Words to Watch
Having the Last Word. By Ivor Brown. (Cape. 6s.)
MR. IVOR BROWN is a regular etymological Jack Homer. Plum after delectable plum he pulls out of the pie, never exclaiming " What a good boy am I ! ", but modestly giving the credit for most of the ingredients to the friends and strangers who provided them. The plums are rich and various—rare words, pleasant- sounding words, comic-sounding words, nouns of assembly, words invented by accident and by design, archaic words, and just words which Mr. Brown likes. Each one is displayed with a wealth of erudite and cosy comment. Sometimes it is a bad plum, a foreign body in the pie, and is treated with the ridicule which it deserves.
It is good to find that the word Homogenised, applied to a brand of infant food by its manufacturers, gets a slating. I wish that there had been more of this sort of thing. Mr. Brown writes of the word intenerate, but has he encountered, as I have in a grocer's shop, the Tenderised Prune ? And what about the London milk carts which bear the mysterious legend " Designated Milk " ? And the Ministry of Food's exhortation to " serve your sweet spread direct on to the slice " (meaning " Don't leave jam on your plate ")? And British Railways' insistence that passengers should " Join the train " without delay ? I wish that we could have had his comments on these and similar absurdities.
The inventing' of words has the sanction of Dr. Johnson, and many a good one has been the product of careless printing and impatient speech. Mr. Brown says of " sny " (a North-country, not an invented word) that it sounds like a mixture of snooping and spying. So it does, and I can give him a word which sounds even more like that, which was invented in my hearing by an angry admiral. A Press photographer on a motor-bicycle wanted a pass to enter certain docks, and was refused it in the folloVving terms, " Tell him people can't go snootling round docks in war-time." To snootle is a fine word to have resulted from the impatient telescoping of tootle and snoop.
Nouns of assembly offer temptation for deliberate invention. (Why not a submission of spaniels, for instance ?) Mr. Brown gives us an unkindness of ravens, and a trembling of goldfinches as an alternative to the better-known charm. In Ireland I have heard of a craft of foxes, and also a green of goslings applied to newly-hatched goslings when they are still squeaking lumps of olive-green fluff.
Mr. Brown wonders whether " to create " ever means to cause a brawl, a row. I can assure him that it does. It is good standard cockney for making a fuss. It was said to me, of the char next door (always referred to as the Person), " Create ? The milkman says that Person creates if he so much as leaves the bottle on the bottom step instead of the top one ! " The modern cockney has played such tricks with the language that one is sometimes tempted to give him credit for adaptations (Apt adaptions, a Ministry of Works word) which are of older and remoter origin. For example, I always thought that " I'll pay you ! " (in the sense of retribution. i.e.. " I'll give you what for ! ") was twentieth-century cockney until I found it the other day in a letter of Sir Walter Scott's little friend Pet Marjorie.
Are you partial to kidney-scrapers, carlings, and kerse ? Can you picture to yourself the struthonious behaviour of a niffle in a tirrivee ? If imagination boggles at these richly suggestive plums of speech, Having the Last Word will enlighten you. I wish that Mr. Brown were not so insistent that this is indeed his Last Word on the subject. Time and philological temptation may intenerate his resolution. For my part I shall go on hoping for One Word
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