, 160, 167 sound symbolism 123–9 South Africa 1, 99, 164–5 South America 5, 100 South Asia 1, 102–3, 113, 118, 164 Spain: Spanish 1, 2, 5, 11–12, 67, 95, 97–8, 100–02, 159–62 spelling 21 Sri Lanka 1, 51, 99 Star Trek 72, 74 Star Wars 43, 141, 167 -ster 69 Sub-Continent 12, 57 subject 7 suffix 7, 16–19, 61, 68–73, 75, 77, 109, 129, 147–8 super- 71 Swahili 88, 99 Swedish 1, 8, 11, 27, 66, 98 syllable 120 synonym 15, 48, 51–3 taboo 25, 46–7, 106, 108, 135–6 Taino 100 Tamil 99, 101, 103 Telugu 99 textese 4, 84–5, 152 Thai: Thailand 27, 159–62 Treis,Yvonne 175 Tupi 100 Tupi-Guarani 101 Tupinamba 100 Turkey: Turkish 128 Twitter 3, 66, 160, 167 über: uber 3, 72 Ukrainian 11 ultra- 71 un- 54 United Kingdom see Britain United States see America updating referent 37 Urban Dictionary 168 Urdu 11–12

Index 

verb 3, 8, 16–19, 23, 31–4, 63, 78–9 verb particle 32 verb to adjective 79 verb to noun 78 verbing 76 view of the world 25 Vikings 8, 140 Virgil 9, 12, 142, 145 vocabulary: size of 15–16 vowels 120–1

Winchester, Simon 175 Woiwurrung 88 women 109–12 Wonderful Life, A 141 Woolworths 21 word classes 16–19 word play 137–8 Wycliffe 9

Waugh, Evelyn 141 weakening of meaning 44 Web 2–3, 38, 138, 151–2, 160, 167–8 Webster, Noah 13–14, 113, 165 Webster’s Dictionary 13 Welsh 6, 11, 99 Western Desert Language 88 Willian the Conqueror 8

-y/-ie 72, 130 Yeats 144 Yiddish 11, 103, 124, 126, 157 Yoruba 88 Yupik 100

Xhosa 136

zero derivation 75–81 Zulu 99, 136

181