Kel's previous Ozwords of the day...

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Labelism My esteemed editor at The Spectator Australia, Rowan Dean, once coined a brand-new (and very useful!) word—the term ‘labelism’ to name how some (mentally lazy) commentators go about their work. Instead of using real mental muscle these lazy commentators just resort to ‘labelism’—they stick a label on a person or an idea or a movement. That means they no longer need to think about it. They can just pigeonhole (and dismiss it) under a handy label. For example, there is the label ‘far right’ (sometimes expressed as ‘hard right’). By labelling the One Nation political party as ‘far right’ it has been stuck in a pigeonhole, and you can stop thinking about it. The label tells you all you need to know. Or so these commentators seem to think. If you have some complex ideas about fashionable climate theories you can be labelled ‘climate denier’ and just dismissed. If you happen to think attacks on Jews (both verbal and physical) are a bad thing you can be labelled a ‘Zionist’—and hence there’s no need to weigh the moral seriousness of what you say. If you are concerned about radical Islamic terrorism your protests can be dismissed under the label of ‘Islamophobia.’ Similarly, if you have the temerity to have reservations about the claim that men can become women, you will be labelled ‘transphobic.' Even the label ‘Boomer’ is being used to dismiss the views of older Aussies. If you’re part of the baby boomer generation then you must be old and stupid and you should be slammed in a box labelled ‘Boomer’ to muffle the sound of your complaining voice. That’s how ‘labelism’ works. Well done Rowan Dean! This is a word we clearly need. 

Larping There are always some words that become fashionable (at least for a while) and then fade away again long before those of us who are not dedicated followers of fashion have even heard of them. I suspect this is one. For a certain segment of the population ‘larping’ is currently a popular put-down that is splattered all over social media like bird droppings. So, what does it mean? What is it criticising? According to the hyper-hip Urban Dictionary ‘larping’ means ‘When someone is pretending to be something they’re not.’ This, they say, can involve lying on social media or lying in real life. The Urban Dictionary says ‘often’ (I would have thought always) used in a derogatory sense.’ The word comes from the world of game playing, and is an acronym for Live Action Role Play. However, when you accuse someone of ‘larping’ you are not accusing them of a bit of swords and sorcery role playing, but of pretending to be something in real life that they are not. If you take a selfie standing beside a Lamborghini in a car sales room and use it to pretend you have bought a Lambo, then you are ‘larping.’ Pretending to know a famous person, pretending to be rich, pretending to know about a topic, pretending to have a certain lifestyle, and so on—all are examples of ‘larping.’ The Urban Dictionary says this has been around since early 2021—but it seems to have become particularly popular this year. Perhaps there’s more of it going on? You have to feel sorry for the younger generation—they just don’t seem to be happy living in the real world!

Kangaroo court This is officially defined as ‘an improperly constituted court having no legal standing, especially one held by strikers, mutineers or prisoners.’ More broadly the notion is that in a ‘kangaroo court’ the accused will not receive justice, but that rough punishment will follow almost immediately upon accusation. Oddly, this expression appears to be Australian influenced, but not of Australian origin. In fact, the phrase appears to have been born in the United States. The earliest citation is from Texas in the second half of the 19thcentury. One suggestion is that the term ‘kangaroo court’ was born on the gold fields of California in the gold rushes that began in 1848. The phrase may have been coined because there were Australians who’d joined the rush, and they were teaching the yanks a word or two—including the idea that ‘kangaroos’ were ‘jumpers.’ The first such ‘rough justice’ tribunals might have been aimed at punishing ‘claim jumpers’—and anyone who’s a ‘jumper’ can be nicknamed a ‘kangaroo.’ However, there is a problem with that theory.

This expression is first recorded in New Orleans in 1841, well before the Californian gold rush. It next turns up in Texas in 1853, and not (as it logically should) in California. So, this American expression must only come from the fact that around the world the kangaroo had become famous as a ‘jumper’—and a ‘kangaroo court’ was one that ‘jumped to judgement.’ Hence. this so-called ‘court’ jumped to judgment in a single bound (with the agility of an Australian macropod). 

Fifth column Yesterday when writing about the expression ‘cold war’ I used another of those familiar (but slightly odd) expressions— ‘fifth column.’ We know what it means. It refers to enemies within our midst—people who look like us and seem to be ordinary citizens, but who are working being the scenes to bring down all we care about. We treasure the good things that come to us from the past, but there are some among who hate the past and want to destroy everything that has been handed down to us. We treasure the words of Shakespeare, the paintings of Rembrandt, the music of Bach and the values of Christianity—but the ‘fifth column’ of enemies within hate all these things. But why are they called a ‘fifth column’? Where does that number come in? It comes from the Spanish Civil War (1936—39). One of General Franco’s military leaders was General Emilio Mola who was besieging the city of Madrid with four columns of troops surrounding the city. It was General Mola who famously said that as well as his four columns around the city he had a ‘column of supporters’ inside the city who were his ‘fifth column. In October of 1936 The New York Times reported: ‘Police last night began a house-to-house search for Rebels in Madrid... Orders for these raids… apparently were instigated by a recent broadcast over the Rebel radio station by General Emilio Mola. He stated he was counting on four columns of troops outside Madrid and another column of persons hiding within the city who would join the invaders as soon as they entered the capital.’ And we have a column of enemies within us today—who live amongst us but are not part of ‘team Australia.’

Cold War You and I are inclined to think that the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. And we won. Led by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher western civilisation won the Cold War. That is now looking doubtful as a generation born after the fall of the wall is now doing its best to destroy our civilisation from within. But, leaving that to one side for a moment—where did the expression ‘Cold War’ come from? The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘cold war’ as meaning, ‘A state of hostility that falls short of armed conflict, typically consisting of threats, propaganda, espionage, or other similar measures.’ You and I probably assume that ‘cold war’ was coined after the end of the ‘hot war’ (the shooting war) that was Word War Two. But to my surprise it predates that great conflict. ‘Cold war’ is recorded as early as March 1938, when the news magazine Nation ran a headline about ‘Hitler’s Cold War.’ In other words, before he launched his massive military machine on Europe in September 1939 Hitler was pursuing his aims by means of propaganda, spying and other means. This was the ‘cold war’ that preceded his devastating, six-year ‘hot war.’ Then after World War II the compound noun ‘cold war’ was revived. It was even used during the Second World War by George Orwell in 1943—but he seems to be referring back to the period before the shooting started, when innocent Englishmen failed to understand the danger posed by Hitler’s totalitarianism. So, what about now? Is it time to revive the expression ‘cold war’? Is there a ‘fifth column’ of enemies in our midst trying to eat away like acid at the foundations of our civilisation? If so, who are these enemies within? Marxists? Radical Islamists? An empty-headed generation who fail to appreciate the treasures handed down to them by their grandparents and great-great-grandparents? It is a hard war to fight because there is no distinct ‘front line’—but if there really is a ‘cold war’ then we need to be ‘cold warriors’!

Groyper Sometimes new words are born that are just plain puzzling. And this is one of them. The Collins Dictionary has it listed in its ‘new word suggestion’ section with the definition, ‘a member of a particular far-right American political movement.’ Writing in The Weekend Australian Greg Sheridan said that ‘Groyper is one of the ugliest terms in modern politics.’ He goes on to say that far-right, Jew-hating American extremist Nick Fuentes claims that he ‘and his followers named their Jew-hating group of campaigners Groypers, which they illustrate with the symbol of a slug-like frog.’ Still it remains a puzzling word, doesn’t it? The background seems to be that there is an internet meme called ‘Pepe the frog’, originated in 2005 by cartoonist Matt Furie as a green, anthropomorphic frog with a speech balloon saying ‘feels good man’ coming out of its mouth. All of this ‘meme’ nonsense is beyond me (and possibly you as well) but it seems that simple-minded folk who have substituted being glued to screens in place of thinking like these little symbolic images they can repeat. And further the ‘Pepe the frog’ image has been co-opted by the far-right racists in America as their chosen ‘meme’ or image. A variation of Pepe known as ‘Groyper’ was used as early as 2015, and became popular in 2017. So how come this word (or non-word?) was chosen to name this version of a cartoon frog as a far-right symbol? No one seems to know. Is it meant to be a play on the croaking sound that frogs make? I’m guessing here. Since ‘groypers’ are viciously anti-Jewish is it meant to be a play on a Yiddish word? Perhaps a twist on the Yiddish word ‘goyim’ meaning ‘gentiles’ (non-Jews). There is a slightly (very slightly!) similar word in Leo Rosten’s The Joys of Yiddish meaning ‘coarse, crude, uncouth, vulgar’—and perhaps these horrible ‘groypers’ delight in seeing themselves this way? All I know for sure is that this is a horrible word for nasty people.

Epicentre There seem to have been rather a lot of earthquakes recently—a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Eastern Indonesia, a 7.4 magnitude one in Colombia, and a 7.1 magnitude shake in Japan. In each of these cases we were told where the ‘epicentre’ of the quake was. And, upon thinking about this, I decided that ‘epicentre’ is an odd word. Why ‘epicentre’? Why not just ‘centre’? Back in 2004 when a massive 9.1 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia causing a devastating tsunami we were told that the ‘epicentre’ was off the west coast of Aceh, in northern Sumatra. But why not just tell us that the ‘centre’ of the quake was there? Why ‘epicentre’? The word appears to have been coined in the world of seismology (of course!) and its first appearance in print was in a journal called the Geological Record in 1877. It means, ‘The point on the earth's surface that overlies the subterranean focus of an earthquake’ (Oxford). In other words, the actual shifting of the tectonic plates (that is, the earthquake itself) happens at some distance underground. Sometimes, a considerable distance underground. In the recent Japanese and Indonesian earthquakes were said to have happened about ten kilometres below the surface of the earth. And that is where the little prefix ‘epi’ comes in. It is not underground—it is the point on the surface of the earth immediately above where all that shaking and quaking happened. ‘Epi’ can be found in classical Latin, and before that in ancient Greek, with a range of directional (prepositional) meanings: upon, to or towards, against, over, beyond, with, after, above. In the case of earthquakes the ‘epicentre’ is above the centre of the shaking. 

Rabbit on Why do we accuse someone who talks on and on, giving us more details than we were ever interested in, of ‘rabbiting on’? The expression is first recorded in 1950, in a book published that year called Lag’s Lexicon. This was compiled and written by Paul Tempest, and is a record of prison slang (hence the use of the word ‘lag’—English slang for an old crim). To those doing ‘porridge’ behind bars ‘rabbit on’ meant, ‘One who ‘rabbits’ all the time is one who never stops talking.’ And if you were stuck sharing a cell with a such a person I can well understand how it would really get on your wick after a while. The official definition by the Oxford wise ones says that to ‘rabbit on’ means, ‘To talk volubly to chatter; to speak or write at length, without saying anything important.’ Although some other dictionaries (including the Cambridge and the Collins) add that ‘rabbiting on’ means talking not only at length, but also on a subject of no interest to the person you’re speaking to. Doubly annoying! (Something you and I would never do, right? Right!) Mind you there are some distinguished people who have been accused of ‘rabbiting on.’ When Umberto Eco’s best-selling novel The Name of the Rose was first published, the reviewer in the Sydney Morning Herald said, ‘Umberto Eco spent the first 100 closely typed pages of The Name of the Rose rabbiting on about Benedictine history, before getting to the murder that kickstarted the plot.’ Well, I read the novel when it first came out, and I was gripped from page one (and it became a major movie starring Sean Connery—so I was not the only one). Perhaps ‘rabbiting on’ is in the eye of the beholder? And why this word for constant talking? None of the experts makes any suggestions, so here is mine: the person ‘rabbiting on’ breeds words as prolifically and as rapidly as rabbits breed rabbits. At least my idea seems possible, doesn’t it? 

Dapper A friend recently described her six-year-old grandson, dressed up for a special day at kindy, as looking ‘dapper.’ But why ‘dapper’? Where does that come from? Well, it’s a very old word—first recorded from around 1440. It did not exist in Old English or in Middle English. The Oxford people suggest it came into English towards the end of the Middle English period, apparently adopted from a Germanic word found in Flemish and other Low German dialects. And since I’ve mentioned them, this is probably as good a place as any to give you a guide to the major periods in the development of English. What we now call Old English (and used to call Anglo-Saxon) flourished from the 5th to the 11thcentury. So it began somewhere in the 400s and changed somewhere in the 1000s. Middle English is often said to arise from the Norman Conquest in 1066, so it flourished from the late 11th century to the late 15thcentury. This gradually became Modern English which has flourish from the 1600s to the present day. I just thought you might like to know that. Now, back to ‘dapper.’ This means, ‘Neat, trim, smart, spruce in dress or appearance’ (Oxford). It probably (or should I say ‘possibly’—there’s always doubt around these things) comes from very similar words found in Middle Dutch and Middle Low German. But the word ‘dapper’ they used meant something more along the lines of ‘powerful, strong, stout, heavy, firm, persevering, energetic, undaunted.’ So, how on earth is it possible to get from that range of meanings to our modern sense of ‘nicely dressed, neat appearance, and (usually) small or thin’? One doesn’t imply the other, does it? But the expert linguists are convinced that this is where our word ‘dapper’ comes from. And if they say that, I am left here scratching my head.

Louche Today the third part of our three-part series on those fancy French words that we sort-of know when we read them, although we’d be most unlikely to speak them. We’ve already looked at ‘élan’ and ‘insouciance’—today the word is ‘louche.’ This word (pronounced loosh) means something like ‘not straightforward’ or ‘not entirely on the up-and-up.’ In Brideshead Revisited Evely Waugh writes, ‘I knew of a louche little bar quite near here.’ He might have meant a bid shady, but attractive none-the-less. In other words, a bar where criminals meet or drug deals are done in the corner—but which honest people like because it gives a shiver-up-the-spine feeling to be close to the darker side of life. But I find this a very vague word in English—because it’s meaning can be much looser than that, and it is used by different people in many different ways. For example, one sentence (quoted by the Merriam-Webster people) says, ‘Suits are cut with louche, wide-legged trousers.’ In that sentence the word seems to be used to mean something that is ‘not-quite-right’, not entirely acceptable in fashionable society. Can you see what I mean I call this the vaguest of the three words we’ve looked at so far? Here’s how the Merriam-Webster experts tell the story of this word: ‘Louche ultimately comes from the Latin word luscus, meaning “blind in one eye” or “having poor sight.” This Latin term gave rise to the French louche, meaning “squinting” or “cross-eyed.” The French gave their term a figurative sense as well, taking that squinty look to mean “shady” or “devious.” English speakers didn’t see the need for the sight-impaired uses when they borrowed the term in the 19th century (from about 1819), but they kept the figurative one. The word is still quite visible today and is used to describe both people and things of questionable repute.’ And that’s quite enough French borrowings for the moment—tomorrow, back to real English words.

Irritating words—part two Following my earlier column on the list of most irritating words compiled by the late, great Rod Liddle readers have been in touch with their own suggestions. Craig nominated the word ‘absolutely’—and he is absolutely right. Sheila drew my attention to the irritating repetition of ‘right’. She says she once counted it used five times in one 30-second answer on a TV news show. My response is that there is a baffling kind of fashion that seems to cover the words of affirmation. A simple ‘yes’ is abandoned in favour of ‘absolutely’ (as Craig and other have pointed out); this then becomes ‘100%’, and then this in turn is replaced by a repeated muttered ‘right, right.’ Another reader, picking up on this same irritating habit, suggested a revival of the lovely old Sherlock Holmes word ‘indubitably.’ A nice idea, but (I fear) unlikely to catch on. Philip is particularly irritated by the combination of the reflexive pronoun with another person’s name, as in ‘Mary and myself.’ Quite right! Nothing wrong with ‘Mary and me’ in the objective case or ‘Mary and I’ in the subjective case. Peter hates the use of the word ‘hike’ (as in ‘rate hike’)—a clumsy way of saying ‘increase.’ Di says the expressions that irritate her are: ‘would you like me to be perfectly honest?’ or ‘to be perfectly honest with you.’ Martin is irritated by ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation.’ Yes, a lie is a lie and doesn’t need to wear a multisyllabic mask. Helen is annoyed by those sports commentators for whom everything is ‘iconic’, and the irritating journalistic overuse of ‘catastrophe.’ Matt sent a long and creative list, and I was especially interested in his observation that ‘community’ is now overused. Laurie complains that everything goes ‘viral’ these days. Chris hates it when people say, ‘I’m over it.’ Andrew is irritated by ‘asylum’ which he says is a place for lunatics, not refugees! Dennis wants us to add to the list that political stupidity ‘moving forward.’ Paul wants to add ‘incredibly’—applied to things that are perfectly credible. John doesn’t like ‘impact’ used as a verb. Tracey finds the American expression ‘my bad’ totally irritating. And my apologies to anyone whose ‘irritating’ nominations I have omitted—there were just so many I couldn’t fit them all in!

Insouciance This is a (sort of) follow up to yesterday’s note on élan—because quite possibly someone who does things with élan also has ‘insouciance.’ Clearly this is another French-sourced word (recorded from 1799). I first came across this in descriptions of the movies of Bing Crosby. Yes, I know that’s now ancient history, but bear with me. Bing’s earliest career in Hollywood in the 1930s and 40s—including the Big Broadcast movies, the Rhythm movies (‘Rhythm on the Range’, ‘Rhythm on the River’, ‘Doctor Rhythm, ‘Pennies of Heaven’ and the rest) followed by the Road movies (with Bob Hope)—all had Bing playing much the same character, a sort of version of himself, that had critics saying his dominant on-screen characteristic was ‘insouciance.’ The word is pronounced, in English, as on-sooss-ee-yonss (that’s me abandoning all the usual phonetic guidelines, I hope you can cope!) The dictionaries say that it means, ‘a relaxed, happy way of behaving without feeling worried or guilty’ (Cambridge English Dictionary); or ‘a cheerful feeling of not worrying or caring about anything (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English). If you’ve ever seen those ancient Bing Crosby movies on late night TV you’ll recognise this at once. These days, of course, no one would worry about such as awkward sounding French-sourced word; they would just call such a performance being ‘cool.’ And one movie critic made an interesting comparison between the ‘insouciant’ Bing character in the 1930s and the ‘cool’ character played by Elvis in all those 1960s movies (sadly, many of them just studio ‘quickies’ designed to make a buck). The critic pointed out that Elvis was always the ‘coolest’ person in his movies, just as Bing was the most ‘insouciant’ in his. And the producer of many of those Bing films in the 30s and those Elvis movies in the 60s was the same man—Hal. B. Wallis!

Élan This is one of those familiar, but uncommon, words that we come across in print from time to time, but are most unlikely to use in conversation. If we read that some Aussie sports star performed with ‘élan’ we know (more or less) what is means—that they performed with a bit of style, energy and enthusiasm (or something along those lines). This is one of the French-sourced words that doesn’t go all the way back to William the Conqueror and his French speaking Norman knights—it’s a much more recent borrowing, appearing in English only from around 1880 onwards. And why it was borrowed is not at all clear. I suppose we thought that there wasn’t one English word that said exactly this. It comes from an earlier French borrowing élancer which meant ‘to throw.’ This is now a forgotten word that could be used figuratively to mean ‘throwing’ a glance at someone, but it could also be used literally to mean throwing a dart or a lance (a clearly related word, that means a spear of some sort). And somehow this fancy French way of saying ‘throw’ became élan more or less implying that in order to have élan you had to ‘throw’ yourself into something. The lexicographers at the Merriam-Webster say: Elance enjoyed only a short flight in English, falling into disuse by the mid-19th century, around which time English speakers picked up élan, another French word that traces back to Middle French. The earliest meaning of élan was ‘an impetuous rush’ of troops into battle or anything of that sort. It means a combination of style and energetic confidence. And my feeling is that mere energy is not enough to label some action or person as having élan—it also implies being stylish. Although, the Merriam-Webster claims that élan now means much the same as dash, spunk or vim. I’m not so sure. And if the pronunciation bothers you, you should say ay-LAHN which is not exactly how the French say it, but it is the Anglicised version of the French.

Crypto Karen wrote to ask, ‘Where does the “crypto” in “cryptocurrency” come from? And what does it mean?’ ‘Crypto’ comes from Greek and means ‘hidden, or concealed.’ It has been used as a prefix in English since at least the 1830s—usually by scientists (in long, multi-syllabic words) to name some plant, insect or animal that didn’t look like what it actually was. The word ‘cryptocurrency’ was coined (on Twitter) in September of 2009, to name a kind of digital currency where the history of transactions was hidden (concealed) by something called ‘blockchain’ technology. ‘Cryptocurrency’ was probably coined from the earlier word ‘cryptography’ meaning ‘hidden writing.’ All those clever brains (many of them poached from Oxford and Cambridge) working at Bletchley Park during the Second World War trying to crack German’s notorious Enigma code were ‘cryptographers’ (from ‘crypto-’ meaning hidden and ‘-graph’ meaning writing). What blockchain technology does is to hide a chain of transmission. Blockchain is a digital database where transactions are stored in linked sequential data groups (known as ‘blocks’). This means that any individual user can look at the last ‘block’ of data, but no further. So when payments are transferred as blocks of data over a long ‘chain’ of such blocks, it becomes impossible to trace the source of the payment back to its original, beginning source. Anyone getting into the chain can see the previous block, but no further. This makes each block secure and, hence, useful for individuals or corporations. But it’s also extremely handy for organized crime when they are busy ‘laundering’ their ill-gotten gains. 

Irritating words The late, great Rod Liddle was a columnist for the weekly news magazine The Spectator—and in one column he fulminated against what he called ‘irritating words.’ For instance, there is the irritating use of ‘myself’ (the self-referential pronoun)—now excessively overused as in: ‘As for me myself, what I think is…’ Similarly, the absurd use of ‘yourself’ when the person from the call centre asks if ‘you yourself are happy with the service.’ Also on Liddle’s list of verbal irritations is ‘today’—as when a waiter (sorry, ‘wait-person’) asks ‘how can I help you today?’ Did they think I might need their help a week from now? Liddle put the boot into the over-use of the word ‘vile’—so overused, he says, it has almost lost its meaning. And the same applies to ‘toxic’ when used to describe something someone has said. Liddle wrote: ‘Stuff which is toxic includes Strontium-90, blue asbestos and nerve gas: not words.’ Quite right! And calling someone who has suffered sexual harassment a ‘survivor’ rather than a ‘victim’ does them no good at all. It implies that a shadow has been cast over the rest of their life. To round off his list Rod Liddle pointed to that odious expression ‘my truth.’ As he pointed out this is usually uttered by people who are refusing to face facts and deal with reality. Most of the Woke Left these days seems to be living in a fantasy, fairy tale world in which reality is meant to conform to their opinions, instead of the other way around. So, what are the expressions that most irritate you? Send me your thoughts through the contact page of this website, and I’ll publish a list…

Preternatural Recently the word ‘preternatural’ kept popping into my head. (We don’t know how or why these things happen, they just do. Our brains are weird and, largely, mysterious, organs.) You and I have heard or read the word ‘preternatural’ from time to time over the years. And from the context we have (more or less) worked out what it meant. It conveyed the notion of something or someone being apart from, or above, or outside of, what we might call natural. It clearly didn’t imply something spiritual (as the word ‘supernatural’ does)—but it conveyed the notion of being different in some way. This nagging thought sent me back to my shelf full of dictionaries to finally track down exactly what ‘preternatural’ means and how I should use it (not that I ever have, you understand, but just in case I ever get the urge). It turns out that ‘preternatural’ came into English around 1580, with the meaning that it still largely has: ‘outside the ordinary course of nature.’ All the dictionaries say something along those lines, but perhaps the Collins Dictionary says it best, when it says: ‘abilities, qualities, or events that are very unusual...’ The ‘-natural’ part of the word is familiar, and the prefix ‘preter-’ came into English from the classical Latin word praeter- meaning ‘above’ or ‘beyond’ or ‘more than.’ So, if we said, ‘Young Toby is preternaturally clever at maths’ we would be saying that he has taken to maths more than most six-year-olds do—that his skill with numbers is ‘above’ or ‘beyond’ or ‘more than’ we would expect from a six-year-old. So now I have the word comfortably nailed. For years I vaguely knew what it meant and just accepted it whenever it turned up (without feeling the last inclination to use it myself). Now, I know exactly what it means—and look out, I might use any day now!

Verbs Do you remember learning in school about ‘auxiliary verbs’? These (I remember being told in primary school) are little ‘added’ verbs that have the role of ‘helping’ the main verb. These thoughts from my distant past came back to me when I read the following sentence in the newspaper: ‘Will Smith’s time under the radar is set to short-lived…’ Eh? Something is needed in there, isn’t it? And that ‘something’ is the missing verb ‘to be.’ The sentence should read ‘Will Smith’s time under the radar is set to be short-lived…’ That sounds right, doesn’t it? At first I thought what this sentence needed what an auxiliary verb—and extra verb to help it along. Then I read it again—and I realised that (as written by the journalist and published by the newspaper) it had no verb at all! ‘Short-lived’ is not a verb but an adjective. This journalist has served up (and the paper has published) a verbless sentence. Which is weird. We need verbs in sentences. Verbs are action words. Verbs are telling us what is happening in the sentence. I have just bought a copy of Sarah Kaufman’s much-praised book Verb Your Enthusiasm—about how to make verbs work better for us. It reports that verbs make up about 25% of the English language. Without verbs nothing happens. The action in the verb. In the case of poor Will Smith, the missing verb ‘to be’ is the verb of existence. If something has ‘being’ it exists. If its ‘being’ will only survive for a short while, then its existence will come to an end shortly. This strange verbless sentence was trying to tell us that Will Smith’s visit to Sydney was going undetected (‘under the radar’) but that this would not last. But to say that it needed a verb. At the moment, it wanted to say, Will’s visit was being unnoticed—had no ‘being’ in the public square. But it left out the verb ‘to be’ that would have said that. To be a proper English sentence it needed the verb ‘to be.’ I gather many newspapers have largely dispensed with the services of sub-editors—the people who check copy submitted by journalists for errors—and it shows!

Article The word ‘article’ can refer to an item or a thing (as in ‘an article of furniture’)—but it can also refer to a bit of language. And you have two choices with this bit of language: you can either say (1) it is a definite something, or (2) it is an example of that sort of something. In instance of (1) is ‘the car is in front of the house’—which identifies to a particular car (the one parked in front of the house). An instance of (2) might be ‘I’m going to buy a new car’—which refers to an imprecise example of a ‘car’ (which ever one I chose to buy). (1) is called ‘the definite article’ (because it’s definite about what it identifies), while (2) is called the indefinite article (since it refers to a class or group of things, not one definite  thing). The definite article is ‘the’ while the indefinite article is ‘a’ or ‘an’—and that’s where (for some unknow reason) English users of the 21stcentury are coming unstuck. In a newspaper I read these words: ‘Donald Trump called off a attack…’ Wrong—the indefinite article must always be ‘an’ before a vowel sound, and can only be ‘a’ before a consonant sound. You and I have known this from infancy, but these days it seems to be forgotten—even by journalists writing for newspapers. For the dummy at the back of the classroom I’ll explain how it works. It should be ‘an attack’ because ‘attack’ starts with a vowel sound. Simple isn’t it? How can anyone be confused about that? And it applies to vowel sounds rather than vowels. So I could say something is ‘an honour’ because although ‘honour’ starts with the consonant H, the H is silent and the first syllable of the word makes a vowel sound. However (this is the bit that confuses some people) it would be wrong to say ‘an historian’ because in that word the H is pronounced. To get away with using ‘an’ you’d have to pronounce the word as ‘istorian’—and no one does! Yes, I know it is awkward because H is a soft, aspirant consonant—but soft or not it is still a consonant. The trick is to pronounce the H in ‘historian” (and similar words) clearly ad carefully, and you won’t’ fall into that trap!

They There are some people in our society who are confused about whether they are male or female (maybe they should just have a look around when they’re in the shower?) And such folk ask to be referred to not by ‘he’ or ‘she’ but by ‘they.’ But hang on (I hear you cry) isn’t ‘they’ a plural pronoun? Isn’t it grammatically wrong to use of a single person? Well, the Oxford English Dictionary has been looking into this and decided that it’s okay. Here’s how their argument runs. The Oxford traces singular ‘they’ back to 1375, where it appears in the medieval romance William and the Werewolf. Since forms may exist in speech long before they’re written down, it’s likely that singular ‘they’ was common even before the late 1300s. That makes an old form even older. In the eighteenth century, grammarians began warning that singular ‘they’ was an error because a plural pronoun can’t take a singular antecedent. They clearly forgot that singular ‘you’ started out as a plural pronoun and then became singular as well. But not everyone agrees with singular ‘they.’ The well-respected Chicago Manual of Style still rejects singular ‘they’ for formal writing. Former Chief Editor of the OED Robert Burchfield, in The New Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1996), dismisses objections to singular ‘they’ as unsupported by the historical record. Burchfield says that the construction is being accepted by speakers of standard English as well as by editors, and he concludes that this trend is ‘irreversible’. Are you persuaded? What do you think of the Oxford’s argument for the singular ‘they’?

Nursery rhymes Jeremy Butterfield (the former Editor-in-Chief for Collins Dictionaries) once explained that nursey rhymes teach the basics of English to small children. We can define a ‘nursery rhyme’ as ‘a simple or traditional poem or song for small children.’ Butterfield says they teach young children about rhyme, word order, vocabulary, verbal reduplication, alliteration (a series of words that start with the same sound) and assonance (in which there is a resemblance between word sounds without rhyme). All of which is pretty straight forward (and very good for little kids). But then Jeremy adds that nursery rhymes also teach the ‘Unwritten Immutable Law of Ablaut Reduplication’—and that is something that needs a bit of explanation. ‘Ablaut’ is a word coined by Jacob Grimm. We know him (and his brother Wilhelm), as The Brothers Grimm—the source of many traditional fairy tales. But the Grimms were also pioneering language researchers, and Jacob coined ‘ablaut’ to name the way vowel sounds change in some words—for instance in irregular verbs such as ‘sing, sang, sung’ or ‘swim, swam, swum.’ And here is his ‘Unwritten Immutable Law of Ablaut Reduplication’—which says that in such words the vowels will always change in this order—i,a,o: ‘In other words’ (Jeremy Butterfield explains) ‘a short I sound can be followed by an A or an O, but it absolutely has to be in that order. Hence 'mishmash' not 'mashmish' and shilly-shally', not 'shally-shilly.' At the same time, you get 'flip-flop' and 'hip-hop' , not 'flop-flip' and 'hop-hip.' That also explains why the nursery rhyme runs Hickory Dickory Dockand not Hockory Dockory Dick. And if you have all three sounds, they absolutely must go in the order Ithen A then O. Why does it run in this order? Jacob Grimm didn’t really explain why, just that this order is a linguistic fixture in Germanic languages (such as English). And the only thing to add is that Jeremy Butterfield can explain language so that even those of us without his vast learning can understand! Bing, bang, bong!

Accents When we speak English is it fair to say that some accents are better than others? I remember when the late Clive James talked to me on radio about his success in Britain, he said the British judge people by their class accent and being Australian really helped—because they couldn’t work out how to classify the Australian voice. In years gone by the BBC was the home of voices that spoke in a ‘BBC accent’—meaning Standard Southern English (also called ‘RP’ meaning Received Pronunciation). Some time ago the BBC decided its voices needed to represent all of the British Isles and so hired broadcasters with regional accents from all over the UK. But this (we are told) has now gone so far the BBC rejects anyone who speaks RP on the grounds that they ‘sound too posh.’ (I remember when I joined NewsRadio at the ABC Philip Adams told me I had ‘poshed it up no end!’) Veteran BBC broadcaster Edward Stoughton has called for a truce in what has been dubbed the accent wars at the broadcaster saying that ‘clarity should not be confused with class.’ Stourton, who co-hosts World at One on BBC Radio 4, wrote in the Radio Times ‘clarity and authority’ are important and ‘it’s easy to confuse those qualities with poshness; easy but wrong.’ Writing in The Spectator Charles Moore says: ‘An educated accent is not the same as an upper-class accent, but it does carry a class register—the tone of people who have encountered what Matthew Arnold called “the best that is thought and known”.’ What about accents here in Australia? When I first joined the ABC (many, many years ago) we were told at our induction session there are three Australian accents: Broad Australian, Middle Australian, and Educated Australian. And it was assumed that the population divided up roughly equally between them. Today my impression is that ‘Middle Australian’ has spread out and is spoken by the vast majority of us, with only small (and shrinking) portion of the population speaking either Broad Australian or Educated Australian. And I agree with Ed Stoughton that accent matters more in radio and television than it does in many other areas of life. He is also correct to say that on radio and television what really matters is ‘clarity and authority.’ What are your thoughts on the accents you hear these days—especially on radio and television? 

Bacteria These are nasty little things that can make us sick or infect open wounds. The word ‘bacteria’ is the plural of another Latin word bacterium—although it is hard to imagine it ever being used in the singular, since these little things always swarm in large numbers. We need to think of ‘bacteria’ as gangs rather than individuals. There was a time when this word was on the ‘popular’ list of the Merriam-Webster lexicographers because it had become one of the most looked-up words on their website. And the reason for all that looking was rather disturbing. When it comes to ‘bacteria’ you would expect that cleaning products do the job of getting rid of them. So, what would you think of a cleaning product that instead of getting rid of bacteria was full of them? Not much, I would think. The New York Times had a report (from a journalist named Christine Chung) saying that: ‘Clorox (and I presume that’s the name of the American cleaning product in question) is voluntarily recalling about 37 million bottles of pine scented Pine-Sol because the cleaning products may contain bacteria that can cause serious infections in people with weakened immune systems, the Consumer Product Safety Commission said.’ It’s one of those odd news stories that leave you scratching your head. If this was a cleaning product, filled with strong cleaning chemicals, how did any bacteria—once they got in there—survive? Why didn’t the chemicals kill off the bacteria? Instead of which these little bacteria seem to have been swimming around in the stuff having the time of their little lives. Puzzling.

Shrapnel Two days ago I wrote about the origin of the word ‘grenade.’ In response a reader has asked me to explain the source of the word ‘shrapnel.’ The connection is a good one, since what makes grenades so deadly in battle these days is the shrapnel—the flying pieces of sharp metal that the grenade’s explosion sprays all over the place. It is the shrapnel rather than the explosion itself that causes most of the death and injury. Grenades designed to splinter into deadly shrapnel have been used in combat since 1901. But the idea of explosive devices designed to blow deadly bits of metal far and wide is much older than that. And here is the interesting bit—the word ‘shrapnel’ comes from a man’s name. Henry Shrapnel (1761-1842) was a British army officer who fought in the Napoleonic wars and invented the ‘shrapnel shell’ which was (fairly obviously!) named after him. In 1784 he began to experiment with hollow cannonballs filled with lead shot that burst in mid-air. These rather nasty things are called ‘anti-personnel’ weapons, because they don’t aim to blow up buildings (or ships) but to cut down people. He rose to the rank of lieutenant general on 10 January 1837. He joins a long list of people whose names have become words in the English language (technically they become ‘eponyms’): sandwich (from John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich); diesel (from Rudolf Diesel who invented—guess what!); boycott (from Irish landowner Charles Boycott); biro (from Laszlo Biro who inspired the ballpoint pen); guillotine (invented as a painless method of execution by Dr Joseph Guillotin); and a host of others. And we now know that Henry Shrapnel belongs on that list. 

Flummox A short while ago there was a news story saying that residents of a small Queensland town were flummoxed after six mysterious metal spheres washed ashore on Forrest Beach. The unmarked objects, which resembled oversized silver basketballs, prompted police to close off the area amid concerns that they could be explosive. Several days later, Australia’s space agency announced that the spheres appeared to be pressure vessels from a space launch vehicle. An interesting enough little story (and one that conspiracy theories could have fun with!)—but what caught my attention was this strange word ‘flummox.’ You and I have often used this, but have we ever given any thought to where such a strange word came from? So, let’s check it out. The verb ‘to flummox’ means ‘To bewilder, confuse, confound, perplex, disconcert.’ It’s recorded from 1837, and the first person to use it was Charles Dickens in The Pickwick Papers. But where did Dickens get it from? No one is exactly sure. Given his genius it is possible Dickens just made up the word—perhaps based on other imitative or expressive formulations he had heard. Somewhere in background behind ‘flummox’ there may be (the Oxford Dictionary suggests) an English regional dialect word. They refer to some of the odd local dialect words from Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, South Cheshire, and Sheffield—such words as ‘flummocks’ (which meant to maul or mangle), ‘flummock’ (which meant to make untidy or disordered) and a similar word that meant to confuse or bewilder. The lexicographers at the Oxford comment that ‘The formation seems to be onomatopoeic, expressive of the notion of throwing down roughly and untidily.’ And it seems that out of these verbal threads floating around the place Dickens gave us ‘flummox’ (his spelling). And we’ve had it ever since.