susie dent

Word Perfect – October/November/December

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Finally reached the end of a very lexically-laden year here at Bookishly Abroad, thanks to the marvellous Susie Dent. If you’ve enjoyed my picks, I cannot recommend the whole book enough!

I hope you all had a very merry Christmas and here’s to a brilliant 2022! 🥂

October:

1st – INWIT – refers to common sense or ‘inbuilt wisdom’. The total opposite of nitwit …

6th – SILVER SCREEN – now a metonym for cinema in general, originating from the earliest projectors screens, which were coated in silver paint.

12th – UNASINOUS – from one 1656 entry in the OED, meaning ‘united in stupidity’. I’m sure I’ll be finding a use for this one!

16th – FAN-BLOODY-TASTIC – the meaning is clear but I had no idea these infixes have a name in linguistics. The process of inserting one word into the middle of another is called ‘tmesis’, from the Greek ‘to cut’.

17th – CUDDLEMEBUFF – an excellent slang term for liquor.

22nd – CORONACOASTER – one of the many pandemic-born additions to our vocabulary, making it sound considerably more fun than it has been …

November

4th – EXSIBILATE – a neighbour of ‘booing’, this Latin word means to hiss an inadequate performer off the stage.

12th – POWWOW – borrowed from Algonquian, this comes from the name of a sacred Native American ceremony that often features dances, singing and vibrant traditional dress.

16th – JACK THE LAD – the namesake of this idiom was Jack Sheppard, a thief and folk hero of the 1700s, known and celebrated for his daring prison escapes. He was referred to affectionately by this moniker or, ironically, ‘Honest Jack’.

19th – PERISSOLOGY – put succinctly, using far more words than necessary!

25th – SPHALLOLALIA – the original working title for Tinder … From the Greek for ‘stumble-talk’, Susie defines this as “flirtatious talk that goes absolutely nowhere”.

December

12th – THROTTLEBOTTOM – an incompetent, bumbling individual in public office. The book uses Boris Johnson as its example …

16th – ZHUZH – to make something more lively or exciting. I’ve only heard this one used relating to hair and must never have written it down; before now, I wouldn’t have had an orthographical clue!

18th – BRUME – a winter mist.

20th – QUAFFTIDE – very aptly for December, the OED defines this as ‘the season for drinking’.

22nd – SCURRYFUNGE – frantically tidying before the arrival of guests. Also appropriate for this month in particular.

25th – CONFELICITY – finding joy in the happiness of others. The antonym of ‘schadenfreude’.

28th – MERRYNEUM – the endless stretch between Christmas and New Year when we’re lost in a blur of alcohol, leftover turkey and sitcom repeats. Also known as ‘Twixtmas’ or ‘Chrimbo Limbo’.

xxx

P.S. I got another of Susie’s books, What Made the Crocodile Cry?, for Christmas so I’m afraid my fangirling is far from over!

Word Perfect – August/September

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A few linguistic gems selected from Queen Susie’s August and September offerings:

August

2nd – TESTICULATING – gesturing dramatically while talking absolute bollocks. One of many ‘blended’ words recently entering our lexicon, joining ‘hangry’ and ‘textpectation’. Apparently, The Washington Post also runs a competition to create new vocabulary by altering only a single letter of an existing word. One that needs to be added to the dictionary immediately is ‘sarchasm’, the gulf between the individual delivering sarcastic comments and an intended recipient who remains oblivious.

7th – CONSPUE – a niche (and gross) verb meaning to spit on someone with contempt.

10th – THE FULL MONTY – supposedly due to General Bernard Montgomery, an eccentric commander during the Second World War, who favoured a full English breakfast (‘the full works’) each morning. This origin is contested, but remains by far the most popular story.

17th – RHOTACISM – those unable to correctly pronounce the ‘r’ sound suffer from rhotacism, an arguably cruelly spelt diagnosis …

20th – HALCYON – tranquil and happy (usually referring to ‘days’). From the Greek myth of Alcyone who, upon drowning, was transformed by the gods into a kingfisher. Divine intervention from her father, Aeolus, god of the winds, allowed her to build her nest each year on calm waters untroubled by storms.

31st – ZWODDER – the perfect adjective for hot summer days – a drowsy state of mind and body, plausibly caused by daytime drinking.

September

2nd – MUBBLE FUBBLES – the melancholic feeling on a Sunday evening or at the end of a holiday, as a return to work looms.

4th – GENERCIDE – becoming generic. Often used to refer to brand names that have become synonymous for the service they offer e.g. Hoover, Band-Aid, Blu-Tack and Google.

9th – SLOGAN – from the Scottish Gaelic, sluagh-ghairm (war cry).

12th – CONKER – a major player in the autumnal lexicon, most likely from a dialect word for snail shell. Perhaps not the most gripping origin story but I had to include this one, as the explanation points out that the winners of conker games are know as ‘conkistadors’!

18th – GOSSAMER – a satisfying sibilant addition, thought to be a shortened version of ‘goose-summer’, referring to the popularity of goose in the autumn months.

25th – BOONDOGGLE – any project that is completely unnecessary or a total waste of time.

Word Perfect – June/July

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Unfortunately, Susie fell to the wayside over the summer in favour of other holiday reads. But we’re back with the best of June and July, at the beginning of September …

June

6th – SNOUTFAIR – the 1600s version of ‘fit’ or ‘attractive’, though it doesn’t sound it!

8th – NEWSPEAK – Dent draws a sly connection between Orwell’s censored language and Trump’s “fake news”/”alternative facts”.

10th – THEIST – ‘believer’, but its secondary meaning is far better. Apparently, Percy Bysshe Shelley liked to refer to himself by this moniker, with the intended sense of ‘a tea-drinking addict’. In this context, I am most certainly not an atheist!

13th – CLATTERFART – a serious gossip.

17th – BUMF – short for ‘bumfodder’; loo roll.

24th – CHOREOMANIA – an uncontrollable urge to dance. It is thought this phenomenon was responsible for the so-called ‘dancing plagues’ of the Medieval period. Clare Testoni discusses the connection between these and the tale of The Pied Piper in her brilliant podcast, Singing Bones.

30th – SCONE – must admit I was a little grumpy with Susie after this one. She graciously refuses to come down on either side of the argument, stating it’s ‘all a matter of taste’. According to the OED, both pronunciation variations are correct …

July

1st – CWTCH – I lived in Wales for a few years and this was one of my favourites. Mostly used to mean a cuddle but it can also be a safe, cosy place.

12th – LACKADAISICAL – apathetic, without motivation, careless.

17th – FIRGUN – the exact opposite of ‘Schadenfreude’. A recent Hebrew word meaning to find joy in another’s success. Dent quotes another author who aptly describes it as ‘the art of tooting someone else’s horn’.

24th – ZEPHYR – a gentle breeze. Named after Zephyrus, the Greek god of the west wind.

31st – PETRICHOR – the smell of rain, specifically falling on dry earth. I think ‘apricity’ has some competition.

Word Perfect – April/May

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A selection of April and May’s lexical offerings – I’ll pretend combining the two was a stylistic choice rather than an accidental necessity, as I forgot about April …

April

7th – HAIR OF THE DOG – turns out this one is decidedly literal! A shorted version of ‘a hair of the dog that bit you’ harking back to the medieval belief that once bitten by a dog, you could only be cured with a poultice containing one hair from the same animal. The entry also mention the delightful ‘wamble-cropped‘ as a synonym of ‘hangover’.

10th – COMET – one specific phrase springs to my mind considering the origins of this word – “it’s very Greek” (Julie Walters, Mamma Mia, 2008). It comes from ‘komÄ“tÄ“s’, meaning ‘long-haired star’. As Dent points out , much of our astral vocabulary can be traced back to the language – with ‘asteroid’ indicating ‘star-like’ and ‘meteor’ originating from the word for ‘lofty’. Other little facts I liked from this entry were ‘astronauts’ as ‘star sailors’ and an asterisk as hte diminutive ‘little star’.

11th – ANTHOLOGY – a collection of flowers, used metaphorically to refer to various ‘flowers’ of verse/poetry in one volume.

15th – CONTRAFIBULARITY – insincere congratulations (literally invented by TV series Blackadder!)

19th – GHETTO – featured on this day in memory of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. It has two possible origins; the first ‘getto’, the Italian translation of iron foundry, as this was the area Venice’s Jewish population were banished to in 1516. The second possibility is ‘borghetto’, meaning ‘little suburb’.

23rd – BARDOLATRY – overzealous admiration of Shakespeare …

24th – GHOST – included for the pettiness! Apparently, this was originally spelled ‘gost’ but Flemish print workers added an ‘h’ because they didn’t like how it looked on paper.

27th – PANDEMONIUM – the capital city of Hell in Paradise Lost. Tickles me slightly that Milton thought devils would comply with human geographical convention.

May

4th – JEDI – for reasons obvious hopefully that are …

7th – WHITE ELEPHANT – any task or endeavour that it considerably more effort than it is worth! This entry includes the anecdote that the King of Siam used to gift an elephant to courtiers who had upset him; the animals were so expensive to care for that bankruptcy was a guarantee. Strangely, this exact fact features in my current read, The Firework Maker’s Daughter!

9th – HUGGER-MUGGER – to do something secretively. An example of what linguists call a reduplicated compound, like one of my preferred phrases, higgledy-piggledy.

15th – VOLCANO – another one rooted in mythology, this time Roman. Named after the god Vulcan, associated with fire.

22nd – ABSQUATULATE – to leave abruptly. Apparently in the 1800s, there was a literal trend in America for making up stupid words – this fad also gave us ‘discombobulate’ and ‘skedaddle’, so can’t have been all that bad.

23rd – PICNIC – another gloriously petty one – my favourites. For IT departments, PICNIC as an acronym indicates ‘problem in chair, not in computer’ or rather, that the person asking for their technical expertise is a moron …

26th – COCKNEY – maybe this is commonly knowledge and I haven’t been paying attention but there is something poetically lovely in the idea you are only a true Cockney if born within earshot of the St Mary-le-Bow church bells.

27th – FUCK – naturally. I get the impression Susie really enjoyed writing this one 😂. Unsurprisingly known to linguists as one of the most versatile words in the English language.

Word Perfect – February

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Still going with the 2021 word-a-day challenge, aided by Susie Dent’s Word Perfect, though I’ve been playing catch-up a bit this month. My favourite of February’s phrases:

6th Feb – BUMBERSHOOT – late 19th century American nickname for an umbrella, of all things!

8th Feb – RAGAMUFFIN – originally a byword for the devil, included on this date as it is (so I’ve learned …) infamously inauspicious, particularly in Devon.

14th Feb – FIRKYTOODLING – a far superior word for ‘flirting’ that would make a great name for a dating app 😂

15th Feb – HUFFLE-BUFFS – defined in the Scots language dictionary as ‘old, comfy clothes’. So for the majority of lockdown I’ve been just ‘a Hufflepuff in her huffle-buffs’ …

19th Feb – PERENDINATE – an extension of ‘procrastinate’, meaning to put off until the day after tomorrow! The Romans understood the struggle.

21st Feb – SNACCIDENT – Susie puts it best – ‘the inadvertent eating of a whole packet of biscuits […] when you meant to just have one’.

Which is your favourite?

x

Word Perfect – January

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Thought I’d do a little monthly round-up of my favourites from Word Perfect by Susie Dent. So far (miraculously) I’ve stuck to my resolution of a-word-a-day so here is the best of January’s jargon:

1st Jan – CRAMBAZZLED – prematurely aged/looking rough after the consumption of much alcohol

7th Jan – GYM – I was less interested in this specific word that the revelation within its dedicated paragraph that ‘muscle’ comes from the Latin ‘musculus’ (‘little mouse’), due to the appearance of the biceps moving beneath the skin.

9th Jan – DONG-DING and the rule of Ablaut Reduplication – the often unconsciously followed linguistic phenomenon that explains why reversing ‘chit-chat’, ‘ding-dong’ or ‘zig-zag’ just sounds wrong.

12th Jan – FEEFLE – historic Scottish word for snow.

15th Jan – HIBERNACLE – the place an animal spends its hibernaton period.

20th Jan – LALOCHEZIA – alleviating stress or unhappiness through profanity (perhaps the one I most related to …)

28th Jan – SEREDIPITY – expected to find this one, it’s just a lovely word.

30th Jan – MAVERICK – originally the name of an eccentric Texan who refused to brand his cows … Tom Cruise eat your heart out!

x