by Alex Horne
55 In fact, further reading of an online Maori dictionary (www.maoridictionary.co.nz) reveals that utu is most often used to mean ‘revenge’ and then ‘compensation’ in New Zealand. Jonathon Green’s translation of ‘money’ may be rather simplistic, but when utu emerged as the English slang ‘hoot’ from the filters of travel and time, that is indeed the meaning that stuck.
56 Although I was heartened to read that the word ‘games’ was the second most popular search term on Google in the UK between 2004 and 2009. That can’t be coincidence. Just between you and me, I still secretly hope our adjective will take off.
27
Three years after commencing the project, D(ictionary) Day itself was one of frantic administration. After an hour in the stationer’s buying all manner of folders, clips, blank DVDs and staples, I spent the rest of the day painstakingly photocopying and filing every single example of my words into ten plump Verbal Gardening dossiers. The more evidence I sent them, I reasoned, the more attention the dictionary authorities would pay to our words. So even though an unhealthy percentage of the examples came from one ‘Alex Horne’, I included everything.
I knew how carefully the editors would research any potential new entries and was well aware the paper trail would lead back to me, so instead of trying to cover my tracks I embraced the body I’d created, burned a DVD of my appearances on the Daily Politics, Sky News and BBC World alongside Josie Long’s ‘mental safari’ on STV and Jane McDonald’s ‘honk’ on Loose Women and photocopied every newspaper article I’d written and every football programme, parish magazine and music review I’d been sent. Every previous usage of the words in old books, new websites and obscure sleeve notes I attached too, alongside a scan of Steven Gerrard’s note as the ultimate seal of approval. Each file contained well over a hundred usages of my words.
These ten parcels of paperwork I addressed to ten different dictionaries:
The Oxford English Dictionary: still the dictionary – Verbal Gardening nirvana.
The Cambridge Dictionary: they let me in a decade before, would they do so again?
The Collins Dictionary: founded in Glasgow in 1819 by Presbyterian schoolmaster William Collins, now owned by Rupert Murdoch.
The Chambers Dictionary: also based in Scotland, GSOH – we had history.
The MacMillan Dictionary: very nearly the publisher of Murray’s dictionary – its dictionaries are currently used in over 140 countries worldwide.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary: the American dictionary – famously forbidding but a fine home for my words all the same.
The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English: they call themselves ‘your link to living language’ – worth a shot, I thought.
The Cassell Dictionary of Slang: edited by the godfather of slang, Jonathon Green.
The American Dialect Society: the new words monitoring station, run by Allan Metcalf, author of Predicting New Words.
Comments on Etymology: a respected linguistic journal edited and published by Gerald Cohen, word historian extraordinaire.
Laid out on my bed, these bundles looked mightily impressive. As linguistic experiments go, this was an unprecedented pile of evidence to send to my superiors. I had done all I could. This was my equivalent of scrawling ‘quiz’ on every wall in Dublin.
I heaved the packages down to the post office and spent yet another dollop of honk sending each of them first class to the offices of the world’s leading lexicographers. Rather than feeling any guilt that I was wasting these important people’s time I actually felt that I was doing my duty as an English-speaking citizen. These words were definitely ‘out there’; I was merely ensuring those who guard our language knew about them. James Murray would have been pleased with me. ‘Fling our doors wide!’ he’d proclaimed, exhorting people everywhere to send him definitions and examples of words. ‘All – not one, but all – must enter!’
I had no idea how long it would take the dictionaries to respond, but I did know that in the meantime I had to keep working; this was no time to sit and wait for letters of congratulation from the editors, this wasn’t the end of the project, merely the first point at which the words might be judged. Whether or not they were allowed into the record books yet, I had to ensure they remained in circulation for years to come.
Fortunately, this didn’t require too much extra effort because, as I soon discovered, the words were now safely established in the dictionary in my head. Since passing the parcels through a hatch in the post office I have used ‘honk’, ‘pratdigger’, ‘games’, ‘bollo’, ‘tkday’, ‘mental safari’, ‘paddles’, ‘honest’ and ‘demi’ in several radio interviews, various publications and countless conversations. To my delight, I have also witnessed several of the words used independently in an assortment of media, with ‘honk’ still leading the way; various people have plonked it into various emails, someone other than ‘VG‘ posted it on Urban Dictionary, it appears regularly on Radio 3’s The Verb and, on the day of Alistair Darling’s ‘Robin Hood’ Budget, 22 April 2009 (Day 1182), it rose to become the fourth most popular ‘trend’ on Twitter.
The first reply to drop through my letter box was from the editor of the Collins Dictionary. It began promisingly enough:
Thank you for your letters of 6 November, listing the new coinages you suggest for inclusion in our dictionaries.
The rest, however, was ever so slightly dismissive:
We regularly receive letters and emails suggesting new words for our books. Dictionaries rarely, if ever, include a word solely on the suggestion of one user or one organisation. We require a spread of citations over a significant period of time as evidence that the word is real, and not just a coinage used by one individual or group.
This wasn’t looking good.
In the case of the words you have suggested, there is still insufficient evidence that these words have been in wide usage over a long period of time, despite the citations you have kindly provided.
What? ‘Insufficient evidence’ Steven Gerrard used honk! The letter did end with the promising line:
In the meantime we will continue to monitor the progress of these words.
But there was no doubt about it – this was my first rejection.
Not long afterwards, Chambers, my laughter-loving allies, politely said no:
I was very pleased that you included some citations as evidence of the words in current use. We would not include words just because they were etymologically plausible if we did not have evidence of the kind you have provided. Having said that, like other dictionary publishers, it is not our policy to include words until they have been used by a range of people over a reasonable period of time. Therefore, before any of these words could be included in The Chambers Dictionary, we would need evidence from an even greater variety of sources.
How is a thousand days not reasonable
Oxford rejected me too. A quick glance at the letter was enough to realise they weren’t going to let my words in. I read with ever-increasing despondency their line:
We need to be very sure that they are well established before we include them.
Even my old home Cambridge couldn’t help me this time:
We appreciate the suggestions, and the carefully gathered evidence, that you have sent us.
But they couldn’t offer me a place.
While the headlines seemed gloomy, there was hope to be found between the lines. Collins had written:
If you have invented a word, the only way to get it to appear in dictionaries is to convince a large number of people unconnected with yourself to start using it unselfconsciously – a notoriously difficult and unpredictable task. If this happens, eventually it will generate enough citations over a sufficiently diverse range of sources for us and other dictionary publishers to consider it for inclusion.
Chambers had added:
However, I am delighted to take a note of these words in the meantime. If people find these words useful, and start to repeat them, it is pos
sible that they will catch on and eventually merit a place in the dictionary.
Even Oxford included the sentences:
Your contributions have been added to the dictionary’s word files.
and
All suggestions for additions to the dictionary are carefully considered by our new words team, but before they can start drafting an entry for any new word they need a body of published evidence demonstrating sustained and widespread use over a period of years.
All I needed to do was to ‘convince a large number of people’ to ‘find these words useful’. If those people started ‘demonstrating sustained and widespread use over a period of years’ I could get in the next edition.
So that’s where you come in. I need your help. When Sir James Murray began his work he asked the British public to share ‘the toil and honour of such an undertaking’. Now I have to do the same.
The dictionaries know my words now, but they’re not convinced everyone else does. I’m still telling everyone I meet about them, but I really need you to start using them too. Go on! Slip in a honk, you know you want to. And if you can get one of the words in print, all the better. Go to www.urbandictionary.com and give the words a thumbs up. Look out for ‘honest’ people. Spend lots of ‘honk’. And, above all, send me the evidence. If you do I’ll send you a T-shirt, then, in another three years I’ll knock on the dictionary door again. ‘There’s more!’ I’ll shout to the editors. And if they say it’s still not enough, I’ll try again. And then again:
‘It is possible that they will catch on and eventually merit a place in the dictionary,’ said Chambers. I will be patient. Samuel Johnson originally allowed himself three years to write his Dictionary. In the end, it took him nine. I must also be prepared to wait.
For the first time since its original publication, the Oxford English Dictionary is currently undergoing a complete revision, led by the efficient pair of John Simpson and Edmund Weiner. By December 2008 they had reached ‘reamy’ (a great word meaning ‘creamy’ or ‘frothy’, used for the first time in 1831), which sounds quite impressive, except that they started the process at M and Simpson was appointed editor in 1993. It’s not expected to be finished until 2037. I think that’s a realistic target for all of us.
At the end of his book about the OED, Simon Winchester eagerly looks forward to OED3’s publication, imagining the three hundred-strong staff of scholars, researchers, readers and consultants ‘trying now to catch and snare the indiscernible, ever outward-spreading ripples of idiom and neologism and slang and linguistic invention by which the English language expands and changes, year by year, decade by decade, century by century’. I will keep casting my bait until one of the words is finally caught and reeled in, once and for all.
28
Of course, English isn’t only spoken in England.
I’d almost forgotten about the other five packages that I’d sent out but, one by one, my American correspondents responded.
Unsurprisingly, the folks at Merriam-Webster couldn’t offer my words a home either, but they did take my input seriously:
We appreciate the time and effort you’ve taken to copy and send the numerous enclosures, including the DVD, and we enjoyed learning of these neologisms. We will certainly look for any occurrences of them in North American publications.
Well, I appreciate your time and effort too and will do my best to infiltrate as many North American publications as possible in the coming months.
At this point, however, the tide began to turn. Sending my words to the etymologists Allan Metcalf, Jonathon Green and Gerald Cohen was the longest shot of all. These were the men whose works I had read so avidly while researching my Verbal Gardening History. Sure, I wanted to share my own neologisms with them, but they were bound to shrug them off as the deluded ranting of an amateur, weren’t they?
Not really. Allan Metcalf wrote this lovely response:
Mr Horne, thank you very much for the bountiful examples and citations of new words. I should have acknowledged them earlier, but I wanted to wait till I could give a reply more fitting to all the material you sent. It will probably be a while still, but I do look forward to reviewing everything you sent.
Jonathon Green penned this:
I cannot say how grateful I am for your efforts … (W)hat you have done is invaluable: offer the words in context. This means citations for me, and I am hugely grateful. As to ‘entry into the dictionary’, I can certainly offer (some of) them a home. Once I’ve checked through they’ll be joining the existing database.
And best of all, Gerald Cohen, the man who tracked down Smart Aleck Hoag, sent this:
Thank you for your letter of 6 Nov with its accompanying information on slang. I’m certainly willing to help you bring your items to the attention of lexicographers for possible entry in dictionaries, especially slang dictionaries. Actually, this is quite simple. The Internet discussion group of the American Dialect Society (which discusses all aspects of English, not just dialects) includes as members all the leading lexicographers. All either I or you would need to do is bring your items to their attention.
But what really interests me about your material is that it deserves to be compiled and published as one or more articles. If you’d like to consider Comments on Etymology as a publication where you could develop and print your material, I’d be happy to have it appear there.
I couldn’t believe it. These men were taking me seriously. The editors of the dictionaries might have needed more evidence but maybe, just maybe, I could gain credibility by association with Metcalf, Green and Cohen. I wrote back, thanked them all and told Mr Cohen I would be extremely interested in having my material appear in Comments on Etymology.
He promptly replied:
Just to keep you posted. I’ve been swamped with the start of the semester but hope to work on your article this Thursday. Otherwise, for sure, this weekend. Your material on ‘honk’ (money) looks interesting. The term doesn’t appear in Jonathan Lighter’s Historical Dictionary of American Slang, and I know he’ll be very interested in what you have to say about it.
My article! This was brilliant.
Or was it? All of a sudden the guilt that had racked me over the ‘games’ affair flared up once more. I’d already wasted the time of Alex Games himself, as well as Wikipedia, Victoria Coren and countless schoolchildren across the land; now I was letting a respected etymologist work away on words I’d made up.
But then again, this was my last and only chance to get some tangible result this time round. I bit my tongue and wrote back once more, thanking him profusely again. I would just have to be his second Smart Alex.
A few weeks later I received the official journal, published and bound: my words, in proper print. And if this was to be my legacy, I’d be immensely proud of my very own article which opened with these lines:
THREE BRITISH SLANG ITEMS:
‘HONK‘ (MONEY), ‘MENTAL SAFARI‘ AND ‘PRATDIGGER‘
Alex Horne
[editor, G. Cohen: Alex Horne is an independent scholar with an interest in slang, and, I believe, has a valuable contribution to make to word studies. I would like to encourage him to continue sharing his material with the scholarly community. The three items he discusses here can be added, for example to Dalzell & Victor 2006 and to Green 2005.]
As a keen but recreational wordspy, I always like to keep an eye on new words and phrases. My study at home is littered with notebooks full of scribbles and cuttings, all documenting what I consider to be unusual lexical behaviour.
A few years ago I decided to pay particularly close attention to a handful of slang words and phrases that had pricked my ears when heard on the radio, TV and amongst friends but which I couldn’t find in any dictionaries or in any online wordlists. I have since kept records of any usages of these words that I’ve encountered in an attempt to build up a body of evidence to show both their meaning and their growth. It is my opinion that the following three items are now common enough to
justify inclusion in collections of slang at the very least.
So I was beginning to break America. I didn’t expect to triumph overseas first, but perhaps after succeeding stateside I can return, victorious, and march straight through British security.
Of course, that is still some way off. At some point poor kind Mr Cohen might discover my sneakiness, possibly by reading this, and put American lexicographers on red alert. My name will be a dirty word amongst etymologists everywhere. At least then, however, it would be a word, dirty or otherwise. Because that was the aim of this game; to invent a word. And I am confident that I have done that. Even though they weren’t yet in any of the major printed dictionaries, ‘honk’, ‘pratdigger’, ‘mental safari’, ‘bollo’, ‘games’, ‘paddle’, ‘demi’, ‘honest’ and ‘tkday’ are definitely words. Look at that sentence again – there they are: words. And if I take away the quotation marks, they become even more convincing. The honks blend in with the other nouns, mental safari is a normal phrase, demi doesn’t jar, paddle sits nicely at the front of a clause, even tkday looks familiar now.
Just because they’re not in the dictionary, my words aren’t meaningless. As Samuel Johnson himself wrote, ‘Words are hourly shifting their relations, and can no more be ascertained in a dictionary, than a grove, in the agitation of a storm, can be accurately delineated from its picture in the water.’
How can you say that something people use as a word is not actually a word? It can be a ‘bad’ word, or a slang word, or a substandard or colloquial word; but it is still very much a word. To deny its existence is as wishful and futile as saying that the car that is about to run you over does not exist.
Ammon Shea, as spoken to his eleventh grade