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Spelling bee Registrations are how open for the annual Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee. (You can find out more at spelling-bee.com.au.) This is an excellent idea, getting our school kids interesting in ‘orthography’ (that means ‘correct spelling’)—and teaching them from an early age not to rely on computer spell checkers, but to care about (and know) words correctly. All well and good—and if you have children or grandchildren in the appropriate age group encourage them to take part—they can do so online. There are three age groups: Green level (years 3 and 4), Orange level (years 5 and 6), and Red level (years 7 and 8). But what intrigues me is the name—why are these contests called ‘spelling bees’? And what about the related expression ‘working bee’? Both expressions seem to have started in the United States (although both are recorded as being well-known here). ‘Spelling bee’ seems to be the earlier of the two (from around 1850) while ‘working bee’ is recorded from around 1870. In America the word ‘bee’ on its own is recorded from 1769 with the meaning of ‘an informal social gathering or party of neighbours, organized to carry out a specific activity’ (Oxford). This seems to come from two well-known characteristics of the little insect: (1) they are known to be social, to function cooperatively; and (2) the worker bees that gather the pollen are busy, hard working little things. (The word ‘bee’ as the name for this insect is ancient—coming from the earliest days of Old English.) But, back to the ’spelling bee’. The suggestion is that this notion for spelling contests was inspired by Noah Webster’s famous spelling books (which he published from 1786—his great American dictionary didn’t come out until 1806). Webster's spelling books were an essential part of the curriculum of all elementary school children in the United States for five generations. Spelling bees became widespread across the United States during the 19th century, as a way to motivate students to learn standardized spelling. In 1908, America’s National Education Association held what it called the ‘first national spelling bee’ at its convention in Cleveland, Ohio. It became an annual event from 1925. And it is, as I said, a jolly good thing. You could, I suppose, go to the spelling-bee.com.au and test yourself against some of the words (to be honest, I’m sure how I would go!)
Word salad With Kamala Harris now looking like becoming the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee (when the part meets at its convention in Chicago in the middle of August) it is time to look at how she uses words—especially compared to the now departed Joe Biden and her competitor Donald Trump. One commentator o n Fox News suggested that her speeches (and answers in interviews) was often just a ‘word salad’—and then made the outrageous claim that one of his fellow commentors at Fox had coined the expression. Well, we can settle that one quickly. The English expression ‘word salad’ goes back to 1904 and seems to be a direct translation of an earlier (1894 or even earlier) German expression wortsalat. When it was first coined it was applied to the meaningless jumble of words that came from patients with advanced schizophrenia. I suppose the notion was that a ‘salad’ was a tossed together mixture of different ingredients and what these patients were doing was tossing together a mixture of words. In the years since then the expression ‘word salad’ has broadened out in meaning—so that it covers any mixture of words that appear to be tossed together. And it’s not always a negative expression—in one citation it’s used to describe the prose style of James Joyce (in Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake). So, does ‘word salad’ cover the way Kamala Harris talks? Well, my observation is that she seems to use a lot of repetition, and lots of fairly simple, obvious statements with no great insight. Rumours from the White House says she doesn’t do her homework and doesn’t like being briefed by her staff. If she does become the nominee it will be interesting to see her debate Donald Trump. He also uses a lot of repetition, but, in his case, he seems to have the habit of making a statement and immediately repeating it, and he uses the same phrases and arguments repeatedly in every speech. So, Harris is not alone in being repetitive. Her problem (from what I’ve seen on television) is that she seems to say the obvious, and not offer anything original—just a lot of ‘bromides’. That’s an expression that’s been around since 1903 and means thoughts and comments that are conventional and commonplace, trite remarks. And if these are tossed together in a ‘word salad’ does that capture her language? Well, let’s watch and see, shall we?
Senescence When I was talking to James Morrow in the Sky News office he suggested the word I should look at to describe the departure of Joe Biden from the US Presidential race is the word ‘senescence.’ But, having thought about it, I’m not so sure! First, the background. ‘Senescence’ means ‘the process or condition of growing old’ (Oxford English Dictionary). It is a noun constructed from the earlier adjective ‘senescent’—which you could use in an expression such as ‘the senescent Joe Biden’ meaning ‘the aging Joe Biden.’ (And for those who want a pronunciation guide, ‘senescent’ is pronounced suh-NESS-uhnt.) But is this the best way to describe Joe Biden? Yes, I know he is 81-years-old, but is that really the issue? To be honest, I’m irritated by people who say that Joe Biden is quitting ‘because of his age’, or that he is ‘too old to run for another term.’ I don’t believe that. It’s not about age, it’s about fitness. In Joe’s case, it’s more a matter of mental fitness than physical fitness (although recently he has seemed weaker and even more unsteady on his feet). The point is that Clint Eastwood made movies (good movies!) into his 90s. It’s not about age, it’s about capacity. Australian novelist Jon Clearly was still writing novels (good novels) in his 90s. I remember interviewing Australian painter Lloyd Rees when he was in his 90s (and still painting his impressionist landscapes) and his mind and his capacity were as strong as ever. Joe Biden has dropped out not because of ‘senescence’ (age) but because of capacity. From his appearances in the media it seems that Joe Biden is not suffering from age but from ‘dementia’—a word that came into English in 1598 (from a Latin source word) that means ‘impairment of memory and of abstract thinking, often with other disturbances of cognitive function’ (Oxford). That’s what we saw in that now notorious debate with Donald Trump, isn’t it? Not age, but cognitive impairment. I am becoming very irritated by this. The media should stop talking about his age, and talk instead about his impairment. The ‘Joe is too old’ line they run is just ugly, biased agism—and I don’t like it! (Now I’ll go and have a cup of coffee and try to calm down!)
Bold as brass This is an expression that has a story behind it. The story concerns Mr Brass Crosby—a lawyer and politician, a supporter of John Wilkes, who became Lord Mayor of London in 1770. He had a famous run-in with Parliament, which regarded publication of reports of their debates to be a breach of parliamentary privilege. When two printers accused of publishing reports appeared before the City magistrates, Crosby freed them; later he arrested a messenger from the House of Commons who had demanded a third printer be brought before the House. Crosby was called to the bar of the House and, despite arguing forcefully for the ancient rights of the City, was committed to jail. He became highly popular as a result of his defiance. The result was (ultimately) the publication of the Hansard reports of parliamentary proceedings—so Mr Brass in the end, won the day. It’s a great story. Unfortunately the expression appears to be too old to come from this dramatic series of events. Brass is a shiny, hard metal that has often been thought cheap and vulgar, a debased or pretentious rival to gold, whose use in musical instruments has suggested stridency. In the sense of a person who is impudent or insensible to shame, brass had by the time of Crosby been in the language for two centuries (Shakespeare is the first known user); brassy, for someone having a face of brass and so unblushing, impudently confident or forward is slightly older (though its use for a woman who is tastelessly showy or loud in appearance or manner is relatively recent), while brazen, the adjective for something brass-like in its figurative sense of a shameless person, is sixteenth-century. Brass face, an impudent person, is from the seventeenth century (its relative brass cheek is again more recent). So an inventive Londoner would have had no shortage of precedents on which to base the alliterative bold as brass. So, it would be nice if the story of Mr Brass Crosby was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But (as is so often the case) the truth is messier than that!
Hillbilly Elegy With J. D. Vance now installed as Trump’s running mate—the Republican nominee for Vice President—Robert writes to ask for the origin of the two words in the title of his famous book Hillbilly Elegy (now also a movie). Let’s take the ‘hillbilly’ part first. It’s recorded from around 1900 with the meaning of ‘q person from a remote rural or mountainous area, esp. of the south-eastern U.S.’ (Oxford English Dictionary). The ‘hill’ part is obvious since Vance grew up in the Appalachian Mountains. The ‘billy’ part seems to come from an old English source, rather than America. From as a long ago as the 1500s ‘billy’ was used to mean ‘fellow, companion, mate.’ So, originally ‘hillbilly’ meant something like ‘mountain mate.’ Of course, for some people ‘hillbilly’ came to be a term of abuse. In 1900 the New York Journal described a ‘hillbilly’ as ‘a free and untrammelled white citizen of Alabama, who lives in the hills, has no means to speak of, dresses as he can, talks as he pleases, drinks whiskey when he gets it, and fires off his revolver as the fancy takes him.’ I doubt they meant it as a compliment. The second word of the book title, ‘elegy’ is much older. It’s recorded from the early 1500s in English with the meaning of ‘a song or poem of lamentation, especially for the dead, a memorial poem’ (Oxford). Later, in the 1930s, the word broadened out to mean ‘any piece of writing, drama, or art imbued with a sense of mourning or melancholy affection for something.’ Which is certainly how Vance meant the word—Hillbilly Elegy is filled with both melancholy and affection. But the word ‘elegy’ is much older than its use in English. It came into our language from a French source word, behind which is classical Latin word elegīa and behind that in turn is an ancient Greek word, which transliterates as elegeion. When Hillbilly Elegy was first published in 2016 it
received high praise from most quarters. The memoir was nearly universally praised, becoming a staple of university reading programs and critics’ best-of lists. Hillbilly Elegy wasn’t just good; it was ‘essential.’ But since being chosen by Donald Trump the literary establishment have decided it is wrong to say anything nice about Vance of his book.
Bug With the world stunned by a global computer outage, we find ourselves bombarded by the word ‘bug’—this was not, we are told, a hacking attack, it was a small ‘bug’ in a program patch. But why is such a thing called a ‘bug’? Well, there is a story behind this use of the word, and, as it happens the story is wrong. But it’s so widespread, let me explain it and then debunk it. The story is that the word was first used by computer language pioneer Dr Grace Hooper. On September 9, 1947, she was part of team working on Harvard University’s Mark II computer that found a bug gumming up the works—a moth had squeezed into one of the machine’s components—creating a short-circuit. After extracting it, Dr Hooper taped it to the logbook with the caption ‘first actual case of a bug being found.’ That logbook, with moth intact, is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. It's a great story, and I’m sure it really happened. But it’s not the origin of the use of ‘bug’ for a defect or fault in a machine or in a process (especially an electrical or electronic one). That use of the word ‘bug’ has been traced back to at least 1875. Then there is a letter written by Thomas Edison in 1878 in which he refers to ‘bugs’ explaining this is what ‘such little faults and difficulties are called.’ In 1889 the Pall Mall Gazette reported that Thomas Edison had been up for two nights fixing a ‘bug’ in his phonograph. An electrical handbook of 1896 suggests it had long been used by telegraphers to suggest that electromechanical glitches were caused by bugs getting into the cables. Clearly Grace Hooper knew this, which is why she wrote: ‘first actual case of a bug being found’—clearly a play on the already existing language of small faults being called ‘bugs.’ The ‘bugs’ have been around for as long as we have been using electricity—not just from Harvard in 1947;
Right as rain Neville has written to ask about the expression ‘right as rain.’ This expression means (as you know): ‘absolutely fine, completely fit and well; without any problems.’ It’s recorded from around 1865. On 7 December that year the Devizes & Wiltshire Gazette ran a story that includes these lines: ‘He said he wouldn't put them pigs into my stye unless they were sound... He said, “they were right as rain.” Twas a stupid expression, wasn’t it? but that's what he said.’ From that we can guess that ‘right as rain’ had been part of the spoken language for some time before it ever appeared in print. There have been other ‘right as…’ expressions, such as ‘right as a line’ and a bunch of others. As for this one, ‘right as rain’, I have consulted all the usual suspects, and they all agree—there is no reason for this. It was coined just for the nice ring of the alliteration: two one-syllable words both beginning with ‘R’. Proverbial phrases with a bit of strong alliteration tend to catch on in English. That’s what’s happened in this case—and there is nothing deeper behind it. Sorry, Neville, that’s the only story. But while I’m on the subject of rain I can respond to Roslyn’s request that I explain ‘raining cats and dogs.’ This is recorded (with some variations) from around 1652. For a long time there was an email called ‘Life in the 1500s’ circulating that claimed this expression came from dogs and cats living in the thatched roofs of cottages and being washed out in the rain. Nonsense, I’m afraid. The real story is that it began as a joke. Back in the mid-1600s drainage and sewerage was fairly primitive. In those days there tended to be an open drain running down the middle of most streets (certainly any street of size). This open drain carried storm water and waste from houses. In the same period there were a lot of stray cats and dogs scrounging a living on the streets of towns and cities. When a major rainstorm hit there would (inevitably) be the bodies of cats and dogs floating down those open drains. On seeing this the jocular comment was: ‘Looks as if it’s been raining cats and dogs.’ A joke, you see. But since the source of the joke has long since been forgotten, puzzled moderns have invented all kinds of stories to explain the phrase. But now you know the real story behind it!
Assassination attempt On Wednesday night on Sky News Peta Credlin asked me about those American news sources that called the assassination attempt a ‘shooting.’ For example, Peta said when it happened last Saturday the editorial board of the New York Times chose to call the attack on Trump a ‘shooting’ not an ‘assassination attempt’—and she asked me if this is justifiable linguistically. Peta is certainly correct about the initial response from the New York Times but when I checked online they have been shamed into now telling the truth—and admitting that it was, indeed, an ‘assassination attempt.’ So what does the language tell us? What language is correct? The rule is that it is (by definition) wrong to call an attack a ‘shooting’ if someone is killed. Firing warning shots into the air is a shooting. Firing and wounding can be called a ‘shooting.’ Aiming at people is not a mere shooting—it is attempted killing. And in this case a man was killed. Corey Comperatore dived in front of his wife and daughters to protect them. He saved them by taking the bullet. It is demeaning to call his death a ‘shooting.’ But more than that—a kill shot aimed at the head is not a shooting, it is an attempted killing. Whether it is classified as ‘attempted murder’ or ‘attempted assassination’ depends entirely on the target. All the dictionaries agree that the killing (or attempted killing) of a public figure or prominent figure changes it from attempted to murder to attempted assassination. Mind you, even now some American news outlets are trying to hide their misuse of language by muddling up (to this day) how they report what happened. For instance, an online report from CBS News carries the headline: ‘Trump rally shooting investigation continues as new details emerge about assassination attempt.’ I think by putting both expressions into a single sentence they are trying to hide how they downplayed the attack last Saturday. Here’s my guess: these left-wing news outlets are so infected by Trump-derangement-syndrome that they can’t even admit that a would-be assassin tried to kill him—until they are shamed into doing so. They would rather misuse the English language than tell the truth. Or am I being too linguistically finicky here? I’m happy to be corrected if I’ve misunderstood, or got this wrong.
Islamophobia The word ‘Islamophobia’ is first recorded in English from 1923. It appeared in a journal of theological studies in that year. I must admit I am surprised it is quite that old—I would have expected it to be a much more recent coinage. The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘Islamophobia’ as: ‘Intense dislike or fear of Islam, esp. as a political force; hostility or prejudice towards Muslims.’ The reason I raise this word now is that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has appointed a special envoy to deal with ‘anti-Semitism’ and has announced his intention to appoint another envoy to tackle ‘Islamophobia.’ In saying that he is treating those two things as being morally equivalent. Which I suggest is absurd. ‘Anti-Semitism’ has a very long history (over a thousand years) of hatred and persecution. Today people who say they are ‘anti-Israel’ are (in fact) ‘anti-Semitic’ since they are opposed to the existence of the ancient homeland of the Jewish people. They chant ‘from the river to the sea’ meaning that want to see the Jewish state of Israel (and its population of seven million Jews) annihilated. The word ‘Islamophobia’ contains no suggestion of that kind of violence. It expresses (as the Oxford puts it): ‘intense dislike or fear of Islam.’ Such a fear, I suppose, might be thought reasonable since September 11, 2001, when Islamist terrorists killed thousands by flying aircraft into the World Trade Centre in New York. But there is something more worrying about this word. Before Keir Starmer became Prime Minister of Britain he recorded a conversation with the mayor of London Sadiq Khan. In that conversation Khan suggested there should be new law that would make ‘Islamophobia’ a criminal offence. Starmer appeared to approve of this idea. That is very worrying. There is something wrong about making a person’s ‘dislikes’ or ‘fears’ into a criminal offence. It comes dangerously close to trying to ban any criticism of Islam at all. Which is what the so-called ‘blasphemy’ laws in many Muslim countries do—they criminalise any critical discussion of Islam. Will Britain do the same? It’s a worrying thought.
Multiculturalism My friend Joe Hilderbrand wrote about ‘multiculturalism’ in last Saturday’s edition of The Daily Telegraph. And that has set me thinking about the word. ‘Multiculturalism’ is recorded from 1957, but it only became common under the Whitlam government (1972-1975) when Al Grassy who, first as Minister for Immigration and then as Commissioner for Community Relations, promoted the idea of ‘multiculturalism.’ Officially (in the Oxford English Dictionary) ‘multiculturalism’ means: ‘the policy or process whereby the distinctive identities of the cultural groups within such a society are maintained or supported’—which is correct as far as it goes, but it doesn’t tell us quite enough. The reality is that there are two different forms of ‘multiculturalism’: (1) separation, or (2) sharing. The separation version of ‘multiculturalism’ is divisive, and says that the ethnic background of communities is more important than their identity as Australians. If this was vigorously pursued it would mean that any sense of Australia as a coherent nation would simply dissolve. Fortunately, there is the second version of ‘multiculturalism’—sharing. This is best expressed by Australia’s greatest ever poet Les Murray. Les wrote a ‘verse novel’ (or ‘sonnet sequence’) called The Boys Who Stole the Funeral. It is a great book a great (long) narrative poem. In that book Les has the image he called ‘the common pot’—that’s his picture of multiculturalism based on sharing. His notion is that there is a common pot (perhaps pictured as giant cooking pot) to which everyone makes a contribution, and which ends up being rich, complex and satisfying stew. In other words, in Les’ vision Australia has a single, national, shared culture—but it is rich, colourful culture to which every ethnic group has made their own distinctive contribution. The result is a vibrant, living, growing culture we can all share, and that unites us as a nation. So there you have it— (1) separation multiculturalism BAD, (2) shared multiculturalism GOOD. Our local shopping precinct is Chatswood, which it ‘multicultural’ is the good (sharing) sense. I often say that going to Chatswood is like going to Singapore without the airfare! It’s rich, complex, and culturally interesting—but most of all, it is Australia!
Save Our Placenames Would you like to join an informal organisation called ‘Save Our Placenames’? Well, it’s not actually an organisation—there’s no leaders and no members, it’s just an informal movement. The purpose of SOP (pronounced ‘soap’) is to defend our most familiar placenames from attempts to change them needlessly. It has been prompted by the proposal to change the name of Cooks River in Sydney to Goolay’yari, and by the recent change of Fraser Island to K’Gari. Unless we take a stand other, more important and more familiar placenames, will be changed. There have already been attempts to change ‘Brisbane’ to ‘Meanjin.’ In fact, ‘Meanjin’ has (reportedly) appeared on some airport departure boards. Then there’s the claim that Melbourne’s ‘real’ name is Narrm. I don’t know what name is proposed for Sydney—possibly Eora. These (we are told) are the ‘original’ Indigenous names of these places. Mind you, there were more than 200 Indigenous languages in Australia before 1788—and none of them were written languages: so we have to question how confident we can ever be about what those so-called ‘original’ placenames really were. Without documentary evidence there can be no certainty about those pre-1788 names—despite what the activists claim. We have, of course, changed names in in the past. As long ago as 1788 Governor Arthur Phillip called the settlement at the head of the river ‘Rose Hill’ but then he changed it when he discovered the locals called it ‘Parramatta.’ (Not wanting to waste a good name, he used ‘Rose Hill’ for another suburb.) And, of course, Ayers Rock became Uluru. But we must be cautious. Here is my worry: changing too many names, especially of major, familiar places, would be a purely political action, not a sensible geographical placenames action. It could look as though some activists would like to take every English language placename off the map of Australia (if they could get away with it). There are two reasons not to: (1) there are approximately four million placenames in Australia, 75% of which are Indigenous names (from Gunnedah to Gundagai, from Kurri Kurri to Oodnadatta)—all of which are great names, and we are delighted they are there. But that’s three million Indigenous placenames. Surely that’s enough? (2) Familiarity matters. When major sites have well established and familiar placenames they should be left alone. The world knows Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and much more. It is unhelpful to change them. So, will you support SOP?
Assassination In the light of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump we need to look at this term ‘assassination.’ The core word ‘assassin’ (in the sense that we use the word) is recorded in English from the 1500s—so this is nothing new. What is intriguing is the way that ‘assassin’ has been derived from ‘hashish’ (the mind-altering drug of cannabis resin). The story (that is circulated widely) is that back in medieval times there was band of fanatical Islamic killers who got themselves high on hashish before murdering their political enemies. Hence the shift from ‘hashish’ to ‘assassin’ (the killer of a prominent figure in a planned attack). And there seems to be some truth in the story. It’s all just a bit more complicated than that. The Arabic name ‘assassin’ was probably originally given as a nickname to the members of the Nizari sect of the Ismaili branch of Islam. It’s suggested that the members of the sect were so called either because they were actually addicted to hashish, or because they were encouraged by their supposed leader, the ‘Old Man of the Mountain’, to consume hashish before being sent on a mission to assassinate Christian or Muslim adversaries, so that, from the resulting hallucinatory visions, the members might gain a foretaste of the joys of paradise which, they believed, awaited them on completion of their mission. That story seems to go back to the 12thcentury. However, the Oxford says it is almost certainly a folk tale. Well, whether true of not, it gives us the word ‘assassination’ and connects its derivation to ‘hashish.’ The attempt to assassinate Trump is the second time such an attempt has been made on a presidential candidate. On October 14, 1912, Teddy Roosevelt was shot in the chest at a campaign rally. The bullet passed through his steel glasses case, and a 50-page document, both of which were in his top pocket, before lodging in a shallow wound in his chest. The bullet had lost its force passing through the steel of the glasses case and the thick wad of pages (of the speech he was about to deliver). Roosevelt’s comment was: ‘it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.’ Now, it has happened again on the campaign trail—and what impact this attempted assassination of Donald Trump will have on the 2024 American Presidential election remains to be seen.
Touchstone The linguists at the Merriam-Webster Dictionary tell me the word ‘touchstone’ has been looked up a great deal on their website recently. This interest, they say, has been generated by the state education Superintendent of Oklahoma, Ryan Walters, who has instructed schools to use the Bible in classroom lessons. A memo by Walters referred to the Bible as a ‘touchstone.’ He described the Bible as an ‘indispensable historical and cultural touchstone.’ He added that it must be taught at certain grade levels. The word ‘touchstone’ is used these days metaphorically (as Ryan Walters did) but it began as a literal stone. Back when the word was formed, in the 1500s, it meant: ‘Fine-grained black stone… upon which objects made of gold or silver can be rubbed to determine their purity’ (Oxford English Dictionary). The Oxford then adds this historical note: ‘The touchstone was originally used in conjunction with a set of touch needles of known purity, allowing visual comparison of the mark left on the stone by the object being assayed with those of the touch needles. Later the touch needles were replaced by the use of acid solutions which removed or altered the appearance of the object’s mark.’ Of course, it’s no longer used literally. So when we use ‘touchstone’ as a metaphor (or image) as we do today, what are we saying? The Oxford says that current usage of the word means: ‘Anything which serves to test the genuineness or value of anything; a test, a trial; a criterion or reference point by which something is assessed, judged, or recognized.’ And that is clearly what Ryan Walters had in mind when he called the Bible an ‘indispensable historical and cultural touchstone.’ He meant that we live in a civilisation that has grown out of more than a thousand years of Judeo-Christian culture. C. S. Lewis used to encourage his students at Oxford to read the Bible in order to understand the classics of English literature. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Jane Austen… all of them, show the influence of the Bible in their writing. They contain references to Biblical language that will be missed by students who known nothing of the Good Book. Some of the great movements of history (the Renaissance, the Reformation, the English Civil War, the campaign to end slavery) were driven by how people read the Bible. And such basic political and culture ideas such as universal human rights (and the balancing sense of human responsibilities) together with justice and democracy and the value of human life grow out of the teaching of Jesus (found only in the Bible). So, was Ryan Waters wise in calling the Bible an indispensable ‘touchstone’? I think so. You may disagree, but I think so.
Populism again About a month ago I wrote about this word ‘populism’—but now I have to do so again. The reason this time is that great journalist Paul Kelly. I have admired Paul’s work for many years and always found him delightful bloke to interview on my radio show. But in The Weekend Australian he wrote an article I can only describe as odd. The first sentence captures the flavour of what he wrote: ‘The age of sweeping populism based on economic grievance and cultural cohesion has arrived.’ He goes on to label what he calls ‘populism’ as a bad thing, writing: ‘Populism thrives on grievance but is devoid of genuine solutions.’ Which leaves my original question about populism unanswered: what is the difference between ‘populism’ and ‘democracy’? Paul writes that ‘populism needs a leader who is charismatic, or a celebrity, or a rabble rouser’ and he mentions Donald Trump and Nigel Farage. Again: surely this is just democracy? This is how democracy works, and calling it ‘populism’ to disparage it is just an underhanded attack on the core principle of democracy? The whole article uses ‘populism’ as a sneer word or a snarl word. And it baffles me that an intelligent journalist such as Paul would want to sneer at democracy. Here’s my theory—Paul has swallowed the poison being pumped out by the left-wing technocrats who hate democracy and want to undermine it. The competition in many western nations (especially following the autocratic behaviour of governments during covid) is now between the technocratic elite who want to boss everyone else around on the one hand, and on the other—democracy (where the people decide who will government and what policies they want). This is especially the case here in Australia since the failure of the technocrats to impose ‘The Voice’ on the rest of us. When they were rejected by the massive margin of 61% to 39% they decided that we can’t be trusted, and democracy is a bad thing. Hence, we need to be wary of all this sneering at ‘populism’—since behind such sneers is a hated of ordinary people and a rejection of what the great mass of ordinary people want. G. K. Chesterton once said: ‘Choosing who will govern you is like choosing who to marry, or like blowing your nose—what matters is not how well it is done, but that you do it for yourself.’ That’s what the self-appointed technocratic elites hate: that we the people are allowed to exercise our own choice. Their hatred of us is embodied in their use of this word ‘populism’. It’s just very sad to see someone of Paul Kelly’s stature falling for their poisonous hatred of democracy.
Flubs We are all familiar with the verbal problems that President Joe Biden is struggling with. I have written here in the past about the train wreck of a televised debate he had with Donald Trump. A debate so disastrous that it has driven his own political party to call on him to drop out of the presidential race. Since then he did a prime-time TV interview with George Stephanopoulos to try to set the record straight, but that just increased the damage. Now a lovely word has emerged for these ‘verbal irregularities’ coming out of Joe Biden’s mouth—they are being called ‘flubs.’ If you Google ‘Biden’s flubs’ you will be offered endless commentary (and plenty of videos) coving the issue. The word ‘flub’ is an American colloquialism, first recorded in 1924. The Oxford defines the verb ‘to flub’ as meaning ‘to botch or bungle.’ The Merriam-Webster says much the same—the word means: ‘to perform or deal with in a blundering manner: make a botch of; fail at,’ The Oxford does not know where the word comes from, and so offers us the unhelpful note of ‘origin unknown.’ Some have guessed that it started out as a comic variation on ‘blunder’—perhaps with bits of the words ‘fluff; and ‘flop’ woven into it. My own guess is that certain sounds convey certain ideas and these words starting with ‘fl-’ just suggest stumbling into a mistake. Somehow those sounds convey the notion of a flow that is interrupted and doesn’t happen as it should. One other verbal note: a person who ‘flubs’ often can become known as ‘flubber.’ But that word has a second meaning, because it was used in a 1961 Walt Disney movie with Fred MacMurray (The Absent Minded Professor) as the name for a new substance ‘floating rubber’—contracted to ‘flubber.’ But in Joe Biden’s case, there is no floating rubber in sight, just a ‘flubber’ and can’t seem to stop ‘flubbing.’
Placenames Should familiar Australian landmarks that have familiar, well-established names, be re-named using Aboriginal words? That’s a hot question these days because it’s happening all over the place. Fraser Island in Queensland has become K-gari, while The Rocks on Sydney Harbour now has two names—on some placename signs you’ll see ‘The Rocks’ with another name underneath as its second (or Aboriginal) name. Yesterday morning on 2GB I talked to Ben Fordham about this because the latest place to come under threat of renaming is Sydney’s Cooks River. The Cooks River runs from a park near Bankstown in Sydney’s south-west, via Strathfield South through to Tempe before entering Botany Bay in Sydney's south. The river was surveyed (and reported on) but not named by Captain James Cook in 1770. Early in the 19th century (I think around 1810) early settlers gave it the name of Cooks River because it was mentioned in his journals. Now a mob called the Cooks River Alliance wants to re-name it Goolay’yari—which (they claim) was the old Aboriginal name for the place. I have more than once made the point that there are about four million placenames in Australia—and 75% of them (around three million of them) are Aboriginal names. The many Aboriginal languages of Australia are already all over the map. (That’s the point I was making on Seven Network News last night.) Very often early settlers would arrive in an area and ask the locals ‘what do you call this place?’ And whatever answer they got would be the name the place was given. That being so, we don’t need more. Aboriginal languages are already all over the map of Australia. There were (probably, we can’t be certain) more than 200 Aboriginal languages in Australia when settlement began—so those placenames come from many different Indigenous languages. And that is fine. They are now established placename—from Gundagai to Gunnedah, from Kurri Kurri to Oodnadatta our map is filled with them. What matters is that we leave in place familiar established placenames and not change them or fiddle with them just to score some sort of political point. Changing the name of Cooks River is unwanted, unnecessary, and unhelpful.
Catholicon Today another word I have discovered from my reading of detective novels. (You see, I do read things other than dictionaries. I admit that I read dictionaries a lot—but, occasionally, other things.) This word ‘catholicon’ I found in one of Rex Stout’s delightful Nero Wolfe stories. The tale in question is a long story called ‘Cordially Invited to Meet Death’ and it appears in a book entitled Black Orchids, first published in 1942. In case you’ve never discovered these stories, Nero Wolfe is a fat, indolent, orchid-growing, gourmet, private detective in New York. Much of the pleasure in these books comes from the narrative voice of his sidekick and leg-man Archie Goodwin. Archie is a very funny storyteller, with a turn of phrase that almost equals the great P. G. Wodehouse. (In reality, of course, that means Rex Stout comes close to the genius of Wodehouse.) In the story in question a chemist tells Wolfe he is involved in research into the Elixir of Life. He adds: ‘My motivation and my methods are both strictly scientific. Elixir of Life is a romantic and inadmissible conception. The proper scientific term is “catholicon.”’ Wolfe’s response was to scoff at him. Mine was to reach for my big Oxford dictionary and investigate this intriguing term. The word ‘catholicon’ is recorded in English from the early 1400s. It came to mean ‘a remedy believed to be applicable or effective in all diseases’ (Oxford). So you can see why Nero Wolfe scoffed. Later, around 1600, ‘catholicon’ came to mean: ‘Something used to solve all problems; a practice or course of action adopted in every case of difficulty; a universal cure, a panacea.’ The word itself seems to come from ancient Greek via post-classical Latin. The Greek source word (transliterated as katholikos) meant ‘general or universal.’ The word can still be used today, but not necessarily in a good way. In 1989 a book called Health for Saleincluded this statement: ‘The label of quack was also, with some consistency, pinned upon a particular genre of medical operator—those… who mass-marketed cure-alls and catholicons…’ And it would be nice, I suppose, if you were sitting in a conference that was struggling with a whole range of problems to be able to say, ‘Well, there’s no catholicon for these issues.’ Eyebrows would be raised around the table, and you’d be asked to explain this item from your (clearly) vast vocabulary. To which you respond (as if it’s something every educated person should know): ‘I just said there’s no single, universal solution to all these problems.’ Everyone else would nod their heads wisely muttering, ‘yes, of course, I knew that.’ So add ‘catholicon’ to your collection. To help you, here’s the pronunciation guide: kuh-THOL-uh-kon.
Moythered I love discovering new words, and I discovered this one in the pages of an old detective novel. For late night relaxing reading (to put me to sleep) I like old detective novels from the so-called ‘golden age’ of detective writing—the 1920s and 30s, between the wars. When I was reading one such book (The Kang-He Vase by J. S. Fletcher, published in 1924) I came across this word. (By way of explanation, J. S. Fletcher—1863 to 1935—was an English journalist and author. He wrote more than 230 books on a wide variety of subjects, both fiction and non-fiction, and was one of the most prolific English writers of detective fiction.) In that book I read this sentence: ‘…my wits were certainly something moythered, with one thing and another, but still sufficiently clear to put two and two together…’ (And for the sake of the gottcha gang, yes, alright, it’s not a sentence, its part of a sentence.) At any rate, back to this word—which I suspect may turn out to be a useful one. ‘Moythered’ is the past-participle of the verb ‘to moyther’ which means: ‘To confuse, perplex, bewilder’ (Oxford English Dictionary). It’s recorded from 1587, and the Oxford has citations for it up to 1987. So, it’s not quite dead yet. It is (or was) used sufficiently to prevent it from being hit with those deadly labels of ‘rare’ or ‘obsolete.’ Where does it come from? Probably from Irish. The Oxford notes that the verb ‘to moyther’ is found chiefly in Irish English, Manx English and English regional dialects (mainly northern and midlands). In case you’ve forgotten ‘Manx English’ is the dialect of English spoken on the Isle of Man. It consists of words that survive from the ancient Manx tongue (Goidelic, one of the Celtic languages) with borrowings from English, Irish and elsewhere. But back to ‘moythered.’ This, it strikes me, is a potentially useful word. I think in future if I get something a bit muddled up or confused I might explain: ‘Sorry about that—my brain was a bit moythered.’ Then, instead of condemnation I might get sympathy. Perhaps you could try it yourself—see if it works for you.
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