by Alex Horne
Johnson too, then, was a Verbal Gardener. Understandably unable to resist the temptation to slip at least a few of his own words into his own dictionary, he conquered the mountain I’m trying to climb. I like to think he’d have given me a helping hand up too. We would have got on, me and Samuel. We both drank at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street, we both studied Latin and Greek at school (although he hated his teachers, I liked mine) (also, he hated brackets, I’m rather fond of them). I’m sure he would have squeezed in one of our words. Maybe not bollo; he didn’t accept ‘shit’ or ‘penis’ on grounds of taste, but definitely ‘pratdigger’, which would have sat nicely next to ‘bedpresser’ (‘a heavy lazy fellow’), ‘fopdoodle’ (‘a fool; an insignificant wretch’) and ‘pricklouse’ (‘a word of contempt for a tailor’). If ‘dandiprat’ was let in as another word for ‘urchin’, there should be a pratdigger lurking somewhere nearby.
Johnson was conspicuously fond of criminal jargon, inspiration for which he drew from the legal profession. The Honourable Sir Mathew Hale wrote an expansive work called the Primitive Origination of Mankind, Considered and Examined According to the Light of Nature, which was published in 1677, a year after his death. Hale was widely considered to be one of the greatest lawyers of his age, responsible for much of the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire of 1666, and the following century Samuel Johnson scribbled all over his own copy of the Primitive Origination, daubing little squiggles here and comments in Latin there, as was his wont when researching words. When Johnson’s own book was then published, he quoted Hale’s numerous times with ‘characterize’, ‘consequential’ and ‘digestive’ (not the biscuit) the most consequential credited to the lawyer, and ‘nolition’ (the opposite of volition) and ‘ferineness’ (meaning ‘wild; untamed; savage; as, lions, tigers, wolves, and bears are ferine beasts’) among the more inventive. When the 1933 edition of the OED was published one ‘Hale, Sir Mathew – Contemplations Moral and Divine 1676–77’ was listed with no fewer than eight citations to his name. If you look up ‘draught’ in the OED you’ll find Hale’s name in the definition. The same goes for ‘economy’, ‘pond’ and even ‘carp’. Perhaps his greatest triumph is the sprawling noun ‘disciplinableness’, meaning ‘the quality of being improvable by discipline’, for which he provides the sole quotation in both Johnson’s Dictionary and the OED with the line, ‘We find in Animals … something of Sagacity, Providence, Disciplinableness’. It might not be much better than Ian Dowie’s ‘bouncebackability’ but this was Mathew Hale’s word and he broke it into the dictionary!
So today’s descendants of the Honourable Sir Mathew Hale can still look up his words in The Book. Indeed, I have done so. For my mum’s maiden name is Hale and, unlike my more speculative bids at association with the likes of James Daly and Aleck Hoag, I am genuinely related to the man. My older brother’s name is spelt in the same way (with just the one ‘t’) in acknowledgement of the family tree, with someone in almost every generation since Sir Mathew named thus. Through hard work and creativity (and unprecedented legal nous) my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather achieved verbal immortality. My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather invented the word ‘disciplinableness’. I’m so proud of that. For me, that’s like saying my dad played for Liverpool. I too had to succeed.
*
I therefore tried to put the Wikipedia episode behind me. Although I felt ridiculously naughty, I still wasn’t convinced I had done anything wrong. More than anything I was impressed and intimidated by the speed and efficiency of the site’s researchers, and so it was through fear rather than remorse that I sent both ‘administrators’ apologetic messages explaining that I was sorry and I wouldn’t do it again. But was I a vandal? Hasn’t Banksy turned graffiti into mainstream art nowadays? Couldn’t they see that I was just being innovative? And why does the spreading of neologisms make people so angry? My project was meant to be a fun and intriguing diversion. Yes, I wanted to ensure I ended up with immortality through an entry in the dictionary, but is that such a crime?
More to the point, the whole affair reaffirmed how important it is for a word to be ‘in the dictionary’ before it can be taken seriously. In Wikipedia’s definition of ‘neologisms’, it states that they ‘generally do not appear in any dictionary’. In its neologism policy, it is made abundantly clear that ‘The use of neologisms should be avoided in Wikipedia articles’. So if a word is not ‘in the dictionary’ it can also not be in Wikipedia. Thus I found myself in a catch-22* situation. You can’t get in the dictionary unless you have the sort of evidence Wikipedia provides. You can’t get in Wikipedia unless you have the sort of evidence a dictionary provides.
I would have to try another route if I wanted to succeed. It was time to shut my laptop and open my door.
I had been watching Countdown religiously throughout my campaign. Settling down with a cup of tea, a chewed biro* and a battered pad of paper, the reassuring jollity of the supposedly tense music, the awkward banter and, most importantly, the letters themselves, all reminded me why I was trying to get a word in the dictionary. Our front room was constantly covered with scraps of paper overwritten in apparently secret codes, my daily attempts to unpick the anagrams and weave verbal gold from Carol’s straw letters.
I love words.
On one particular Friday, my love was put to the test. Before the second advert and a rather tricky ‘teatime teaser’, a message went up on the screen reading, ‘Auditions for the next series of Countdown will be taking place up and down the country over the next few months. If you’re interested in being a contestant please call the following number …’
Do I love words that much?
Instinctively I scribbled the numbers on my pad, half-expecting Carol to press a button and generate a three-figure sum for me to match. But as images of the Churchill dog and Michael Winner flickered away on the screen, I found myself reaching for the remote control, turning down the volume, and tapping the digits into my phone.
19 If you’re less of a geek than me, the ‘user talk’ section is a noticeboard where people can leave you messages. It’s like sending someone an email or posting them a card, but much less friendly.
20 A calque could also be called a ‘loan translation’. It means a word or phrase taken from another language and translated either word-for-word or root-for-root. Instead of ‘a calque of’, I could have just written ‘from’ and it would have made the same sense. But calque looks more interesting. That’s why I disagree with the controversialists.
PART TWO
Language is no respecter of persons in that it will find birth wherever and whenever it can. There is very often something wonderfully anonymous about the whole process: a pimp can coin a word as lasting as that of a poet, a street hawker as a statesman, a farmer as a scholar, a foul mouth as a Latinist, vulgar as refined, illiterate as schooled.
The Adventure of English, Melvyn Bragg
11
‘Broadcasting’ was once a term used solely by farmers. Out in the fields it simply meant the throwing of seeds in such a way as to cover as wide an area as possible. But like ‘culture’ (from the Latin cultura, meaning ‘cultivation’ or ‘tending’), ‘broadcasting’ gradually shifted from agriculture to the arts as radio and then TV presenters attempted to emulate farmers and disseminate their information to all corners of the country. They’re the unlikely pioneers of language, farmers. ‘Combine harvester’ and ‘slurry’ have yet to move into the media mainstream, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.
After a year of unsuccessful spreading, I knew that I too would have to follow the farmers; that I too would at least have to try to cast my seeds further. Rather than the single-figure audiences I’d so far attained through T-shirts and websites, thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands could hear them at once by transmitting our words live or recording them on tape or film. Or perhaps I should downgrade that to hundreds, for, not wanting to get too far ahead of myself, it
was local radio that I targeted as our first audiovisual outlet.
Being a stand-up comedian means I do occasionally have access to the media. But being a relatively unknown comedian means that those occasions and those media don’t always provide the greatest casting breadth. So when Mr Elephant and I embarked on our first-ever national tour (and when I say ‘national’, what I really mean is ‘not international’; it amounted to performing the When in Rome show in twenty different places over three months, the one link being that we decided to play only in Roman towns) the ensuing ‘publicity merry-go-round’ consisted of an interview with the nearest local radio station to each of the venues rather than appearances on TV chat shows or adverts in the national press.
Whilst not being particularly merry, this did provide some straightforward gardening practice, and I chose ‘honk’ as my tool for this exercise. Early on in the tour, for instance, I modestly told the Radio Solent Breakfast Show that I wasn’t ‘in it for the honk’. A week later, on BBC Southern Counties Radio’s Tea at Three programme, I revealed that my parents were concerned about me ‘not earning enough honk’. The very next day I told the listeners of BBC Radio Lincolnshire that our Latin show was ‘excellent value for honk’. I used the same word in conversation with Roger, an amiable but downtrodden DJ on Radio Mersey, who seemed to know exactly what it meant, nodding enthusiastically as I burbled on about not having enough of it. And before a show in Stroud, BBC Radio Gloucestershire broadcast the fact that I couldn’t find a ‘honk machine’ anywhere in the city centre before BBC Radio Kent’s Julie Maddock did the same the following week. I’m not sure how many of our regional listeners would have taken our lead word on board but at least they were exposed. At a subconscious level, some people must have heard ‘honk’ and understood its meaning.
Of course the beauty (and occasionally downfall) of being on the radio is that it usually goes out live. Hence the delectably awkward moments when interviewees use words they shouldn’t and sheepish presenters rush to apologise. But when someone uses a word that’s not rude, but also isn’t – to the presenter’s knowledge – actually a word, a different situation arises. Usually I found the local radio presenters glossed over the strange word, presuming it was just a bit of ‘youth slang‘ or ‘London lingo’ they hadn’t yet heard themselves. But occasionally the DJ would stop and talk about the word, which in turn gave it a little more air time. The Radio Solent Breakfast presenter, Nick Girdler, for example, interrupted me straight after my honk to say, ‘Honk! Not heard that before, but I like it! I might start using it! I often come up with my own words, you know. Like whizzy! That’s mine! It means anything good. Let’s hope your show’s whizzy tonight!’
Radio Gloucestershire’s John Rockley reacted in an almost identical way, shouting, ‘Honk’s great! Yes, honk honk honk, money money money. I’ve actually got my own words called Rockleyisms. The best one is probably “noodling” which just means “chatting about something”. You should use that. We’re having a good old noodle now …’
It is because of these men that I love local radio. I like to imagine that all local radio presenters have created their own words, their own language for their own corner of the country. So please do let me know if you hear any more DJ-isms. And if you fancy joining this project in a more active sort of way, local radio is an easy target. All local radio stations revolve around listeners’ calls so they will put you on air more often than not, even if you don’t know any words at all. Call, write or text in, using our words, and let me know how you get on.
With the radio ropes learnt in the provinces it was time to unleash a word on a national scale. Once more my Latin tour afforded me an opportunity, this time on the long-running Radio 4 show Loose Ends, then presented by the great Ned Sherrin, during an episode of which I was supposed to be publicising my show with a routine about the language. As luck would have it, one of the other guests on this particular Saturday was the glamour model turned television personality turned ‘Abi Titmuss’, Abi Titmuss, who, I’d discovered when researching When in Rome, had been something of a star Latin pupil whilst at Sleaford High School. Tim and I therefore attempted to demonstrate our powers of communication to Miss Titmuss via the medium of an ingenious mindreading trick. I did most of the talking:
‘OK, Abi, so just by using this clipboard I’m going to literally read your mind. First, I need you to think of a number – any number at all, just go on a mental safari and pick a number …’
There! Straight in with the new phrase and, naturally, it was immediately understood. Miss Titmuss actually shut her eyes before saying she had indeed thought of her number. A mental safari indeed.
The rest of the stunt was a bit of a blur for me, so caught up was I in the moment of releasing our phrase all over Radio 4, but in case you’re keen to find out her number, I continued:
‘OK, good. So using this clipboard I should be able to work that out. (At this point I wrote something on the clipboard.) There, so can you look after that, Ned? (I handed the board to Ned.) Thanks Ned. Now then Abi, please tell me your number.’
‘Seven.’
‘A great number. What we call an “odd” number. Now, Ned, can you hand the board to Abi? (He did.) Thank you, Ned. And if you’d like to read out what I wrote, I think you’ll be amazed.’
Abi read aloud: ‘Look at Tim’s hand.’
‘OK, Tim, can we see your hand please? (Tim showed us his hand on which he’d hastily scrawled the number Abi had just said) The number seven! That is amazing!’ (Abi looked genuinely amazed.)
More of a joke than a trick, but what the basic misdirection really disguised was the countrywide sowing of a seed for the first time. The more we could drop these words into the media, the more people would get used to them and accept them as cromulent* everyday words.
*
There was no way that anyone at Radio 4 could have thought there was anything wrong with ‘mental safari’. It is, as already discussed, a perfectly acceptable phrase, if not one well known enough to warrant its own dictionary definition just yet. So when I was asked to appear on Loose Ends for a second time, I made sure I dropped a more ambitious word into my piece. ‘I like birdwatching,’ I said this time, ‘because it doesn’t cost you any honk.’
The reaction of my fellow loose guests on this occasion was intriguing. They laughed, as soon as I uttered the word. But I wasn’t sure why. Was it the incongruity of ‘honk’ at the end of the sentence? It can’t have been the word they were expecting. Or was it simply because I was supposed to be the comedian on the show and this pause seemed like the polite place to express amusement, feigned or real? Either way, nobody questioned the word itself and again it was transmitted across the country, reaching new ears and hopefully penetrating even further into the national consciousness.
I was lucky to have these broadcasting opportunities, but you don’t have to be a comedian to get on national radio. Stations like the BBC’s Five Live revolve around listener input almost as much as Radio Gloucestershire, and with a little persistence one can easily become part of a programme. Indeed, when I heard the Five Live presenter Anita Anand announcing a particular topic for a phone-in towards the end of the first year of Verbal Gardening, I did my utmost to make myself heard. I was on my way back from a show in Newbury when I heard her say: ‘I just feel, you know, in the New Year people dust off their clothes and say, “look, I need a new wardrobe,” or “I need a new outlook on life,” well no, what you need is a new vocabulary. And I’m looking for new words to use.’
This was a golden opportunity. She was looking for ‘new words to use’. I pulled the car over and dashed out a text. Ten minutes later, as if by magic, Anita said: ‘So, Henry from Cambridge has a new word for us: “Chillax”. It’s a mixture of chilling and relaxing. To chillax. It’s quite good isn’t it? Do you like that? Well, Sheila from Midhurst says that her kids call their hands “paddles”. So I just wanted you to know about that. Thanks! Apparently it’s cool lingo.’
Ah ha! With a few deft blows from my thumb, the hundreds of thousands of loyal listeners to the BBC’s home of live news and live sport were led to believe that a lady in West Sussex had kids who casually referred to their appendages as ‘paddles’. Because, and I’m slightly ashamed to admit it, I had indeed texted the radio station pretending to be my own mother. I’m aware this isn’t necessarily a normal thing to do, but I reasoned that Anita was more likely to read out a text from a respectable mother than a peculiar son.
This Henry’s word ‘chillax’ is worth noting here too. I was not Henry. We did not come up with ‘chillax’. Nor, I suspect, did Henry. I would hazard a guess that you too have heard of the word ‘chillax’. It’s a successful invention; I’ve even heard it used by someone called Brad or Scott or Toadfish on Neighbours. But it’s not to my liking. It’s too clunky, too obvious and too, dare I say it, American. It’s trying too hard. It’s too deliberately wacky. And, what’s more, its origins are too hard to track. Cool kids and eccentric DJs from all over the shop have taken to using it. We can’t be sure who was first. So I would recommend not chillaxing. Instead, take your paddles out of your pockets and get texting in your own, or even better our own, more imaginative Verbal Seeds to this or any other radio stations hosting similar phone-ins. Every time a word is spoken on the radio it’s heard by someone else. Eventually this drip-drip approach would wear our words into the language.