Kel's previous Ozwords of the day...

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Proselytory I ran into James Morrow in the corridor the other day—and he told me that he thought he had coined a new word. You’ll know James as a Daily Telegraph columnist and a Sky News host. The word he had thought he had coined is ‘proselytory.’ The context was the push to have the Muslim call to prayer from the Lakemba Mosque amplified at midday every day—so the sound would echo for streets and streets around the suburb. Obviously there was strong opposition—15 minutes of loud, amplified Arabic language would quite likely disturb your day and put you right off your lunch. But those defending the push towards making us all listen to the Islamic call to prayer said, ‘Well, it’s just like church bells.’ But, no, James Morrow pointed out, it’s not the least bit like church bells. For a start that loud, echoing Islamic voice lacks the musical quality of bells, but (more importantly) the bells are ‘celebratory’ while the Muslim call to prayer is ‘proselytory.’ There’s that new word. And, yes, James it is a brand-new word, unknown to the dictionary! So, congratulations—this is your word, your coinage! It comes from the verb ‘to proselytize’—which means ‘to make proselytes.’ That is, an attempt to persuade people to adopt the Islamic worldview and convert to Islam. It does that because it uses words. For 15 minutes there are a series of propositions that are contained in this ‘call to prayer.’ It includes claims that there is no god but Allah, and that everyone should submit to Allah, and pray to Allah. That’s an attempt to change minds, to ‘proselytize’—so it is indeed ‘proselytory.’ Clearly this is a new word we need. Church bells, on the other hand, are just a time call—a musical way of reminding church goers that it’s time for church. Let’s hope James’ new word is widely used and picked by the dictionaries. 

Heckle The news story said the Erika Kirk was rudely ‘heckled’ at a recent public meeting. Erika, you’ll remember, is the widow of Charlie Kirk who was assassinated last September. She responded by speaking nicely (and cleverly!) to the heckler. Then I wondered—why do we label someone who calls out rudely in a crowd a ‘heckler’? It turns out this is a very old word. The verb ‘to heckle’ is recorded in English from around 1325 (so a very old word indeed!). It means, of course, ‘to abuse or taunt (a speaker, performer, etc.) with derisive or aggressive comments’ (Oxford). Although, interestingly, it’s only had this meaning since 1808—when it first appeared in English is had something to do with preparing flax. Which all sounds a bit weird, so clearly more digging is needed. The Oxford goes on to say that in those ancient times it was ‘used chiefly in north-east England, Scotland, and East Anglia’ because those places had what the dictionary calls a ‘continental influence’ (by which I think they mean a lot of early invaders from Europe). And this, in turn, matters because ‘heckle’ comes from a family of Middle Dutch and Middle Low German source words. And (this is where it gets really interesting) it is closely related to ‘hackle’—as in ‘that bloke really gets my hackles up.’ What on earth are ‘hackles’? It turns out that originally ‘hackles’ referred to long feathers on the necks of certain birds. And when those birds were disturbed these feathers rose up (in irritation or alarm). When human beings are irritated or alarmed we can say that something has ‘raised their hackles.’ From this it came to refer to ways of preparing flax that involved beating out the flax until it resembled the raised feathers of the birds. And this derivative word ‘heckle’ is clearly related. If someone calls out and interrupts a public speech or performance then the person on stage is likely to be irritated, or annoyed, or (perhaps) even alarmed. The one calling out has ‘got their hackles up’, so they are called a ‘heckler.’ That’s the journey of the word. 

Ruditude Professor Gary Martin introduced me this new word ‘ruditude’ in one of his columns in The Daily Telegraph. This is a portmanteau word. We’ve discussed this before, but in case you’ve forgotten—portmanteau is an old word for a suitcase, and a portmanteau word is one that packs two words into one, small, ‘verbal suitcase.’ In the case of ‘ruditude’ those two words are ‘rude’ and ‘attitude’—so ‘ruditude’ means ‘a rude attitude.’ From what Professor Martin writes this word names a very particular sort of behaviour. It doesn’t mean the explosive, noisy, aggressive sort of rudeness. Instead, is means the quiet, subtle, ignoring sort of rudeness. And Martin provides some examples. Someone who simply ignores your invitation to come to a birthday party. Not accepted, not rejected, no apology for a prior engagement—just ignored. Someone arrives late for dinner—but there is no apology and no excuse, they just expect their rude lateness to be accepted. Someone promises to call you back and they never do. They are not just late in responding, but (however long you wait) you never get that promised response at all. This is the sort of rudeness which seems to have become acceptable and common in the 21stcentury. What has died is good, old-fashioned courtesy. Many people seem to feel they owe no one else any consideration or any courtesy these days—a rude attitude, therefore an expression of ‘ruditude.’ So, will this new word catch on? My own guess is—probably not. With all due respect to Professor Martin, outside of his column I have never encountered this word, and I never expect to. It is not a euphonious word—it doesn’t roll easily and comfortably off the tongue. And it’s meaning is not immediately clear—so if you used it you would then have to explain it. Both of those things make it unlikely to catch on.

Ill-being We are all familiar with the term ‘well-being’—but is there an opposite? Is there any such thing as ‘ill-being’? ‘Well-being’ is recorded from 1561—so this idea has been around for some time. It means that state of being contented with one’s lot in life. The opposite term, ‘ill-being’, was coined in 1841 by Thomas Carlyle in his book On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History. As you might expect, ‘well-being’ is far more common. ‘Well-being’ occurs about ten times per million words in modern, written English—while ‘ill-being’ occurs only 0.02 times. For most people evaluating their current state of ‘well-being’ or (on a bad day, their ‘ill-being’!) will relate to such indicators as health, prosperity, relationships, stress levels and so on. Carlyle, in the book in which he coined ‘ill-being’, focussed on the unity of life, on the interconnectedness of all elements—suggesting that ‘well-being’ came from the harmony of many things. John Donne (1517-1631) was an English poet, soldier and scholar who became a clergyman in the Church of England. When he was on his sick bed Donne heard a church bell ringing for a funeral service, and wrote the famous words: ‘Ask not for whom the bells tolls, it tolls for thee’—because (he says) everyone’s life is part of his, so the loss of one life is a loss to him. In a book published after his death, Fifty Sermons, Preached by That Learned and Reverend Divine, John Donne (they had great book titles in those days!) equated ‘well-being’ and ‘ill-being’ with the state of your soul: ‘well-being’ was ‘being blessed by God’, while ‘ill-being’ meant ‘being damned by God.’ Cheerful stuff! And I trust the needle on you ‘being’ metre is pointing towards the ‘well’ scale, not the ‘ill’ scale.’

Reading Those of us who love the English language tend to be readers—big readers. We read magazines and newspapers and books—lots of books. But should we read three new books? Or one old book three times? A while ago I came across an article on the web (now lost, I’m afraid, so I can’t credit them properly) reporting several studies that suggest great benefits in re-reading favourite books rather than always reaching for a new book. A 2025 study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that the first reading creates a mental representation in the reader’s mind, and each subsequent reading activates that representation, allowing for deeper comprehension, faster processing, and richer connections between ideas. You are not reading the same book again. Your brain is building a new layer on top of the previous one. A separate study published in the Journal of Positive Psychologyfound that 68 per cent of participants who re-read their favourite books reported improved emotional well-being and reduced feelings of loneliness. The familiarity of the text reduces cognitive load, which means your brain has more capacity to notice subtlety, absorb nuance, and process emotion. You stop reading for plot and start reading for meaning. Is this something that you have ever tried? I admit I have re-read old favourites—and often enjoyed them more the second or third time around. Spiritual Depression: Its Cause and Cure by Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones is a book I can read and re-read. But this works not only with serious books, but light reading as well. I love the comic novels and short stories of P. G. Wodehouse—and I find I can often enjoy them even more on the second or third reading. I recently re-read all of Wodehouse’s golf stories. The plots were familiar this time around, but the story telling, and witty one-liners, were better than ever. Is this something you do? And do you find that it works for you?

How many words? How many words there are in the English language? The short answer is that nobody knows for sure. A standard concise desk dictionary will have around 50,000 headwords – the big ones much more. Webster’s Third New International has around 450,000 headwords and the Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains more than 615,000—and the third edition (available online) is expanding all the time. But these two lists don’t entirely overlap – in fact they have less than two thirds of their headwords in common. That means that together, their combined list would exceed three-quarters of a million. And they are not exhaustive. One American philologist once claimed that according to his estimate there are at least five million words in the English language! Seems a bit high to me, but, hey—who knows? The real answer is that one knows for sure. One reason is that there can be some dispute about what counts as an English word. For instance those scientific words that are used in every language are certainly used in English. If you read a scientific paper in English it might contain the correct Latin name for a plant, or the scientifically accurate name for a chemical element—does that make those names part of the English language or not? And what about regional dialects? If they are dialects of English, are all their words to be counted as part of the English language? And what about the jargon language of a trade or profession? All this makes the report from the Global Language Monitor, in Austin, Texas, at bit strange. This is a linguistic consultancy, and they have claimed there are exactly 999,060 words in the language at the moment—and the one million mark should tick up soon. But that’s an oddly precise figure? How did they come up with that? I go back to where I started—we don’t really know how many words there are in our language—but it’s a lot!

Shark The news stories said another diver had died after being bitten by a shark in Western Australia and a woman had been mauled by a great white at Coogee Beach. Is it just my imagination or have there been a remarkable number of these serious shark attacks around Australia in recent months? While my wife was telling me that it was time to start culling sharks in Australian waters, I was wondering where the word ‘shark’ came from. It turns out that this is a bit of a mystery. The great Oxford English Dictionary says, ‘of obscure origin.’ However, there are one or two more details they add, which are quite interesting. The first is that the word ‘shark’ suddenly appears in English in 1569. It just appears abruptly as the name given to this creature by sailors under the command of Captain (afterwards Sir John) Hawkins’ expedition. In that year they brought back to England a specimen that was exhibited in London—apparently the first shark that the English had ever seen. There is an old citation that says, ‘There is no proper name for this marvellous strange fish but these men under Hawkins’ command called a “shark”’—which is what they’ve been called ever since. So did they just invent the word? Or did it come from somewhere inside their sea-going heads? Well, a closely related word (and a possible source) is the word ‘shirk’ (or ‘schirk’) a German—or, more precisely, Austrian—name for the fish we now call a sturgeon. This is a large, fresh-water fish, whose common name comes from a French source word. We can, perhaps, imagine these English sailors peering over the side of their ship at the sinuous, black form of a large shark and (struggling to know what to call it) giving it the same name as the largest fresh-water fish they could think of. Well, it’s possible. And that may be how these deadly sea creatures (which should, as my wife says, be culled) came to be named.

Cull By my count there have been around 14 shark attacks in Australia in 2026. Two (I think) have been fatal and the rest have involved serious injuries. The result is a renewed call for a shark ‘cull.’ Writing in the Sunday Telegraph James Morrow said: ‘It is bizarre that it has to be repeated, but sharks are not our friends.’ He goes on to call for a cull of bull sharks and great white sharks in Australians waters. And, according to some reports, the Minns government in New South Wales is seriously thinking about doing this—despite the outcry from the Greenies who think that sharks matter more than people. The word ‘cull’ in this context means to select and kill. ‘Cull’ is recorded in English from around 1330, and it came from an Old French word meaning ‘to take, to select.’ Quite often we use the word ‘cull’ in a non-lethal manner, as when we take a long list of job applicants and ‘cull’ the list down to the most likely. Mind you, lethality if often intended when we ‘cull.’ The state government is currently ‘culling’ brumbies in the Snowy Mountain National Part—shooting them from helicopters, and leaving them bleeding and dying a slow death. Well, what’s good enough for harmless brumbies is good enough for sharks—that will either take your arm or leg, or else take your life. The worst nonsense I ever heard from talkback callers was this rubbish about the ocean being ‘their (the sharks’) territory not ours.’ Nonsense. For countless thousands of years human beings have owned and used the kilometre or so of ocean closest to the shoreline—where we have paddled canoes, swum and fished. Time to start killing those sharks, folks! People matter more than great whites. That is what makes the word ‘cull’ so useful in these circumstances.

Which witch? Is it okay to call someone a ‘witch? The word first turns up when the Anglo Saxons were speaking Old English, more than a thousand years ago. ‘Witch’ derives from a Germanic source word that (basically) meant ‘to tell the future.’ Old English was a gendered language and ‘witch’ (under various spellings) had both masculine and feminine genders. What they practiced was called witchcraft, which in Old English is ‘wicca’ (a masculine noun). The great Oxford English Dictionary has a helpful usage note which says: ‘Witch is not clearly associated with women more than men in early use.’ So, if you were speaking a thousand years ago ‘witch’ was not sexist. But it was still nasty thing to called someone. It was an accusation of practicing harmful magic in league with the devil. 

But—and this is a big ‘but’—the English language is a living language. It is a river not a lake, it is always moving, always changing. And the first change that hit ‘witch’ was that it became sexist. As the Oxford notes, it became ‘a term of abuse or contempt for a woman from the 15th century onwards.’ In fact, if you wanted to abuse a man in this way, from the 17th century onwards you would have called him a ‘man-witch. But then it changed again. Well, this is what the English language does—it just doesn’t stand still, but keeps on moving—flowing from one meaning to the next. In the 20th century ‘witch’ became what I would call a ‘comic book word.’ No one actually believes in witchcraft anymore. The believers-in-weird-things switched to believing that the moon landing was staged in a Hollywood studio, and that Donald Trump’s hair is real. There have been comic books about Wendy the Good Little Witch right alongside Casper the Friendly Ghost, while Sabrina the Teenage Witch was both a comic book and a TV series. From the time that Elizabeth Montgomery twitched her nose in the sitcom Bewitched and the Disney folk celebrated witches in Wicked, ‘witch’ was clearly marked out as a ‘non-serious word. The result is that if you are offended by the word ‘witch’ in the 21st century you should get a life. 

New Speak ‘New Speak’ is a language that George Orwell invented for the authoritarian dictatorship in his classic novel 1984. What ‘New Speak’ does is to disconnect language from reality. In the novel the government department that wages war is called the Department of Peace. That’s New Speak at work. New Speak is (basically) using words to lie about reality. And you see New Speak being seriously used by authorities when a judge sitting on the bench in a courtroom seriously, and solemnly, rules that a person with XY chromosomes and a normal, functional male body is a woman. Saying a man is a woman is the same deceitful and destructive move as claiming that war is peace! That is Orwellian New Speak. But there are many other common conversational examples around us every day. Here are a few:

100% —this is the answer that New Speakers give instead of just saying ‘yes.’ This terror of the little, one-syllable, affirmative word is hard to understand. But it has been with us for a while. For some time they used to reply ‘absolutely’ instead of ‘yes’ —using four syllables where one would have done. Now it’s ‘100%’—a shift up to five syllable in place of one.

110% —this the absurd reply New Speakers give in an attempt to convey enthusiasm. But it is meaningless. 100% is an expression of fullness, of completeness—it is unique in that sense. And completeness cannot be extended. Completeness is a concept to which more cannot be added—it is already complete!

I’ve changed my position—New Speakers say this instead of just admitting ‘I lied.’

Think different—is urged on us by New Speakers who have forgotten than an adverb is (commonly) formed with an ‘-ly’ suffix. New Speak has (it seems) never encountered the phrase ‘think differently.’

Dropped—New Speakers use this word instead of ‘started’ or ‘begun’ or ‘launched.’ Which makes the launch or beginning of something sound like a clumsy fumble.

Give it up for…—used as a form of New Speak words meaning ‘welcome’ or ‘give a round of applause to…’ It turns a public event into a meeting of AA, where what matters is not the welcome, but the ‘giving up’ part.

And that’s enough New Speak for the moment. Just writing these examples has made me so irritated that my fingernails are starting to curl up! 

Verb your enthusiasm Curb Your Enthusiasm is the title of an American TV comedy series created by, and starring, Larry David—the co-creator of the Seinfeld series (along with Jerry Seinfeld). Curb Your Enthusiasm ran from 2000 to 2024, and I must confess to never having seen it. (My friends who have, tell it is very clever and very funny.) I mention this because a new book has stolen the name of the show and given it a clever twist. Verb Your Enthusiasm is a book about the power of verbs in the English language, written by Sarah L. Kaufman—a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, who writes for The Washington Post. You might be thinking ‘Why do I need a whole book about verbs?’ That’s a good question. I have yet to read Sarah Kaufman’s book (although this is clearly a book for Kel, so I will read it as soon as I can get my hands on a copy)—but based what I have read about the book, it sells its case for taking verbs seriously very well. Verbs are action words. And the more creative and precise our action words are, the more creative and precise our writing in general is. Kaufman writes: ‘Verbs are the underrated stars of the English language. They hold it all together. A complete sentence cannot exist without one, yet a single verb can create complete meaning… Good verbs power great story telling; they leap off the page, fire our senses, and transform our perceptions.’ While praising the use of more (and more variable and colourful verbs) there are two things she is against. The first is adverbs. These, she says, make us lazy about using the right verb, or a more powerful and precise verb. Don’t say ‘John walked slowly’ instead say ‘John crept’ or ‘John slinked’ or ‘John sidled.’ If you drop the adverbs you are more likely to find a better verb. Her other bete noir is passive verbs—have verbs that do something, not that have something done to them. Ask your local library to get this one in for you, and give it a try.

Is ‘drongo’ dying? Part Two A few days ago I asked you if some of the great old Aussie insults are dying. Words such as: Drongo, Galah, Boofhead, Dill, Bogan, Dag, Duffer, Mug, Nong, Ratbag. And then I invited your thoughts on whether Aussies are as good at colourful insults as ever. Here are a few sample responses. Anne says, ‘I remember all these from my time at school even in the eighties, but my younger relatives have not even heard of most of these. Instead using the ‘F’ word seems to be commonplace.’ Tony comments, ‘I use most but I’m 77. It’s a more socialised way of censoring people. Sadly the young default to vulgar, low brow language immediately.’ David says, ‘Some I still use myself, but none are uttered by my two teenagers.’ Tony looked at the list of words and said, ‘Congratulations, you’ve just described every member of the Labour government!’ Kathie’s observation is, ‘I've used all those words, but I must admit not very often nowadays. I'm a senior, 73. I doubt my 35-year-old daughter has used them.’ Graeme writes, ‘In my experience the only one in use today is bogan. My favourite is boofhead.’ Peter writes, ‘I still use all of these words. I grew up with these descriptive words in a country town (1950-60s) and they were commonly used then by my parents and my mates.’ Richard writes, ‘Lovely expression used in a Robert Ludlum novel The Road to Gandolfo: “You really frost my apricots”! P.S. I really enjoy your chats with Peta Credlin.’ David adds, ‘Most of the Aussie slang words on the list are not in my vocabulary anymore! To be honest, unless you are in the workforce, most of these words have been replaced by contemporary language, learned from watching Net Flicks or similar movie channels.’ Susie writes, ‘I do still hear bogan and use dag myself, on occasion, however I don’t see them as swearing.’ Clare writes, ‘Drongo, Yes, infrequently Galah, Yes, generally preceded by great Boofhead.’ Joe says, ‘Remember these growing up Kel. I’m 58. But haven’t heard or used most for quite a while. BOGAN, yes. More likely CLOWN in relation to Chris Bowen and something a bit more profane in relation to Albo.’ From John, ‘Hi Kel I still use Drongo, Ratbag, Boofhead and Dill. Further statistic—I am 79.’ Christine says she just loves them all. From Barb, ‘I use silly duffer to explain any of my senior moments to my grandchildren!’ As I said the other day, not a statistically significant survey—but very interesting! 

When the going gets tough Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan held a news conference to respond to her low approval ratings and rumours that she is about to be dumped. In the course of that news conference she trotted out a familiar old cliché as her main line of defence: ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going.’ She repeated this line at least four time in the space of about five minutes. Except that’s not exactly what she said. Instead, she mangled the phrase by saying, ‘When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.’ Putting that extra ‘S’ at the end of the second ‘get’ is nonsense. It is not the original form of the phrase. It confuses the singular and plural forms of the verb ‘to get.’  ‘Gets’ is the third person singular form of the verb ‘to get’ in present simple tense. In the cliché in question: ‘the going’ (meaning ‘the circumstances’) is singular’ in the first half of the phrase, while ‘the tough’ is intended to imply more than one person (hence, plural) in the second half. So, it should ‘gets’ in the first half and ‘get’ in the second half. That’s the grammatical rule. Obviously, Jacinta Allan had been told to say those words by her PR person, and so she repeated them (or mangled them) endlessly, without understanding the correct form of the phrase (or, probably) why she was being told to say those words. This probably all came out of focus group and followed the usual nonsense of not really addressing an issue, just parroting a ‘talk point’ over and over again. As for the phrase, it seems to come out of American football. It was one of those phrases that football coaches would urge on their players to keep them going hard in a tough game. The first appearance of this phrase in print seems to be from the Texas newspaper The Corpus Christi Caller Times, September 1953, in a report on a speech made by John Thomas, the coach of the Green Hornets football team. But as for the rest of us, those of us around the world who don’t follow American football, the phrase became well-known (and popular) from its use in the 1985 Michael Douglas movie Jewel of the Nile. That’s when most of us heard it for the first time—but clearly not Jacinta Allan, who was saying words she didn’t understand just because she’d been told to say them. Ah, politicians and the English language—complete strangers to each other!

Yous Why do people try to turn the second person pronoun ‘you’ into a plural by saying ‘yous’? The short answer is—because they don’t know any better. But there is a longer, historical, and (I think) quite interesting answer. Until the 1600s the second person pronoun had two forms— ‘thou’ in the singular and ‘ye’ for the plural. So back in those days if you were talking to some person you could say ‘Come on this is something thou can do.’ But if it’s a group of people the expression would become ‘…this is something ye can do.’ That was, as I said, up until the 1600s. But in the course of that century—for reasons that are not entirely clear—all of the different, older, versions of the second person pronoun (‘thou’, ‘thee’, ‘thy’, ‘thine’ and the rest) just went away. People stopped using them. And what people use is what the English language is. All that was left was ‘ye.’ And then it appears that over the 1700s the vowel sound changed and ‘ye’ became ‘you.’ That means that today our familiar word ‘you’ is grammatically plural. But it has clearly ended up being used for both the plural and the singular. That created a problem for people who didn’t understand that. Not having sat through the history lesson I’ve just given you they thought that ‘you’ was singular and it was someone’s job to create a plural form—so that did the usual thing when creating a plural, they added an ‘S’ and they got the word ‘yous.’ The Oxford says that form is used in Scotland, parts of the United States and Australia. It seems to have been coined about 1835—or, at least, that’s the first time anyone has found it appearing in print. And it remains relatively rare— ‘yous’ occurs about 0.05 times per million words in modern written English. It is what we politely call ‘non-standard’ so if you don’t want to sound like a dope, don’t use it.

Is ‘drongo’ dying? The ABC News website recently published an article under the heading of ‘Death of “drongo”: Are Aussie insults and swearwords dying out?’ This, I thought, looked like the sort of thing that interests us, so I read the article. It said nothing about the prevalence of good old Aussie insults such as ‘drongo’ and ‘galah.’ Nothing. The whole thing was about how young people tend to swear using different words than their elders used. And it was about swearing—profanity and four-letter-words—not about colourful Aussie insults. And a great deal of it had to do with a research program that is happening in Sheffield in the UK about how young Britons swear these days. So, the headline had nothing to do with the article. But the question the headline asked is worth asking. However, unlike the article under that headline, I’d like to get some real answers. So, let’s take an informal survey about the insults younger Aussies are using these days. This will be statistically highly unreliable—but it would be fun to see what the results are. Below is a very short list of classic Aussie insults (put together a bit randomly). Here are the questions: Have you heard these words used recently? Do you hear younger friends and relatives using these words? Do you still use them yourself? So, with those questions in mind, run your eye over this little list: Drongo, Galah, Boofhead, Dill, Bogan, Dag, Duffer, Mug, Nong, Ratbag. I’ve deliberately kept the list short—just ten nice little insulting words that Aussies have been using for several generations now. Are they still in use? Run your eye over the list, then go to the contact page at Ozwords.com.au—and write me a (very) short report on your observations. I’ll compile the results and report back to you in the next week or so.

All the waves I don’t know about you, but there are times when I just like to browse in a dictionary. And doing so recently made me aware of all the different ‘waves.’ The first thing this word ‘wave’ suggests to us is the movement of the sea—the rolling waves on our beaches. That meaning of ‘wave’ has existed in English since 1526. The noun ‘wave’ seems to come from the earlier verb ‘to wave’ which is (possibly) recorded as early as 1380, and comes from the Old English word wafian which, in turn, corresponds to the Middle High German word waben (there’s the Germanic roots of the English language again). At first it meant anything that shook in the breeze, and only in 1530 was applied to the movement of the sea. It applied to a movement of the hands only from 1616. Then there is the other wave, the one spelled with an ‘I’—‘waive.’ I saw a story on an American news site saying: ‘The University of Chicago has announced that it will waive tuition for students from families earning less than $250,000 per year.’ Clearly that’s a different kind of ‘waiving’ altogether. In fact, despite the similarities this is a totally different word which came into English from a different source. There is an Old French word behind this ‘waive’ which means it turned up in our language via Anglo-Norman after the Battle of Hastings and William the Conqueror (and his French speaking knights) took over the place in 1066. And behind the French source there seems to be a word from what is called Law Latin. So this shows us the dual source of English—the only language on the planet that has grown out of a combination of Germanic sourced words and Latin sourced words (one of the reasons why English can be so hard to learn as a second language). The earliest meaning of ‘waive’ was ‘relinquishing’ (as early as 1297) depriving a person of the protection of the law (as a punishment). This grew into the familiar use of this ‘waive’ to mean to refrain from insisting on something. And because historically this had the sense of ‘relinquishing’ or ‘abandoning’ it is related to the very different (these days) word ‘waif’ (meaning an abandoned or neglected child). All these connections in our language are what make it constantly fascinating!

Jim Crow For many years I have been puzzled by the American expression ‘Jim Crow’. It obviously meant something bad, and something racist—but exactly what, was not clear to someone not born in America. So, I have done some digging. First, the name. Throughout the 1830s and 1840s, the white entertainer Thomas Dartmouth Rice (1808-1860) performed a popular song-and-dance act supposedly modelled after an enslaved man. He named the character Jim Crow. Rice darkened his face, acted like a buffoon, and spoke with an exaggerated and distorted imitation of African American Vernacular English. And this insulting name for a black person was given to a number of laws (passed in the late 1800s and early 1900s) designed to enforce segregation in southern states in the US. In practice, Jim Crow laws mandated racial segregation in all public facilities in the South, beginning in the 1870s. So, laws that made black Americans sit in the back of public buses (reserving the front seats for white), and laws that made black and white American children go to different schools were ‘Jim Crow’ laws. All pretty horrible stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree. I am old enough to remember the battle against such segregation led by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr in the 1960s. His movement was called the ‘Civil Rights Movement’—and resulted (eventually) in changes enforced by the federal government. (Mind you, even the enforced changes to fought against by the white segregationists.) At any rate, as unpleasant a bit of American history as this is—I now understand what the expression ‘Jim Crow’ means and where it came from. 

Kryptonite The word ‘kryptonite’ is no longer copyright. The word was, of course, invented by the comic book ‘Superman’—the Oxford tells me it first appeared in 1943. As you will recall (from your childhood comic book reading) Superman came from the planet Kryton—and when that home planet exploded fragments of it that reached Earth were disastrous for him. As the Oxford notes: ‘Kryptonite is most commonly depicted as a green mineral that came to earth from Krypton… Other types have appeared in various comic books, films, etc., each having different properties.’ As for the word itself, the definition the Oxford offers is this—kryptonite is ‘a substance that renders Superman weak and powerless. Hence in figurative or allusive use: something that can weaken or damage a particular person or thing; an Achilles heel.’ Hence the use of ‘kryptonite’ in the wider language. This makes it possible to say, ‘death taxes in Jim Chalmers’ budget is kryptonite to the Albanese government.’ And that takes it out of the realm of copyright owned by DC comics. This was tested recently when a Sydney nutrition entrepreneur, Paul Collins, registered the trademark ‘Kryptonite Diet’ (presumably some that destroys your fat). He was immediately sued by DC Comics for breach of their (so-called) copyright in the word. They lost. The Trade Mark Office ruled that ‘kryptonite’ has become a widely used term that has been accepted into the general lexicon of the English language. Well, it is certainly included in most of the world’s major dictionaries (including the biggest of them all, the Oxford English Dictionary). So, another win for common sense. (And you should feel free to use the word ‘kryptonite’ any time you wish!)

Jargon Every area of life has its own ‘jargon.’ This word came into English in the late 1300s from a French source word that meant ‘meaningless chatter or noise.’ It was applied, in those ancient times, to the twittering of flocks of birds. But since the mid-1600s ‘jargon’, says the Oxford, has been ‘applied contemptuously to any mode of speech abounding in unfamiliar terms, or peculiar to a particular set of persons, as the language of scholars or philosophers, the terminology of a science or art, or the cant of a class, sect, trade, or profession.’ And the sort of ‘jargon that is bane of our lives these days is corporate ‘jargon’—which spreads from the management suite to politics and the media and annoys us all. A list compiled by the great British wordsmith Suzie Dent includes the following examples:

Sunsetting—fixing an end date for something

Grandfathering—keeping things in place for now, but changing it all in the future.

Taking a haircut—accepting a loss without being wiped out.

Fiscal headroom—we think have enough money.

Key takeaway—no, not food, but the message you are supposed to remember.

Polycrisis—lots of things going wrong at once.

EOD—the time when this needs to be finished: End Of the Day.

Whiteboarding—putting something up for discussion by the group.

Deficit—that (relatively) small amount of money we’ve overspent this year.

Debt—the massive amount of money we owe because of years of borrowing.

And so on. Suzie Dent says the whole point is that ‘jargon’ makes an utterance clear to those in the inner circle, but unclear to everyone else. Which is the whole point. The people in positions of leadership (in the political and corporate worlds) often don’t want us (the mob, the great unwashed) to understand. We should just take their (jargon filled) word for that everything is going okay. Yeah, right!

Malua Bay A placename word study today. ‘Malua Bay’ is on the south coast of New South Wales (13 kilometres south of Batemans Bay) with a population of a little over 2,000. It used to be called ‘Mosquito Bay’ but (strangely enough!) this name failed to attract holiday makers. So, in the 1960s a competition was held to find a new name. The winner was Frank McGrath (he collected five pounds prize money) and his suggestion was ‘Malua Bay’. Where did his idea come from? Well, he liked a bet and followed the races, and he chose the name from the winner of the 1884 Melbourne Cup. There is statue of this handsome horse ‘Malua’ outside the Visitor Information Centre in Deloraine in northern Tasmania (where the horse was bred). So, the search goes back one step with the question—where did the horse get its name? The answer seems to be, almost certainly, from Fiji—where it means ‘to linger’ or ‘not hurry over anything.’ They talk there (I am told) about ‘Fiji time’—a leisurely way of ignoring the clock. ‘Fiji time’ is also known as ‘malua fever’—a bit like the Spanish notion of mañana (pronounced man-YAH-nuh) meaning ‘tomorrow’ (or I’ll get around to it eventually). This Fijian word was used as the name for a number of different ships (or yachts) in the South Pacific in the late 1800s, which probably inspired the owners of the horse to give it this word as a name. So, that’s how “Malua Bay’ was named—from the Fijian word for ‘to linger’, to a number of sailing ships in the South Pacific, to a Tasmania racehorse, and from there (eventually!) to re-name old ‘Mosquito Bay’ on the south coast of New South Wales. A long journey for one small word. 

Pizza words How is your pizza vocabulary? Perhaps you never get beyond ordering a ‘large supreme’—but the Neapolitan Pizza Association has very precise language (and rules!) for pizzas:

Cornicione—this is the Italian word for the cornice (or ornamental moulder) on the edge of a building. In pizza making it refers to the edge (or crust). The rule is this must be about half an inch to an inch tall. 

Margherita—a thin dough topped with tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, and basil.  Invented in 1889 (in Naples) and named after Queen Margherita of Savoy. 

Mozzarella—fresh, unaged Italian cheese (mild and soft) traditionally made with milk from water buffalos.

Pizza al taglio—means ‘by the cut.’ This is pizza served by the slice in Rome, with a thicker crust and bottom than a Neapolitan pizza.

New York pizza—thin-crust pieces that are served by the slice so they can be folded and eaten while walking down New York streets (or in Central Park).

Sicilian pizza—has a thick, spongy focaccia-like base. topped with tomato sauce, veggies, anchovies, or whatever. 

Detroit pizza—a rectangular pizza that is cut into squares. 

Chicago deep dish pizza—the edges, the crust, rises up to nearly two inches, and the pizza is packed to overflowing with toppings and sauce.

Pizza alla pala—Italian for ‘on the paddle,’ and this oval (or egg) shaped pizza is served on a paddle, and topped with ingredients after it comes out of the oven.

St. Louis pizza—has toppings spread right to the edge so there’s no crust to hang on to.

And there I was thinking that saying ‘with extra olives and anchovies please’ was enough. It’s whole special language. And if you are planning to travel to Italy, clearly some of these terms are worth learning.

Terminological inexactitude It was John Stanley who drew this expression to my attention (when I was on his show on 2GB) as a humorously long-winded way of saying ‘a lie.’ But in its original context that’s not exactly what it meant. In 1906 there was a debate in the British parliament about the status of Chinese workers in South Africa. They had been referred to as being ‘in slavery.’ Winston Churchill, as Under Secretary at the Colonial Office replied, pointing out that these workers had entered into employment voluntarily and for a limited period, that they received wages, that they could not be bought and sold, and that they could buy their way out of their employment contract by paying seventeen-pounds-ten-shillings. He concluded that calling this slavery was a ‘terminological in exactitude.’ He seems to have meant something closer to ‘a mistake’ or ‘a vague expression’ or ‘imprecise language’ rather than ‘a lie.’ He was almost immediately misunderstood. Joseph Chamberlaine stood up in the House and said the Churchill had used eleven syllables, when one syllable—a good old, Anglo-Saxon word (he said)—would have served: the word ‘lie.’ But Churchill almost certainly was not saying anything as blunt or as simple as ‘lie.’ But the expression has been misunderstood in this way ever since.

Talk A report published in Perspectives on Psychological Science in April says that people are each speaking about 120,000 fewer words every year. That’s a cumulative loss of 1.8 million spoken words over five years. If this report is correct—we are talking less. Conversation is dying. The verb ‘to talk’ means ‘to converse or communicate with another person… by means of speech, typically of a spontaneous and informal kind’ (Oxford); ‘to express in speech’ (Merriam-Webster). The word ‘talk’ appears in English around 1225, and comes from a Germanic source verb ‘to tale.’ At that time ‘tale’ did not mean (as it does today) a fictional story, instead it was closer to the (related) word ‘tally.’ It meant ‘to reckon, to number, to enumerate’—something that was done out loud and shared with others. Over time it took on the ‘-lk’ ending in parallel with words such as ‘walk.’ So, why is our talk together dying? Surely it’s largely because of technology. We’ve all seen couples (or whole families) sitting together in a public place (a restaurant, an airport) where all of them are glued to the small screens on their phones, and not talking to each other. Texting has largely replaced emails. Self-checkout at the supermarket means we no longer exchange small talk with the checkout person. I am told that in workplaces colleagues who sit within earshot of each other now exchange emails rather than just turn around and talk to each other. For those of us who love words and language, this nothing less than a tragedy. Without talk relationships wither and die. And relationship is the currency of the universe. Without relationships humanity dies. So, fight the trend! Take every opportunity to talk—talk to anyone, anywhere, any time! I talk to strangers in lifts and at bus stops. We need to be the brigade that fights the loss of language—the loss of conversation. Small talk is better than no talk. You know what needs to be done—so go and do it!