The virtual linguist

1970s words

I'm going away for the weekend to a party hosted by an old school friend. Our era is the 1970s, so it's fancy dress - loons, cheesecloth blouses, platform shoes, punk, that sort of thing. I thought I'd have a look to see which words entered the English language during that decade.

Chambers Dictionary issued a new edition in 1972. The words that went in to that dictionary for the first time were mainly words that had appeared during the 1960s: the pill, civil rights, nuclear weapon, hippy, psychedelic, swinging, mini-skirt, groovy and the Flower People. Britain's expanding cultural and culinary tastes during this decade are evinced by the appearance for the first time of the words pizza, sauna and au pair.

Chambers added a supplement in 1977, with words that had appeared since 1972. These words included: male chauvinist, Ms, nuke, sit-in, chat-show, skateboard, listed building, safari park, teeny-bopper, database and black hole. Phrases coined during the 1970s included blow the whistle and the name of the game.

Words that entered the OED during the 1970s include supermodel, streak (in the sense 'to run naked'), gas-guzzler, baby boomer, bag lady, chairperson, Sloane Ranger, flying picket and car bomb.

Keepy-uppy

A man has set a new 'keepy-uppy' world record by keeping a football off the ground while travelling thirty miles across London. Keepy-uppy is a British expression and involves keeping a ball from touching the ground; you can touch the ball with any part of your body except for your hands. Here's a BBC article and video.

The phrase keepy-uppy was first recorded in the 1980s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, but it developed from an earlier (1950s) Scottish term, keepy-up.

The suffix -y, sometimes with the spelling -ie, signifies a familiar form or pet name, hence Johnny, Tommy, Annie, laddie etc.

The word keepy-uppy is mainstream enough to be in dictionaries, although it rarely appears in print, and you'll notice that the headline of the BBC article I linked to earlier puts it in quotation marks. Sometimes when I am with my old school friends we go looking for a 'sitty-outy', or a cafe where we can sit outside. That expression is not in the dictionary; I think it might be a Northern dialect word.

Triskaidekaphobia

You don't often see the word triskaidekaphobia in a British tabloid, but it was in a free newspaper I picked up on the train this morning in an article about a man who had undergone hypnotherapy so that he could enjoy a new rollercoaster called 'Th13teen'. Or, the word was nearly in the paper; they had got the wrong spelling - tridecaphobia, as in this sentence: "The 44-year-old said he could not wait to work on the £15 million ride at Alton Towers in Staffordshire after treatment to cure his tridecaphobia." 

Triskaidekaphobia means fear of the number 13, or being excessively superstitious about it. Here are a few more unusual words to do with phobias:

algophobia: morbid fear of pain

cynophobia: dread of and aversion to dogs

deipnophobia: dread of dinner parties

ergophobia: fear of work

gynophobia: fear of women

logophobia: fear or distrust of words

monophobia: fear of being alone

neophobia: fear or dislike of what is new

ochlophobia: fear of crowds

pantophobia: fear of everything

politicophobia: an irrational fear of politics or politicians

siderodromophobia: fear of rail travel

The above words are all in the OED, but Wikipedia has a long list of phobias which are not in the dictionary, including glossophobia, fear of public speaking, which is supposed to be everyone's worst fear. 

Dictionary removed from Californian schools

Merriam Webster's Dictionary, 10th edition, has been withdrawn from schools in southern California after parents complained that it contained the entry 'oral sex'. The dictionary is intended for use by children aged 9-10.

I liked the comment of district spokeswoman Betti Cadmus: "It's hard to sit and read the dictionary, but we'll be looking to find other things of a graphic nature." Poor Betti! It's a tough job looking up dirty words in a dictionary!

Joking apart, I don't think that the entry is suitable for 9-10-year-olds either (but I bet they didn't just stumble across it - they were probably looking up all the sex-related words they knew). I've just had a look in some of the children's dictionaries on my shelf. Oral sex isn't in The Oxford School Dictionary, which is for slightly older children, nor is it an entry in the Kingfisher Illustrated Pocket Dictionary, which I updated from an earlier edition a couple of years ago, and which is aimed at children aged 9+. I used the phrase 'oral test' to illustrate the word oral. 

American dictionaries are in many respects different from British dictionaries, especially those that were written before the 1960s. British lexicographers see their job as to observe and record the language; they use terms as 'taboo' or 'slang' but they generally don't censor words or make judgemental comments. Given the history of the US, American dictionaries used to be aimed at people immigrating to the country who needed help with pronunciation and correct usage, but were not interested in etymology (most British readers expect to find a note on the word's origin in a dictionary). You will find a lot of examples of American/Australian/South African etc English in British dictionaries, but are unlikely to find many British English expressions in smaller American dictionaries.

We should not be surprised that a Californian school district has banned this dictionary. Lots of books have been banned from US schools including Huckleberry Finn, Catcher in the Rye, Grapes of Wrath and Lord of the Flies (see list).

Up-Helly-Aa 2010

Today, the last Tuesday of January, is the day that the Shetland Islanders celebrate Up-Helly-Aa, a traditional fire festival associated with their Viking forefathers. Here's an article and photo from Scottish TV's website, and here's the post I wrote on this day last year, where I looked at the origin of the word.  

Burns Night, neeps and Sassenachs

It's the anniversary of the birth of the Scottish poet Robert Burns today. I wrote on the haggis last year, so here's that post again.

An article in The Guardian asks whether neeps are turnips or swedes. The author suggests that neeps may be a contraction of 'new turnips', which is the Scottish term for swedes. The OED is no help on the matter as it defines neep as turnip, swede and parsnip, although thinks that the word comes from the Latin napus, meaning turnip.

Sassenach is a term used by the Scots to describe an English person. It comes from the Scottish Gaelic word for Saxon.

Motorway Man

Motorway Man holds the key to the outcome of this year's general election, and both main parties are targeting him. He lives on a modern housing estate in a former industrial town within easy reach of the M1 and M6 motorways, a place like Rugby, Nuneaton or Milton Keynes. These are considered marginal constituencies. Motorway Man probably voted Labour in the late 1990s and early 2000s but the Tories think that his values have changed and he is now moving towards the Conservative Party.

There was a short piece on Motorway Man at the end of yesterday's Today programme on Radio 4 (listen here for a few more days). There's also an FT article here.

Previous election campaigns have targeted Mondeo Man (someone who owned a Ford Mondeo and may have been a travelling salesman; this group is credited with having returned Labour to power in 1997) and Worcester Woman (a middle-class woman from Middle England; she is seen as someone likely to switch between parties depending on what they are offering). Mrs Thatcher is said to have won a lot of support from the Essex Man, a working-class voter with aspirations to own property and shares.

Bamboccione or mummy's boy

There has been a court case in Italy this week where a 60-year-old father was forced to continue to pay an allowance to his 32-year-old daughter, who still lived at home and couldn't find a job. Italy has a problem with grown-up children not wanting to leave home, it seems, and a there are a couple of words which describe them (although they are masculine words ie refer to men who don't leave home): bamboccione (a bamboccio is a chubby child and mammone is translated as 'mummy's boy'). Here's the story.

I wouldn't say that mummy's boy in English necessarily refers to a grown-up man who doesn't want to leave home. It relates to someone, often a young boy who clings on to his mother or, in the case of an older male, is soppy and wimpish. 

Other English words I've found which refer to this phenomenon include:

kippers: an acronym standing for 'kids in parents' pockets eroding retirement savings'. The phrase was coined by Prudential, an insurance company, about six or seven years ago

slops: another acronym meaning 'singles who live off parents'

parasite singles: the translation of a phrase used in Japan

twixters: an American term meaning the same thing

adultescent: a 1990s word, defined in the OED as 'an adult who has retained the interests, behaviour, or lifestyle of adolescence'

boomeranger: an adult child who has returned to the family nest. There's also the boomerang generation.

The term lifelong parenting has been coined to describe the other side of the coin ie what the bamboccione's or kipper's parents have to do.

Websites and businesses have been set up around the phenomenon eg this one called Adult Children Living at Home. 

Texting improves language skills

A study carried out by developmental psychologists at Coventry University has disproved the commonly held perception that using abbreviations and other text-speak has a negative effect on literacy. Children who are proficient at texting are usually good spellers. They are more phonologically aware ie can recognise sound patterns and the relationship between letters and sounds. Texting also helps children become more aware of rhyme.

Texting can benefit weaker readers and spellers who would generally shun books and the written word, as texting can give them exposure to written English, which they would not get otherwise.

The research was carried out on 63 children aged between 8 and 12. Here's the Coventry University press release.

Languages still in decline in British schools

Fewer school pupils are taking a foreign language at the age of 14, according to a recent survey carried out by CILT, the National Centre for Languages (read here). In the school year 2008-09, 45% of pupils in Year 10 learnt a foreign language but that percentage has dropped to 40% this year. Often the reason is not because the students have been turned off learning languages, but because of there being a far greater choice of options, or schools being more concerned about their league table position (which often means that they encourage students to take 'easier' subjects where they are more likely to get a higher grade). Parents, too, must bear some of the blame, since some parents in the survey are too Anglocentric and do not see the point of foreign languages in an increasingly Anglophone world.

French, Spanish and German are still the most popular languages taught, with Spanish overtaking German in state schools for the first time. In independent schools there has been a big increase in the teaching of Mandarin Chinese.

40% of schools offer exchange programmes, but these are getting more difficult to organise, partly because of parents' fears about safety and due to uncertainty over proposed vetting procedures.