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Kel's previous Ozwords of the day...
Anzac Did you realise that the word Anzac is copyright? Originally, of course, it simply meant the “Australian and New Zealand Army Corps”. But so deeply has this word entered into the consciousness of our nation that there are laws, passed way back in 1920, that control and protect its use. The Minister for Veterans’ Affairs administers the protection of the word Anzac, and the minister’s approval is needed for the use of the word in connection with any “trade, business, calling or profession, any entertainment, lottery or art union, any building, private residence, boat or vehicle, or any charitable or other institution”. Even Anzac biscuits are protected by law. Well, not so much the biscuits as the name of the biscuits. And, by the way, Anzac is no longer an acronym – it is now officially a word: that means the “A” is upper case and the rest of the letters should be lower case. And as a word it has contributed to other parts of the language. For instance, we can refer to Aussie soldiers as ‘Anzacs.’ The earliest use of this was confined to those young men of unimaginable courage who charged up the beaches of ‘Anzac Cove’ (another compound noun that uses ‘Anzac’ as an adjective)—but now the word ‘Anzacs; if often used of Aussies soldiers who fought in any conflict. We can also talk about the ‘Anzac Spirit’ and the ‘Anzac tradition.’ In 1915 there was the expression ‘Anzac zone’—meaning that portion of the beaches of Anzac Cove where the Australians and New Zealanders dug in and fought. And there are other uses too—not the least of which is ‘Anzac biscuit.’ This is a biscuit made out of oatmeal, golden syrup and coconut; one of Australia’s national foods. During World War I the wives, girlfriends and mums of the Australian soldiers used to make these biscuits to ship over to their blokes. They were originally called Soldiers’ Biscuits, but after the landing on Gallipoli, they were given their present name. In the recipe for Anzac biscuits from the Australian War Memorial there are no eggs. Why? Because apparently in the war, most poultry farmers had joined up, so eggs were scarce. Golden syrup took the place of eggs as the binding agent in Anzac biscuits.
Dark Woke We’ve been hearing the word ‘Woke’ tossed around for some years now. It is the name now given to what was once called ‘political correctness’—that is, holding and expressing what the self-appointed elite regarded as the ‘right’ political opinions. Under the label ‘Woke’ this attitude became even more demanding—and assumed moral superiority over everyone who disagreed with them. All of that we have known for some time. Now the New York Times has coined this new expression ‘dark Woke.’ They are using to label where America’s Democrat Party now stands. Which is in a not-very-good place. The Democrats have the lowest approval rating they have ever had in their history. For four years they foisted Joe Biden on America—as a puppet president who was clearly suffering from senile dementia. (We still don’t know who was really running the country during the ‘Biden’ years!) So, how do the Democrats (who’ve lost all credibility) dig themselves out of this mess. Well, according to the New York Times their strategy is mow this thing called ‘dark Woke.’ Here’s what the paper says:
“Dark woke,” for now, is a meme that lives mostly online. But its roots have been sown throughout the party for years. In the waning days of the Biden administration, memes about “Dark Brandon” often referred to the version of the former president that conservatives most feared. Outside the party, the “dirtbag left” the term for a cohort of leftists provocateurs who eschew civility politics, inspired headlines for their unrestrained derision of conservatives and liberals alike.
From what I can understand about this stuff, ‘dark Woke’ means being extremely left-wing ‘Woke’ and at the same time being extremely rude and uncivilised. Michelle Obama once famously said “When they go low, we go high.” Instead, says the New York Times, some Democrats want to see how low they can go, too. Not all Democrats are impressed, with one Democrat Congressman has said the Democrats’ new focus on viral ‘dark Woke’ posts is just a lot of hot air. It seems that being rude and aggressive may not work in politics—regardless of what you call it.
Self-help speak The language used by the self-help gurus has probably always been full of jargon and empty words—going all the way back to Dale Carnegie and his How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936). At least Carnegie was a professional teacher of public speaking, and applied his principles of communication to all our contacts and conversations. Mind you, he was not the first. As far back as 1859 Samuel Smiles wrote a book called Self-Help, after not very successful careers as a doctor and journalist. And even in that pioneering book the ‘self-help jargon’ was becoming apparent, when Smiles wrote: ‘Every human being has a great mission to perform, noble faculties to cultivate, a vast destiny to accomplish.’ But now Meghan Markle has taken the nonsense talk of the Self-Help movement to even greater heights of empty absurdity. She has launched a new podcast called Confessions of a Female Founder (no, that doesn’t she’s a fish, but that she starts things). In the first episode she (apparently) asks her listeners if their ‘bucket is feeling depleted?’ I say ‘apparently’ because I haven’t heard the podcast myself—I am relying on news reports. Meghan goes on talk about the need to ‘re-org yourself.’ (Which sounds rather like an uncomfortable yoga posture.) This ‘self-help’ talk involves such things as: ‘setting boundaries’, ‘prioritizing yourself’, and ‘practicing self-care.’ (The idea of focussing outwards on others around you appears not to occur to these modern self-help fanatics. At least Dale Carnegie made that ‘focus on others’ business the centre of his book. Well done him!) In the podcast Meghan tells her guest (a female entrepreneur) ‘how evolved you are.’ (As if the rest of us have to shave everyday to hide our closeness to gorillas!) Meghan also uses such expressions as ‘beautiful chaos’—whatever that is (the Trump White House?) If anything bad happens, she says, that is an opportunity for gratitude while some good is labelled ‘super high value.’ If you are busy you are ‘so in it’, and you should cut out anything that ‘doesn’t serve you.’ Meanwhile, the jam that Meghan is now selling is said to be ‘an extension of her essence.’ (Which sounds a bit like collected body odours!) Her guest is just as bad, describing being unemployed as being ‘professionally single.’ Is it just me? Or are these junk words expressing junk ideas?
Emu The emu is Australia’s large, flightless bird. It stands around one and half metres tall, weighs around 45 kilos and has brownish black, thick feathers. (Only Africa’s ostrich is a larger bird.) The name seems to come not from any Aboriginal language (as you might expect) but from a Portuguese word (apparently from ema – originally denoting a type of crane, but later applied to ostriches, and ostrich type birds). Emu eggs (as you might expect) are very large, and, in the colonial era, were often collected and decorated. The emu has been known to hit almost 50 kilometres an hour when running at full tilt. To the early settlers the ‘emu’ was also known as the ‘bush chook’ (not that I imagine they’d be very good eating—surely far too tough?) So why do I raise the subject of the ‘emu’? Because this large, flightless bird has made some valuable contributions to the Australian language. It can, for instance, be used in the well-known Aussie curse: ‘I hope your chooks turn into emus and kick your dunny down!’ But there’s lots of others. It turns up in expressions such as “emu bob”, “emu walk”, and “emu stalk” all with much the same meaning. They all refer to picking up litter from an area, usually by an organised group of people, often on school grounds as a school punishment. The same activity occurs in the army (where it’s usually called an “emu parade” or “patrol”). “Emu bobs” are now sometimes organised by community groups as part of Clean Up Australia Day. And emu’s eggs have long been used in Aussie English as an expression of size, as in “that cricket ball gave me a lump as big as an emu’s egg, mate.” In South Australia they have things called ‘emu crossings’—road crossings near a school designed for the safe passage of schoolchildren, marked by red and white striped posts. Then there is a product called ‘emu oil’, which is oil rendered from the carcass of an emu for therapeutic use. It is said to be a moisturizer, an inset repellent, and it relieves minor aches and pains. Then there used to be the strange craft of ‘emu egg carving’—in which empty emu eggs had delicate patterns carved into them. You can find colonial examples of this art in some local museums. Does anyone still do this? That’s a lot of words and expressions spun off from one small, three-letter, word—and it’s not even an Australian word! But it is recorded as the name for our very own Big Bird from 1789 (from Captain Watkin Tench, who recorded so much about life in the early colony).
Niff Last night on ‘The Sunday Showdown’ on Sky News Joe Hildebrand told me about a new word he had come across—the word ‘niff.’ He had found this one while doing a Times cryptic crossword puzzle. (Joe has recently become addicted to the cryptic crosswords in the Times—reputedly the best cryptics in the world). ‘Niff’ (and sometimes in the variation ‘niffer’) means ‘smelling bad’. Or so he said. But is there really any such word? Well, you know me and new words—I collect them like gemstones so I immediately when on a search for this little gem. It turns out that ‘niff’ is an English regional dialect word first recorded in the year 1900. So, from which local English region does it come? Well, there is some dispute about that. According to the legendary English Dialect Dictionary it is first recorded in Sussex—but there is no strong documentary evidence to support this. However, there is strong evidence to support ‘niff’ coming from Derby. It’s listed in something called the Public School Word-book compiled by J. S. Farmer. And that source makes some sense. This started out in life as schoolboy slang. The official definition says that’ niff’ means: ‘To emit an odour or smell, esp. an unpleasant one; to stink’ (Oxford English Dictionary). And it’s fairly easy to imagine the sort of situation in which smart-alec schoolboys would coin a neat little word such as ‘niff’ to say that someone (or someplace) stinks— ‘that really niffs.’ The word can be both a noun and a verb. Where did the schoolboys get their idea for the word? Well, the Oxford says in its occasionally unhelpful way, ‘Of uncertain origin.’ Then they go on to suggest that (perhaps) it is a variant or alteration of another word—and they suggest that words such as ‘sniff’ or ‘whiff’ might be the source. The most likely of these is ‘sniff’ with what the Oxford calls the ‘unexplained dropping of the initial “s”.’ Or perhaps (because they can’t quite make up their minds) it was formed from ‘whiff’ by what they call ‘blending’ with some word that had an initial “n”—you can see how this has made them chew the ends of their pens and think for a bit. But it’s a nice little word to add to our (ever growing) vocabularies. And it’s a good one to try to work into your conversation sometime this week. When something is on the nose, try telling people it’s a bit ‘niffy.’
W A talkback caller on 2GB asked me why we call the 23rd letter of the English alphabet ‘double you’—where, he asked, does that come from? There are some excellent books on the history of the English alphabet, so if this interests you here are two such books you can look for in your local library: The Alphabet Abecedarium by Richard A Firmage; and Alphabetical by Michael Rosen. When it comes to this letter ‘W’ Firmage writes that ‘it has a somewhat confusing history.’ This letter only appears in the English alphabet during the Old English period—it was the speakers of Anglo Saxon who it there—because this letter did not exist in classical Latin. So, while we speak of our alphabet as the ‘Latin alphabet’ it largely is—but not entirely! There are other bits that the English added. Before the Latin alphabet came to the Saxons they had the sound of the ‘W’ in the runic alphabet they used it was called the letter ‘wen’ or ‘wyn’ and was written to look a bit like a rather angular of a lower-case ‘p’. Several Anglo-Saxon letters ended up in the English alphabet, squeezing their way in next to the established Latin letters. The letter called a ‘thorn’ is a good example. This made a ‘th’ sound and looked a little bit like the letter ‘y.’ We no longer have a ‘thorn’ in or alphabet (it disappeared some centuries ago) but we can see the echo of it in the word ‘Ye’ and in ‘Ye Olde Tea Shoppe’—where ‘Ye’ means ‘the.’ But back to the 23rd letter of the alphabet (W) and how it got its distinctive name. When the scribes realised that they had a sound that needed a letter—something that would fit into the Latin alphabet to replace the ‘wen’ or ‘wyn’ rune that was no longer being used—the shape they choose to represent this was two upper case Us with a space in between. Supposedly it was the scribes in the court of Charlemagne who first came up with this idea. This symbol of two Us signified a ‘W’ sound in late Latin, German, French, and (of course) English from about 900 AD. Then printing burst on the scene in 1439 when Johannes Gutenberg invented moveable type. The earliest typesetters indicated this ‘W’ by printed two uppercase Vs side by side, with a gap in between. On the title page of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1600) two Vs can be clearly seen in the printing of his first name. It was only around a hundred years later (in 1700) that printers case a new letter consisting of two Vs joined together to make the W shape we are familiar with today. But because of its historic origin the name of ‘double U’ remained. Mind you, in French the letter is called ‘double V.
Eora We have often been told that the people who lived in the Sydney area at the time of the first settlement in 1788 were the ‘Eora’ people. In fact, when it was announced that Google Maps would include Aboriginal names as well as legal Australian placenames one image printed in the newspapers was of the Sydney area with the words ‘Eora nation’ printed over them. However, I can’t find that now. I just looked up Google Maps and the map of Sydney just has the legal placenames, no ‘Eora’ anywhere. Have they reverted to the old style? Or has my search engine just picked up an earlier version of the map? Either way, we are left with this claim that ‘Eora’ was the name of the tribal grouping (or so-called ‘nation’) that lived in the Sydney basin at the time of settlement. However, I am now told that this was not the case. A very helpful Ozwords reader, Tony, has written to quote from archaeologist and author Val Attenbrow—who says that ‘Eora’ was never a tribal name for Sydney’s Aboriginal people. In fact, this was only applied in the middle of the 20th century. The point that Attenbrow makes is that the word ‘Eora’ is well known to the experts as part of the Sydney language, they know what it means, and it doesn’t mean a tribe or tribal grouping. The same point is made by Jakelin Troy in her contribution to the Macquarie Dictionary of Aboriginal Words where she says that this word always meant ‘a person.’ There is, I should add, a problem transcribing Aboriginal words into our Latin alphabet. The most common transcription of this word is the one I have been using ‘Eora’ but Jakelin Troy prefers the spelling ‘Iyora’ (and she sometimes shortens this to just ‘Yura’) but the meaning is the same—it means ‘person’ not a tribe or a tribal grouping. This is worth understanding. Even the people who get up to do a ‘welcome to country’ may refer to the so-called ‘Eora people’ who once lived here. There never were any such people, because ‘Eora’ is the not the name of a group (a tribe or ‘nation’). There is a lot of guesswork, and a lack of real knowledge, in a lot of the stuff that is being pedalled to us as so-called ‘Aboriginal knowledge of country.’ The Sydney language is extinct. Our knowledge of it comes from the records of the early settlers who worked hard at getting along with, and getting to know, the local Aboriginal people. But there are no Aboriginal people alive today who know that language, and we should be sceptical of claims to have certain knowledge of anything about Sydney Aboriginal people before settlement.
Easter Welcome to the Easter long weekend. Here is what the Oxford English Dictionary says about the word “Easter” in (for the OED) quite a long definition: “The most important and oldest of the festivals of the Christian Church, commemorating the resurrection of Christ and observed annually on the Sunday which follows the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Also (more generally): Easter week or the weekend from Good Friday to Easter Monday, also called Eastertide.” As that definition says, Easter begins with “Good Friday”—and one reader has written to ask why it’s called “good” since it is the annual commemoration of the day that Jesus Christ was crucified—nailed to a rough wooden cross by Roman soldiers. “How can that be good?” he asked. The Oxford records this usage from at least the year 1300—and the “good” label comes about because of what the death of Jesus achieves. The Bible explains it like this: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.” (1 Peter 3:18) This death is called “substitutionary”—Jesus dying in the place of, as a substitute for, his people. To put this personally—I am not perfect. (Hey! That surprised you, didn’t it?) But God is. So, I deserve to be punished for my imperfections (my failings and failures—all of which come from ignoring God). But if Jesus is my substitute I don’t need to be punished—so that at death God can say “Welcome home!” not “You don’t belong here!” And, of course, (as the Oxford definition above says) it ended triumphantly with the conquest of death (what the Bible calls “the last enemy”) by Jesus. That’s why all the traditional Easter symbols are symbols of life—eggs from which new life comes, and rabbits because rabbits breed like… well, like rabbits. Which makes the Australian creation of the chocolate “Easter bilby” a bit silly, since the bilby is an endangered species (threatened with extinction). Nice to save the bilbies, of course, but they represent death—not life. Happy Easter!
Tariffied At this end of this year (as every year) the dictionaries of the world will tell us their choice for ‘word of the year.’ But already (in April!) Geoff O’Brien (of Eltham, Victoria) thinks he knows what it should be. In his letter to The Australian he nominated for Word of the Year 2025 the word ‘tarrified.’ Well, Geoff it’s not going to happen. Mainly because ‘tarrified’ is not an existing word—and invented words (however clever) never get the Word of the Year nod. Geoff’s inventive ‘tarrified’ is clearly a spin on the existing word ‘terrified’—to be very afraid, to be filled with terror (Oxford). That familiar word goes back to the 1500s, but it is part of living language in 2025 and captures perfectly the global reaction to President Trump’s tariff policy. When Trump announced his ‘liberation day’ of reciprocal tariffs on the nations of the world, most countries howled in protest (including Australia) that while everyone else was unfair, an increased tariff on them was a gross injustice. As always the media jumped far too soon with wailing Jeremiads about the end of civilisation as we know it. Within hours of the tariffs being announced the hysterical media declared a global trade war was underway. They still haven’t learned the lesson of how Trump bargains when he sets out to negotiate a deal. In fact, it’s not unusual for negotiators to set out ‘ambit claims’ in order to provoke responses—and then deal back and forth to a middle ground. But journalists who have never read The Art of the Deal and never done a deal in their lives prefer mindless, hysterical panic. As for Geoff’s new word, ‘tariffied’—it might just be taken up and become part of the English language. We shall see. However, as of this moment it exists nowhere except in Geoff’s inventive imagination. Mind you, if he had chosen the slightly similar word ‘tariffed’ he might be on a winner—since the word ‘tariff’ can be used as a verb, and has been since 1756. And if Trump has done anything to the world he has definitely ‘tariffed’ it!
Split infinitive In The Weekend Australian I read a review of a book about AI and its disastrous impact on undergraduate student essay writing. The review largely approved of the book, but towards the end the reviewer wrote this: ‘A quibble: throughout the book, he splits more infinitives than Abraham Lincoln split logs. Is a writer of books on writing permitted such literary slovenliness?’ My problem with this assertion is that I don’t think splitting the infinitive is literary slovenliness. I don’t even think it’s wrong! Yes, I know a lot of grammar books over the years have fulminated about this and told us never to split the infinitive. But they were wrong. I shall explain. I suppose I should start by explaining what ‘splitting the infinitive’ means. The infinitive form of any verb is the form that has the preposition ‘to’ in front of it. So the infinitive form of the walking verb is ‘to walk.’ And every other verb has a similar construction. We talk about the verb ‘to walk’ and then all the tenses it can take—present (‘I walk’) present continuous (‘I am walking’) future (‘I will walk’) past (‘I walked) and so on. But the basic form of the verb, which we call the infinitive form, is ‘to walk.’ Now the old grammar books said you should never place a word (an adverb or whatever) in between the ‘to’ and its verb. For example—take the verb ‘to go’. That’s the infinitive form. When Star Trek says it mission is ‘to boldly go’ it is splitting the infinitive, by putting ‘boldly’ between the ‘to’ and the verb. Now, here’s the point—it is not grammatically wrong to split the infinitive. There is no grammatical rule. So, how did the obsession about ‘splitting the infinitive’ arise? From Latin. The earliest English grammars (and fact, most English grammars, for many years) were based on Latin grammar. Since no one had any idea about what English grammar should be, the school masters just decided to apply the rules of Latin to English. And in Latin you can’t split the infinitive form of the verb, because it is just one word. So (some time in the 1800s) it was decided to apply this to English. And it doesn’t apply. Shakespeare (and countless other writers) have split the infinitive to their heart’s content. You can do the same. Sometimes it is inelegant to split the infinitive—in that case, don’t. But more often it is awkward to move the adverb just to avoid splitting the infinitive—and it doesn’t need to move. On this subject you can divide people into three groups: (1) those who have no idea what an infinitive—split or otherwise—is, and who don’t care; (2) those understand and froth at mouth when anyone breaks the rules of Latin in writing English; (3) those who understand, and exercise care so as not to write inelegantly or awkwardly. Yes, I know I said a lot in a short space, but is it clear?
Kakidrosis Yes, it’s Weird Word time once again—and this time a word that is not only weird, but also unpleasant. That’s because ‘kakidrosis’ is a medical term for sweat that smells bad. There are unfamiliar technical (medical) terms for a number of bodily functions. For example ‘singultus’ is the medical term for hiccups. It’s recorded from the mid-1750s in medical textbooks. It comes from a Latin word singultus which itself came into English as ‘singult’ meaning a ‘sob’ (I suppose a single sob). Both of those words are not only old, but rare. Mind you, you could try to revive ‘singultus’ (pronunciation: sing-GUL-tus) in conversation. Next time someone hiccups in your presence you could say: ‘Bad case of singultus you have there.’ And you would succeed in being both sympathetic and baffling at the same time. And the correct medical term for the act of sneezing in ‘sternutation.’ This also comes from a Latin source word (with exactly the same meaning). So next time you sneeze in someone’s direction you could apologise by saying, ‘Sorry, I sternutated at you.’ You’ll frighten the life out of them, as they worry about what strange bacteria you have sent flying in their direction. And, of course, anyone who sneezes a lot is a ‘sternutator.’ Which brings us back to our headword: ‘kakidrosis.’ This is found in the big American dictionary, the Merriam-Webster but not in the Oxford. Does that mean that Americans sweat more than the English? Or that their sweat smells worse? The Merriam-Webster official definition of ‘kakidrosis’ is: ‘secretion of sweat of a disagreeable odour.’ The editors of the Merriam-Webster tell me that: ‘Kakidrosis comes from New Latin (Latin as used since the end of the medieval period especially in scientific description and classification), combining the prefix cac- meaning “bad” with -drosis, a noun that indicates a specific type of sweating.’ That prefix of cac- we’ve come across before: a ‘cackocracy’ is ‘government by the worst people.’ And I am told there is another ‘idrosis’ (or sweat) word—namely ‘chromidrosis’ which (supposedly) means ‘secretion of coloured sweat.’ No! Surely that never happens! (I’m started to have my suspicions about these ‘medical’ words that people are coming up with!)
Filibuster In the US Congress there is a method of delaying proceedings, and holding up legislative action, that is unknown in any Australian parliament—the ‘filibuster.’ In the Congress a ‘filibuster’ consists of one (or more) members of the chamber talking on and on (and on and on…) to delay (or prevent) a vote on a piece of legislation. In 1957 Strom Thurmond (Democrat, South Carolina) spoke in the US senate for 24 hours and 18 minutes to prevent the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. But that impressive record was broken only recently by Senator Cory Booker (Democrat, New Jersey) who spoke for 25 hours and 5 minutes. He spoke before deliberations on the confirmation of Matthew Whittaker as American ambassador to NATO. But his speech was not about that appointment—rather it was a wide-ranging protest against Donald Trump’s second term as US president. And ‘wide-ranging’ is used here as a polite way to say ‘rambling.’ When I saw this happening on America news channels my question was: is he allowed toilet breaks? And the answer (I believe) is no. No snack breaks, no toilet breaks. So a ‘filibuster’ is mainly a test of stamina, rather that coherent, logical argument. Filibustering is allowed in some parliaments around the world, and not others. The practice appears to go back to ancient Rome where Cato the younger would speak interminably in the Roman senate against legislation he opposed—until nightfall, because the Roman senate had a rule that said all business had to be concluded by sunset (well, it was before electric lighting, wasn’t it?) So, where does this strange word ‘filibuster’ come from? The Oxford tells us that ‘filibuster’ is an anglicized form of the Dutch word vrijbuiter which (in English) was used to mean ‘freebooter.’ A ‘freebooter’ (or ‘filibuster’—both words were used) was a pirate who ‘freed’ (meaning ‘stole’) ‘booty’ (that is, collective plunder or spoil). Hence, originally a ‘filibuster’ was: ‘a class of piratical adventurers who pillaged the Spanish colonies in the West Indies during the 17th century.’ The word went on to be applied to a wide range of piratical activities. So, how does this apply to the US Senate? Well, what does a ‘freebooter’ (or ‘filibuster’) do? He holds people up. And what does a ‘filibuster’ in the US Senate do? It holds people up!
Random A book review in The Times began with these words: ‘As the world comes to feel ever weirder, ever more random, it’s little wonder that more and more people are turning to the reassuring orderliness of conspiracy theories to make sense of it.’ It then went to review a novel obsessed with conspiracy theories. However, it was that use of the word ‘random’ that caught my attention. The word ‘random’ appears to have come into English around 1335 from an Anglo-Norman source word (behind which are similar words in Old French and Middle French). These days we would most likely say that ‘random’ means: ‘by chance rather than according to plan’ (Cambridge Dictionary). Or: ‘without any definite plan, aim or pattern.’ But is that what the writer of the Times book review had in mind? Let’s go back and do a little history, and then look at what is happening to the word ‘random’ today. It started off meaning ‘with great speed or force’ to which was later added the idea of ‘impetuosity’; only from the mid-1500s onwards was it used to mean ‘haphazard or aimless (Oxford English Dictionary). But to find out what Gen Z is doing to ‘random’ we can go to the online, hyper-hip Urban Dictionary. It doesn’t help a lot, because it has a long list of definitions (and comments on definitions). For example, from 2005 is this explanation: ‘Random is the latest in a long line of buzzwords that teenagers use to replace meaningful conversation.’ Earlier, in 2004, one entry said that ‘random’ means: ‘Something unexpected and irrelevant, but often amusing. A very over-used word now people, use it when something really is random.’ Another comment (posted in 2005) says: ‘the nine pages of the definition of “random” on this website are, in fact, random.’ What can we deduce from all this ‘random’ rambling? Well, it appears that the word went through a period of being cool with kids, and then rapidly shifted into being not-cool, and used as word to mock the kids who still thought it was cool. Mind you, during that process, it was possible to say that a person was ‘random’—which makes no sense at all, unless you gather all the slang uses together and say that ‘random’ (briefly) became a fashionable way to say ‘weird.’ So, is that what Robbie Millen (the book reviewer in The Times) was doing? My own view is that there two things we can do with ‘random’: (1) use it in its correct sense to mean unplanned, uncontrolled; or (2) avoid it altogether. And I’m leaning heavily towards (2)!
Corflute Everyone who has ever worked in an election campaign knows what a ‘corflute’ is. In fact, we have all seen ‘corflutes’—even if we never knew what they were called. ‘Corflutes’ are those posters advertising a candidate for the election in your local area. You see them stuck up in front yards, on power poles (which is illegal) in shop windows, plastered on any empty brick wall—all over the place. It is possible to go ‘corflute’ mad at election time, because we just can’t escape them. The point is that they are not made of paper or cardboard. Instead, the message (and the photo of the grinning candidate) are printed on plastic. A ‘corflute’ consists of two sheets of stiff, flat plastic with a corrugated sheet of plastic glued in the middle that keeps the sign flat and rigid. Or at least, it does for long enough to complete the election campaign. I doubt they would last for a long time, but they do last just long enough. That is a ‘corflute.’ Which explains the product, but not this odd name—so where does it come from? To begin with, it is an Australian coinage. Election signs are not called ‘corflutes’ anywhere else in the world. That’s because ‘Corflute’ began life as a registered trademark. It was registered in 1970 by Corex Plastics (Australia) Pty. Ltd., of Melbourne. But since then it has become a generic name for this kind of signage. There are lots of similar words: aspirin, cellophane, kerosene, linoleum, thermos, videotape and a host of others started out as registered trademarks and became generic words. Presumably the Corex Plastic company didn’t object to this happening, because it promoted their own product. The only dictionary in which I could find ‘corflute’ as a headword was the Macquarie Dictionary which offers the following definition: ‘a type of stiff, weatherproof plastic sheeting, consisting of two flat surfaces with a corrugated inner layer, which can be printed on for making temporary signage.’ To which the Macquarie helpfully adds, ‘used by people running for election.’ What puzzles me is who pays for the ‘corflutes’ for so-called ‘independent’ candidates? Because these things are produced in large numbers (as we all, sadly, know) so they can’t be cheap.
Untoward This is one of those odd words that used to puzzle me when I was a small boy in short pants. I could understand what ‘towards’ meant, but his word ‘untoward’ seemed pointless. If, instead of going ‘towards’ something you were being ‘untoward’ didn’t that just mean that you were avoiding it? Well, no it didn’t. The Merriam-Webster people say that ‘untoward’ is a formal word that describes something that is improper or inappropriate, or that is adverse or unfavourable. They such examples as ‘The investigation found that nothing untowardhad happened at the event’ and ‘The medication is safe and effective, with no known untoward side effects.’ So I get it. ‘Untoward’ means something is ‘improper’ or ‘inappropriate.’ But it still strikes (and its Old Kel we’re talking about now) as an oddly constructed word. Why take a perfectly normal, familiar word such as ‘toward’ and then negate it with an ‘un-’ and then tell us it has nothing to do with direction of movement, but instead is all about being appropriate and proper? A very odd thing to do. How did that come about? It seems that as long ago as 1526 this strange word ‘untoward’ was being exclusively of animals. Your cow or your sheep could be called ‘untoward’ if it was ‘Difficult to manage, restrain, or control; intractable, unruly, perverse’ (The Oxford English Dictionary). I suppose this arose in the following sort of circumstances: there you are, trying to drive your sheep or cattle into the home yard so they can be shut in for the night and you can go home to a nice warm house and have your supper. But there is one animal in the herd (there’s always one, isn’t there?) that is contradictory and just won’t behave as it’s told. While the others all trot dutifully towards the home yard the contrary one is bouncing off towards… well, who knows what? A distant tree? A meadow over the hill? While the others head ‘towards’ the correct gate. The difficult one is behaving in an ‘untoward’ manor. That, as far as I can work it out, is (roughly) the birth of the word. When you shift that animals to humans you get behaviour that is ‘improper’ or ‘inappropriate’ so this, too, gets to be labelled ‘untoward.’
Big numbers During the current election campaign the numbers that politicians toss blissfully around are big numbers—very big numbers. Anthony Albanese says he will give 200 million dollars to this project, or spend seven billion dollars on this road, or 2.4 billion dollars to rescue a failing steel plant—and so on. But our imaginations have great difficulty grasping just how big those numbers are. Recently, on the ‘Words Matter’ segment, I talked to Peta Credlin on Sky News about those big numbers. This was in response to a viewer who asked exactly what the words ‘billion’ and ‘trillion’ mean. As a word man I could explain that originally there was a British billion (which was one million million) and an American billion (which was one thousand million). The American billion is now accepted worldwide, even by the British. Something similar has happened to trillion. It is now usually accepted as being one thousand billion (10 to the power of 12). There was once (briefly) an older version that said it was a billion billion (10 to the power of 18) but that seems to have gone by the board. But that was as far as I could go—I am a word man not a numbers man. However, in response to our report on TV one Peta’s viewers (Mark Riggs from Sale in Victoria) wrote in to offer a clear, and fairly simply way of trying to grasp these huge numbers that our political leaders toss around so carelessly. And I find his explanations clear and very helpful. To help us grasp just how big (how utterly enormous) these budget numbers are Mark explains that one thousand seconds is about 16 minutes. That’s okay. We can grasp that. But one million seconds is 11 days. From 16 minutes to 11 days is a huge leap. But wait, there’s more. One billion seconds is about 31 years. We can see that when the “m” changes to a “b” the number is not just bigger. it shoots up enormously. There are people you know who are under 31-years-of age—who are not yet one billion seconds old! And it’s just seconds we’re talking about—that’s how big the number ‘billion’ is! One trillion seconds is 31,000 years—which our minds can’t even begin to imagine. If you were paying off a trillion-dollar debt at one dollar per second it would take you 31,000 years. And that’s the kind of debt our political leaders so blithely talk about.
Beclowned Recently the Grammarphobia website published an article about this odd (and rare) word ‘beclowned.’ A reader had written to them quoting a news headlined that said something about the Reuters newsagency having ‘beclowned’ itself for the benefit of Hamas.’ It does look like an odd word, doesn’t it? We are familiar with words such as ‘besotted’—which the Oxford defines as having a foolish, blinding affection, or doting on, or being infatuated with. That one goes back to 1583. Then there’s ‘befooled’—meaning to make a fool of. This one is older, going back to 1393. In fact, there’s a whole collection of words with this ‘be-’ prefix which is used to form forming transitive verbs on adjectives and nouns meaning that something is the case. As for this word in question, ‘beclowned’—the meaning is fairly clear: it means that it is the case that someone has made a clown of himself/herself. And who do you think is capable of ‘beclowning’ themselves? Did I hear you say politicians? Congratulations, you got it exactly right. It can happen to any politicians, of any political colour, from any party, but (for some reason) my mind keeps returning to Chris Bowen. I wonder why that is? As power prices go higher and higher, he just pulls another face on television and insists that ‘renewables and cheapest form of energy’. Right. Sure. But what about the $275 cut in our power bills that Bowen (and the others) promised 97 times before the last election? It seems that Bowen the clown won’t apologise for that, or renew that promised, or (in fact) do anything at all about. Every Sunday morning on Sky News Australia, on the show called “Outsiders” Rowan Dean (my editor at The Spectator Australia) runs a segment called ‘The Canberra Clown Show’ which demonstrates the ability of our political leaders to ‘beclown’ themselves. The word itself is recorded from 1609, but is very rare—there is only one citation under this headword in the full Oxford English Dictionary. But perhaps it’s time for this rare old word to be revived—and used often in political discourse!