The virtual linguist

Frimponged

My football-mad son introduced me to the verb 'to frimpong', which means, as far as I can gather, 'to tackle very aggressively'. Emmanuel Frimpong plays for Fulham on loan from Arsenal, and he seems to be the person responsible for the new verb coining, having written tweets such as 'I need to start frimponging people instead of me being frimponged' (see here). Coincidentally, Emmanuel Frimpong was also instrumental in coining the word dench, which I blogged on very recently (here).

 

Another well-known verb derived from the name of a footballer (well-known among football fans, that is) is 'to kerzhakov', from Aleksandr Kerzhakov, a striker with Zenit St Petersburg. The verb was coined by a journalist on The Guardian, after Kerzhakov failed to score, despite having several chances, in a match during last year's Euro Championships. It therefore means 'to fail to score when shooting from a perfect position'. Kerzhakoved has been used to refer to other players, for example in this report about the England-Italy match in the Euros:

It should have been dealt with without any fuss whatsoever, but the England defence was dozing and it dropped to De Rossi, who turned and Kerzhakoved a volley wide from six yards out!

 

I can't think of any other footballers whose names have become verbs. I have found 'to be de Jonged' on the internet, after Nigel de Jong, a Dutch footballer, who kicked an opponent in the chest (see the action here), but my son tells me it's not a common phrase.

Birch tree

The literal meaning of the late Boris Berezovsky's surname is 'birch tree' (берёза, pronounced 'beryoza', is birch tree in Russian). Coincidentally, the name of the Icelandic singer Björk also means 'birch tree'.

 

Most words for the tree in Germanic and Slavonic languages are similar. It is believed that the words all stem from a common Proto-Indo-European root *bherəg’-, meaning something bright or shining. The English word bright originates from the same PIE root.

 

Interestingly, the Latin fraxinus, is also a cognate of *bherəg’-. It's hard to see the link, I know, but the PIE sound /bh/, an aspirated vocal stop, changed into other sounds down the centuries, depending on the language. This explains why blaze and flagrant (= burning) come from the same PIE root, and why bleat and the Latin verb flēre, to cry or weep, are related. However, the Latin fraxinus is not a birch tree; it's an ash. Scholars have speculated that the birch, a tree that grows in cool and temperate climates, may not have been familiar to the original inhabitants of warmer, southern European countries, so they applied the same stem meaning 'shining' to a familiar tree that also appeared to be bright and shining.

Not on your Nelly

The phrase 'not on your Nelly' was one of the rounds in last week's radio programme Just a Minute, which prompted me to look it up. Nelly is short for Nelly duff, which is Cockney rhyming slang for puff. Here, puff means 'life; span or length of life' (OED). The OED mentions the phrase in all one's (born) puff, meaning 'in all one's life', and tends to be used in negative contexts, or with a negative verb.

 

Nelly and puff share a definition. They can both refer, according to the OED, to 'an effeminate man'. Puff is the older word here, dating from the very early 20th century, whilst Nelly (also written nelly) goes back to the 1930s.

-stan

The suffix -stan on place names is usually associated with Asian countries or regions eg Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Baluchistan and many others. Today, however, when reading something on early English history, I came across the Battle of Degsastan, fought in AD603 between Aedan, king of Dál Riata, an old kingdom on the west coast of Scotland, and Æthelfrith, king of Northumbria. No-one these days knows where exactly Degsastan was, although it's certainly not in Central Asia. There are other Old English names (of people and places) ending or beginning stan, too, eg Æthelstan, Dunstan and various places (in Gloucestershire, and Suffolk, eg) called Stanton, plus the common first name and surname Stanley.

 

The two 'stans' have different etymologies. The stan prefix denoting an Asian country goes back to the Sanskrit sthāna, meaning 'dwelling place'. The Old English stan was rock, stone, or rocky place.

Dench

My daughter alerted me to last week's Graham Norton show when he discussed the slang word dench (Dame Judi Dench, the actor, was one of his guests). Here's the clip. Dench apparently means 'cool'. It was popularised after the rapper Lethal Bizzle used the name as the brand name for his range of clothing. I don't think he was thinking of Dame Judi at the time, although the fact that she wore one of his baseball caps helped sales of the range (see this article).

 

This meaning of dench has not yet made it into hard-copy dictionaries. Interestingly, dench is in the OED, but as a Middle English spelling variant of Danish.

Collectors

Oxford Dictionaries Online’s word of the day earlier this week was phillumenist, a collector of matchboxes. The phil part of the word is from the Greek prefix philo, denoting a liking for, and lumen is Latin for light.

 

Other interesting specialist terms for collectors include: deltiologist (postcards, from the Greek for ‘writing tablet’), tegestologist (beer mats, from the Latin teges, mat or covering), exonumist (badges, tokens and medals), scripophile (old bond and share certificates) and notaphilist (bank notes). Despite the Latin and Greek connections, these words were all coined only in the 20th century.

 

Other collectors, who are not in the OED, include: arctophile (teddy bears, from the ancient Greek for bear), meadophile (beer bottles) and fromologist (cheese labels).

 

By far the largest group of collectors in the OED are those who collect taxes (not as a hobby, presumably). Here are some old words with that meaning:

gabeller: gabelle was a salt-tax imposed in France before the Revolution. The equivalent English word was salt-master.
galer: gale was duty on fish in Gloucestershire
mise-gatherer: a mise was a tribute paid to secure a liberty or immunity, especially in Wales and Chester
penny-grave: formerly in the East Riding of Yorkshire
poll-groat bailiff: a poll-groat was an extortionate tax
publican: Ancient Roman times
remembrancer: a collector of the Crown’s debts
tithe-proctor: a collector of tithes
uplifter: a collector of rents, in Scotland

There are also words for this job in various parts of the old British empire: amildar and aumil (South Asia), zemindar and zilladar (India).

Conclave

A few dozen Roman Catholic cardinals are sequestered in the Sistine Chapel, as I write, taking part in the papal conclave. I'm not sure whether they are actually locked in, but that is the literal meaning of the word 'conclave'. Con is the combining form of the Latin word for 'with', cum, and clavis is Latin for 'key'.

 

The English music-related words claviature and clavichord are also derived from clavis, as is the word clavicle, or collar-bone. The OED tells us that the 19th-century French lexicographer Littré explained that some people said the collar-bone was compared to the key of a vault, while others said it resembled old bolts in form.

 

Here's a BBC piece giving ten facts about the conclave.

Geekgasm

The word geekgasm, which I spotted in this Guardian piece today, hasn’t yet made it into the OED. Geekgasm is an exciting experience caused by something very nerdy or geeky.

 

Interestingly, there is only one word ending –gasm in the OED, and that is orgasm. This word comes from the Greek ὀργᾶν (pronounced 'organ'), meaning 'to swell with sexual desire, be excited or eager. Ultimately it comes from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *wrōg-, meaning to burgeon or swell with strength'. I cannot find any other English cognates. The English words orgy and organ, which begin similarly, are related to the Greek ἔργον work, and ultimately stem from the PIE root *worg- or *werg-. The OED tells us that the singular orgy was rare before the 19th century. It entered English from Middle French as a plural, meaning “Secret rites or ceremonies practised in the worship of various gods of Greek and Roman mythology; esp. those practices connected with the festivals in honour of Dionysus or Bacchus” (from OED).

The difference between doctor and physician

I heard the newsreader on the BBC this morning, who was reporting on the Queen's admission to hospital, say 'the Queen's physician'. In Britain we don't generally use the word physician - we say doctor. However, physician is used in formal and historical contexts - for instance, there is the Royal College of Physicians, and the term Physician to the Queen is a historical, formal title. Another term for the latter is Head of the Medical Household. The position is currently occupied by Professor John Cunningham.

 

Physician is an older word in English, according to the OED. Its first reported usage was in the early 13th century, when it was spelled with an F (or sometimes a V). It comes ultimately from the Latin word for remedy, or medical or natural science.

 

Doctor was first used in the 14th century to mean medical practitioner. Before that it meant teacher or instructor. Indeed, it comes from the Latin docere, to teach. Even now, doctor has a wider application than medical contexts, referring to learned people with higher degrees in any subject.

Daffodil

It's St David's Day today, so I looked up the word daffodil in the OED. And a very interesting history it has too. The Dictionary says it does not know how the initial d crept in to the word - the flower was originally affodill, belonging to the Asphodelus genus. Suggestions as to where the d came from, according to the Dictionary, include: that it followed the same process that saw Edward become Ted; that the d is based on the th of 'the daffodil', or northern English t'daffodil; that the d came from the word and, as in 'fennell an-d affodil'; that it came from the Dutch or Flemish article, de affodil; or from the French de meaning 'of', as in fleur d'aphrodille.

 

An affodill was originally the flower asphodel, but the name then mistakenly came to be applied to the narcissus. Botanists retained the name affodil for the asphodel (a flower with spiky petals, see here), and applied the name daffodil to the yellow narcissus.

 

Other words for the daffodil in the OED are: bell-rose, chalice-flower, churn, yellow crow-bells, daffadowndilly (or daffydowndilly), hen and chickens, hoop-petticoat, and Lent lily.

 

The Welsh for daffodils is Cennin Pedr, which translates as (St) Peter's leeks. The Welsh word for leeks is cennin, which explains why both daffodils and leeks are Welsh symbols. Here's a BBC page on more Welsh words and traditions.