by Alex Horne
Tkday: The exact etymology for this spiky chronological term is unknown, but the word was definitely invented by neologist and bane of Wikipedia, The Farmer, as the signature concept of the Verbal Gardening movement.
Tractor: A name invented by W. H. Williams, sales manager of the Iowan Hart-Parr company, who fashioned the word out of an old ‘traction engine’ in 1901.
Uncanny: The Scottish poet Walter Scott (1771–1832) wanted, as I do, to ‘contribute somewhat to the history of my native country’, and by promoting such words as ‘uncanny’, ‘glamour’, ‘cosy’, ‘gruesome’ and ‘dervish,’ he ‘gave to the English language possibly more English words than any author since Shakespeare’, according to a man called Manfred Görlach (in English in Nineteenth-Century England: An Introduction), who is clearly far more qualified to make such claims than me.
United States of America: The ‘consummate sloganeer’ (Bill Bryson’s words, the second a cracker) Thomas Paine, who emigrated from Britain to the colonies in 1774, coined the winning phrases ‘the Age of Reason’ and ‘the Rights of Man’, as well as ‘the United States of America’.
Vandal: ‘Vandal’ is a Roman word, not made up by a single person but of a single race: the Vandals, a Germanic tribe who eventually sacked Rome in AD 455 after making numerous raids on Roman provinces throughout the third and fourth centuries and causing havoc in Gaul at the beginning of the fifth. I really want to create a word but there are some lengths even I won’t go to.
Venn diagram: One of my top five favourite diagrams, conceived and named around 1880 by a British logician and philosopher called John Venn to whom we should all be most grateful.
Versatile: While a small minority argue that it was Francis Bacon, not William Shakespeare, who wrote all those plays (and coined many many words in the process), it is generally accepted that the philosopher did introduce the word ‘essay’ to the language in 1597, and he is quoted in the OED as the first user of ‘acoustic’, ‘juvenile’ and ‘versatile’.
Victorian: The word ‘Victorian’ can be attributed to the Queen herself, who was implausibly (possibly rightly so) the first person in the UK to be called ‘Victoria’. From the Latin word for ‘victory’, the name was already widely used across Europe, including Germany, where Victoria’s mother, also Victoria, resided, but never before in the English-speaking world, or at least not by anyone of any standing. Other individually crafted names are ‘Vanessa’, coined by Jonathan Swift (alongside his ‘yahoos’) as a pseudonym for his Dutch love Esther Vanhomrigh (combining her last and first names); ‘Wendy’, invented by J. M. Barrie in Peter Pan (where he also constructed the first ever ‘wendy house’ in 1904); ‘Pamela’, mixed by Sir Philip Sidney from the Greek ‘Pan’ and ‘mela’ (honey) to make the character for his play Arcadia; ‘Dorian’, picked by Oscar Wilde from an ancient Greek tribe to be the titular hero of The Picture of Dorian Gray; and ‘Olivia’, converted by Shakespeare himself from Oliver for Twelfth Night.
Village: Like ‘games’, the noun can also be used as an adjective to describe something quite rubbish. This usage, I’m reliably informed, was invented by the cricketer Michael Atherton, who tended to play a rather higher standard of the sport.
Web: The term ‘the Web’ was coined in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau, replacing Al Gore’s far more clunky 1978 effort, ‘information superhighway’.
Willy Nilly: Unfortunately I have to report that this is merely a contraction of ‘will I, nill I’ (or ‘will he/ye, nill he/ye’) and used since 1608 as an alternative to the Latin nolens volens. I’d much rather spread a rumour that it was invented by a man called Willy Nilly, but I’m not sure you’d believe me.
World War II: The phrase ‘World War II’ can be attributed to Henry J. Stimson, the American Secretary for War in 1945, who convinced President Truman to officially sanction it over other contenders like the grandiose ‘War of World Freedom’ and the catchy ‘Anti Nazi War’. Now that’s an impressive language legacy: ‘World War II’. If another global battle breaks out I’d like to say categorically that I think it should be called ‘World War III’. There, that’ll almost certainly get me in the record books.
Yours Sincerely: Poet (like Mr Elephant) and dramatist (like Mr Bodoni) John Gay designed the apparently ageless ‘yours sincerely’. Yours sincerely, Alex Horne.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dictionaries
Cambridge Dictionary
Cassell Dictionary of Slang
Chambers Dictionary
Collins Dictionary
Gigglossary
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
MacMillan Dictionary
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
New Columbia Encyclopaedia
New Oxford American Dictionary
New Oxford Dictionary of English
Penguin Latin Dictionary
Webster’s New Millennium Dictionary of English
Miscellaneous
Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, The Meaning of Liff
John Bartlett, Dictionary of Americanisms
Howard W. Bergerson, Palindromes and Anagrams
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
Adam Jacot de Boinod, The Meaning of Tingo
Edward de Bono, The Use of Lateral Thinking
Peter Bowler, The Superior Person’s Book of Words
Melvyn Bragg, The Adventure of English
Fanny Burney, Evelina
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass
Gerald Cohen, Studies in Slang
Philip Cohen, Work Ways
Courtenay Ryley Cooper, Designs in Scarlet
David Crystal, Predicting New Words
John Dryden, Defence of the Epilogue
John S. Farmer and W. E. Henley, Dictionary of Slang and Colloquial English
Thomas Fuller, The Church-History of Britain
Alex Games, Balderdash and Piffle – English Words and Their Curious Origins
Manfred Görlach, English in Nineteenth-Century England: An Introduction
Jonathon Green, Slang Down the Ages
Sir Mathew Hale, Primitive Origination of Mankind, Considered and Examined According to the Light of Nature
Mike Harding, When the Martians Landed in Huddersfield
Robert Harris, Imperium
Joseph Heller, Catch-22
Henry Hitchings, Dr Johnson’s Dictionary
Henry Hitchings, The Secret Life of Words
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Ian McMillan, Chelp and Chunter: How to Talk Tyke
Viz and Roger Mellie, Roger’s Profanisaurus
Allan Metcalf, Predicting New Words
Stephen Potter, The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship
F. T. Porter, Gleanings and Reminiscences
Eric Partridge, Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English
Michael Quinion, Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds
Edwin Radford and Alan Smith, To Coin a Phrase
Nigel Rees, As We Say in Our House
Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary
Richard Sheridan, The Rivals
Benjamin Stuart, Walker Remodelled
Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots and Leaves
C. A. Ward, Notes and Queries: A Medium of Intercommunication for Literary Men, General Readers, Etc
R. W. Jackson, You Say Tomato: An Amusing and Irreverent Guide to the Most Often Mispronounced Words in the English Language
Acknowledgements
Due to the sly and occasionally scandalous nature of this project, I can only mention my most trusted conspirators obliquely but I am indebted to TK, DM, OP, PB, MW, MT, EJ, TH, GR and the one and only GP. I hope they know how grateful I am for their often unacknowledged but always unflinching dedication.
Extraordinarily profuse thanks to the many sneaky people who have voluntarily joined our band, independently smuggling words into their own worlds and contributing
countless creative neologisms to the cause. Rather apologetic thanks to those individuals who became unwittingly embroiled in the affair. Again, I won’t name them here but AG, VC and NK have been particularly unobstructive when they could have thrown all sorts of spanners at me and my men. And professional but heartfelt thanks to everyone at Avalon and Virgin, and in particular Ed, James, Davina and Becky, for making this an actual thing rather than just some thoughts in my head.
Finally, despite being confronted by a barrage of unintelligible words and unpredictable behaviour, my ever-expanding family has been as patient and supportive as always. Thanks especially to my mum for providing the inspiration, to Chip for his sound advice throughout both the project and the writing of this book, and to Rachel for encouraging my adventures. Tom and I are lucky little men.
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First published in 2010 by Virgin Books
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