Wordwatching

by Alex Horne

  But there must be some truth to it somewhere. After all, Richard ‘Dicky’ Turner definitely existed; he’s buried in St Peter’s churchyard, right next to the Preston University Library, and the inscription on his gravestone reads:

  Beneath this stone are deposited the remains of Richard Turner, author of the word Teetotal, as applied to abstinence from all liquors, who departed this life on the 27th day of October, 1846, aged 56 years.

  So Mr Turner either went to incredible lengths to falsely claim his own word on his own gravestone or he must indeed be responsible for the word. Either way, it’s a story well worth sharing, especially because, as so often, the supposed ‘truth’ is not only dull, but senseless. ‘A more likely explanation’, reads the official Wikipedia entry, ‘is that teetotal is simply a reduplication of the “T” in total (T-total).’ What? Why is that more likely? Why would you ever ‘simply’ reduplicate the first letter of a word? Absolute peepiffle.

  Even if they are created after the words they explain, and even if they are utterly preposterous, these tales only add to the history of language. They should not be cast aside. Rather they should be recounted and embellished in the tradition of storytelling. In a valiant bid to expose the truth behind the phrase ‘spitting image’, Professor Laurence Horn (yes, we’re all at it, us Hornes) coined the word ‘etymythology’ in the seventy-ninth issue of American Speech, and I think it’s a very useful term. Myths warrant retelling; they’re cracking tales, and if some people believe them to be true, I don’t see how that’s a problem.

  So it is now time to confess that as a protest against doubt and scepticism I have completely made up one of the etymologies in this Verbal Gardening history. As well as my cracker joke rumour, I have inserted my own linguistic mountweazel; that should really irk the pedants. This is an admission, not an apology, although I do feel sorry for people like Michael Quinion, a professional word sleuth who already has ‘enough trouble with mistakes that are caused by ignorance or misunderstanding without having deliberate obfuscation added to the mix’ (Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds, published in 2004). I’m afraid that must come with his chosen territory.

  I’m by no means the first to spin such a yarn. In 1809 the Monthly Review and Boston Anthology published a letter from someone purporting to be Noah Webster, the foremost American lexicologist, who claimed that ‘yankee’ came from the Persian word jenghe, meaning ‘warlike man’ or ‘swift horse’. No such word exists in Persian, but the etymology has since been reported as fact. In the same year (and in the same book in which he invented the word ‘knickerbockers’) Washington Irving joshingly explained that ‘yankee’ meant ‘silent men’ and came from ‘the Mais-tschusaeg or Massachusetts language’, a story that has also been widely believed (partly because no one knows the actual truth).

  At least I have let the curious reader know there definitely is one entirely fictitious back story in this book. Like a protracted game of backwards Balderdash, it’s now up to you to hunt it down. If you want a clue, the word in question was actually created through some dodgy spelling by a Scotsman. There, that should help. Once you’ve sniffed out my fabrication, every other word history, whether absolutely verifiable or decidedly dodgy, will have a comparative glimmer of truth about it. That seems fair to me. And who knows, one day my ‘fake’ etymology may morph into ‘folk’ etymology and become part of the storytelling tradition too.

  24

  In everyday life, in pubs, schools and pantomimes, jokes can travel at a fair pace, as I discovered with my own wandering ‘counter-productive’ effort. But on the stand-up comedy circuit jokes can move even faster, with comics ever eager to pass on new routines: not onstage, but to each other. The nation’s comedians (at the latest count, around 2,500 currently working in the UK) possess a massive collective database of their combined jokes. If you ask a comedian to name another comedian by describing that comedian’s face, the questioned comedian will struggle. But recount one of his gags and you’ll instantly be told the name of the act, how long he’s been going and, if you’re unlucky, another twenty minutes of his material.

  What I didn’t expect in Edinburgh was how quick my colleagues would be to pass on my new words. While all comics frown upon those who pass off other people’s jokes as their own (some even go further than frowning on them), I was overjoyed when several took it upon themselves to include our Verbal Seeds in their sets, unbidden by me and without any hope of reward. If anything, throwing a newfangled word into a set-up might confuse an audience, diminishing the effect of a punchline. But comedians love an in-joke. We thrive on being in the know, one step ahead of the man on the street. And occasionally, when my old audience members recognised words in other comics’ gags, they laughed harder than anyone else, even if the punchline hadn’t actually been reached yet. They too were part of the gang. This is what slang is all about.

  Having neglected to send them their own Verbal Gardening T-shirts I should therefore thank, among others, Dan Atkinson who plonked ‘honk’ into his economy-themed show, The Credit Crunch and Other Biscuits, the comedian and street performer Stu Goldsmith who asked punters to chuck some honk in his hat after each and every performance (surely jeopardising his money-making chances in the process), and to that year’s We Need Answers49 champion, Miss Josie Long, who managed to sneak ‘mental safari’ on to a prime-time programme on STV (the Scottish equivalent of ITV) and the Sunday Surgery on Radio 1.

  Five channels up, on BBC6, Jon Richardson happily discussed ‘honk’ for several minutes on air and allowed me to drop Alan Coren’s ‘peripolitan’ into mainstream media once again. In fringe newspaper Three Weeks the character comedienne Isabel Fay described how she had to briefly leave the festival ‘for an acting job that was worth the honk’, perversely named comic Ellis James (surely James Ellis, no?), the glamorous Lloyd Woolf and fabulous sketch troupe the Umbrella Birds all slapped honk right into the middle of their shows, the cast of hit musical Jet Set Go knowingly described Vanessa Feltz as ‘an honest lady’ and various commentators at the Olympics described freaky swimmer Michael Phelps as having ‘massive paddles’. Everyone was helping.

  Only occasionally did this assistance backfire. Mr Elephant, also appearing at the festival, had an interview with budding comedy magazine The Fix in the course of which he was asked to describe his previous partner (i.e. me). With an affectionate tongue in his mischievous cheek, I hope, he stated that I was ‘only motivated by honk’. This, however, did not survive the edit. When thousands of copies were circulated around the festival Mr Elephant was quoted as exclusively saying;

  Alex Horne is motivated only by money.

  With the disappearance of ‘honk’, any irony in the statement, or indeed any sense of humour at all, vanished too; Mr Elephant appeared spiteful, I seemed greedy. But it’s all about making sacrifices. Once again we’d put our necks on the block and this time the axe hadn’t missed. Thankfully this was the twenty-first century and that was a metaphor. My pride was bruised but I could keep fighting.

  Of course the main reason that we comedians flock to Edinburgh every year is because the Fringe is our industry’s largest shop window. Only in Edinburgh, we tell ourselves, do radio and TV producers browse for talent,* film directors sniff around for writers and actors, and otherwise unknown performers become stars. As rare as this may be in reality, it is certainly true that during the Fringe, unlike at any other time of the year, comedians are in the limelight. As an art form, comedy ranks just below jazz in terms of publicity and general interest. Listings in national newspapers are piddly, only the handful of stand-ups who feature on TV are ever interviewed, and very few people regularly go to comedy clubs. But during August the rest of us do get some attention. We can get reviewed. We may not get critics from many or any nationals, and if we do they may not write nice things anyway, but almost everyone will get a mention somewhere, and that’s usually enough for our fragile egos, and mothers.

  I had extra incentive to grab the attention of the
press. For the past two and a half years I’d tried to sneak words into articles; now I hoped the journalists might include them all by themselves. The radio broadcasters certainly didn’t let me down. On BBC Five Live, Phil Williams encouraged people to attend my show to prevent me ‘losing too much honk’. On Mo Dutta’s business slot on my beloved BBC Radio 2 I authoritatively stated that ‘gold doesn’t cost as much honk as it used to’. Mo agreed. In the first of my two appearances on BBC Scotland, Fred Macaulay used nearly all our words in the following fine sentence; ‘So, how much honk do people have to spend if they want to go on a mental safari and thrash their paddles in your show?’ before another lady from the Chambers Dictionary (Mary, this time), called me a ‘rascal’, a ‘rogue’ and the ‘scourge of lexicographers’ during an entire discussion on the subject. I was extremely flattered. She even admitted to liking the word ‘honk’, saying she thought it did sound like slang for money, which prompted a listener to text and ask if ‘honking’ was the verb for spending money. ‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘If you say so.’ And, I like to think, they did, many many times.

  Print journalists excelled themselves too, planting seeds in a variety of entertainment publications. In What’s on Stage, Kate Jackson wrote: ‘Some people find happiness, some people find degradation, some people go on a mental safari, and an adorable little girl called Margaret dances, giggles and moralises,’ in a (rather scathing) theatrical review. In the following week’s edition Richard Hurst corroborated the phrase with the line: ‘I feel like I’m on a bit of a mental safari, wandering around Edinburgh, swinging between Tiggerish glee and Eeyoreish torpor,’ swiftly followed by: ‘Everyone is keen to know how much well-earned honk they’re going to lose this year.’ Over on the Artrocker website, a music journalist called Rory reviewed hillbilly band The Weight with the magnificent:

  Brothers and sisters lock up your cousins because country’s coming to town and it’s going to get awkward. That’s right, The Weight are ridin’ into this quiet little ’burb to steal your women, drink your beer and maybe – just maybe – convince you to part with some hard-earned honk and buy their album.

  But my favourite print usage appeared in the Financial Times. Yes, one of my little words found its way into the otherwise impregnable paper when its fringe diarist, a larger-than-life character called Ian Shuttleworth, deliberately described himself as the ‘most honest critic on the Fringe’ after seeing my show (which he also described as ‘worth a few quid of anyone’s hard-earned honk’, I must bashfully report), a joke so subtle that surely none of his readers, apart from me, would understand. I was honoured. In one respect at least, I was in the honk.

  Speaking of critics, those who reviewed the show also took the bait, uniformly slipping in a few choice phrases for me to then wield when advertising further shows. Chortle, the leading comedy website, said it was ‘worth a few quid of anybody’s honk’, the Guardian playfully wrote, ‘A refreshingly honest set of fun and games will have you honking for more!’ and a review in the Metro opened with ‘Have you had your tkday? Alex Horne has, and wants others to celebrate their 10,000th day on the planet. But he needs help in spreading the word.’

  Best of all, best-known and most feared critic of them all, the Scotsman’s Kate Copstick, wrote the nicest thing possible, pretty much all of my words in one perfectly packaged paragraph:

  As a reviewer, one never actually has to put one’s honk where one’s mouth is. If a show is completely games we can throw our paddles up and call it a load of bollo, safe in the knowledge it will not be over till the honest lady sings. Don’t be a pratdigger – go and see this show.

  That really did make my festival. On the same day as that review came out I also queued up at the Edinburgh Book Festival to meet Henry Hitchings, the dictionary historian I’ve quoted so frequently in this book. Looking him straight in the eye I explained my project with more confidence than I would have had a month or even a day before. He signed the books of his that I’d bought (for the second time) and wished me luck.

  This meeting with lexical royalty, though, was just a bonus. We wouldn’t need much more luck. Our words had lain dormant for months but now they were finally blooming. Edinburgh had been a success.

  49 A very silly quiz now on BBC4 and featuring the likes of ‘honk’ on a regular basis.

  25

  The festival had gratifying after-effects too; back in their normal lives, many audience members had actually taken our words under their wings and were now casting them far and wide across the country all by themselves, just as I had hoped.

  In the world of entertainment another music journalist, Andrew Reilly, wrote the following sentence in his review of Kate Nash on the Room Thirteen website: ‘It was never going to be the show that would appeal to everyone but when even long-time fans are left wondering if they got value for their hard-earned honk, you have to wonder if the show was the best thing for her at this moment in time.’ Mind-reader and radio producer Chris Cox added this to the official Radio 1 website: ‘Nihal’s Guests: this week it’s Mark Frith, ex-editor of Heat, who’ll be telling us about which celebs are pratdiggers and which are cool dudes.’ While someone, adopting their own rare title of Ms Zapf Dingbats, implanted a couple of seeds in a ‘Rate It or Hate It’ section of the Leeds Guide Lifestyle magazine:

  Pratdiggers: Those friends of yours who always turn up to a party with the kind of obnoxious and pretentious companion who makes your stomach sink during small talk.

  Umbrella prices: When you’ve already bought about four since Christmas and left them behind on various trains/buses/nights out and you have to waste your precious honk on the low weight £7 version in an unexpected downpour.

  All these contributors were sent their own Verbal Gardening T-shirts so are hopefully still spreading the words today.

  Artrocker journo Rory was definitely keeping up the good work, sending me the following message:

  I’m working on a parallel rumour about how they’ve had to adjust the size of the Channel 5 sets in her (Kaplinsky’s) absence to ensure that the shorter presenters seem the same size as her. It’s still in its infancy and may require a few tweaks, but I’ll let you know if it sticks.

  Our friend Dharmesh was also back in touch with an inspirational story about a pub quiz he’d recently competed in:

  Our team name was ‘Natasha Kaplinsky is six foot two’! It turns out that we won the quiz (with a feeble 42 per cent) and the team name was announced as the winners over the speaker system. As a result, I’m sure a large number of people left the pub believing that she is indeed six foot two!!

  That people were coming up with their own dispersal techniques was heartening stuff, and I like to think similar thought was behind three mentions of ‘honest’ I discovered in these final days of the project; on the front page of the BBC website Ben Cooper, head of programmes at Radio 1, defended Chris Moyles as ‘a high-profile and “honest” broadcaster’ (those speech marks were included in the article to highlight the ‘honesty’ of the presenter, giving me hope that Mr Cooper was well aware of the new meaning). In fact, on the cover of Chris Moyles’s own book (The Difficult Second Book) he himself featured a quote from Davina McCall describing the author as ‘Butt-clenchingly honest’. That is honest. The London Lite continued this trend with the following headline above a picture of the nation’s top comic, one Mr Gervais, jogging:

  Ricky runs every day to keep trim (honest).50

  The boundaries of this in-joke, it seemed, were also widening every day.

  The likes of ‘honk’ and ‘mental safari’ crept into the parallel world of sport too. While following the minute-by-minute transfer deadline day updates on the Guardian football blog I happened upon the following notes:

  A piece of transfer news while we await 3 p.m.: Hull have bid £7m for Frazier Campbell. Yes, that’s right, £7m. That’s a lot of honk for a striker that has only ever performed in the Championship.

  I bring news on Robinho to start us off, Peter Kenyon
is still ‘confident’ that he could be earning his honk in west London as of tomorrow morning.

  And:

  There is a rumour that Frazier Campbell will be heading to Tottenham in part exchange for a certain person. Surely not. Meanwhile Stoke have upped their bid for Joe Ledley to £6m. That is a lot of honk for a Championship player.

  I didn’t write these messages, nor, it seemed, was I the only one watching them with insider knowledge. The following replies soon popped up on my screen. This from a man calling himself Davis:

  Good work on your use of the word ‘honk’. Hoping for an end to the Berbatov thing soon, because it is games.

  And this from Simon:

  No transfer gossip but with all the honk flying around tonight Kevin Keegan must be on a mental safari if he hasn’t looked into signing the six foot two inch Natasha Kaplinsky to play alongside Owen this season.

  The Verbal Gardening banter wasn’t limited to the upper echelons of the Premiership either. On his lower league football blog Mr David Nicholls wrote of the FA Cup’s preliminary rounds:

  At this stage of course, it’s all about the prize money; about seeing how much of the FA’s honk you can jam into the club wallet. For clubs like Kingsbury and Eton Manor, plying their trade in the Spartan South Midlands and Essex Senior Leagues respectively, this round’s relatively modest spoils of £750 to the victor will still go a long way.

  Then through my letterbox there dropped a package containing two Southend United match-day programmes for their games against Walsall and Leyton Orient, in the middle of which were columns by a fan called Andy which included the following lines:

  Versus Walsall: Ishmel, Jabo Ibehre and Marco Reich gave The Shrimpers’ back four a torrid time and turned them inside out so convincingly that Anthony Grant’s mental safari culminated in his heading powerfully past his own ‘keeper.