Opportunity Knocks: a rant.

It's jolly useful to have signs by the sides of the roads marking the boundaries of places.

It's an added bonus if, as in England, there are places called Weston-under-Lizard, Limpley Stoke, Marsh Gibbon, and, most deliciously of all, I think, Wishmore Bottom.

It does no harm if these signs add a little extra information: Buggleswick: Home of Surgical Stockings, for instance, or Chantley: Historic Town destroyed by Hairy the Woadsman.

However, the signs around my home county which proclaim:

 HERTFORDSHIRE: A COUNTY OF OPPORTUNITY

are merely embarrassing. A county of opportunity? Opportunity for what? Unemployment, famine and murder? 

Does my home county offer career-development courses for zombies? Or bareback giraffe racing?

Who can tell?

What people can tell, though, is that the members of the County Council who were responsible for putting up those signs have much, much more money than sense.

Ah well. At least they're giving fair warning to every single person who enters the county.

Word To Use Today: opportunity. This word comes from the Latin opportūnus, which means coming to harbour.

In Australia and New Zealand an opportunity shop, or op shop, is one selling second-hand goods on behalf of charitity.

Nuts and Bolts: forensic linguistics I.

What does the word snail mean?

Well, it's not easy to say, because snail, like most words, describes a group of things. What is the animal you think of when you hear the word snail like? Is it plain? Striped? Tabby? Is it eating a lettuce? Asleep in its shell? On a plate in a restaurant? In a rockpool?

The job of forensic linguistics is to work out exactly what language means when it's used in the law.

One obvious part of forensic linguistics is working out just what laws mean.

Laws need to be absolutely clear (what is a snail? As I recall AP Herbert wrote a lovely story, one of his Misleading Cases, in which a legal judgement depends upon whether snails are wild and ferocious, or whether they are better described as domestic).

As well as problems of definition, what if changes in the meaning of a words over time has led to a change in the law? There's a fashion at the moment for saying absolutely! in conversation, but you'd have to be very careful indeed when using it when making a will.

What if a law has to be translated into another language? (In England, law has been written in English, then French, then back to English again; with, of course, lots of Latin thrown in at various times to confuse things.) That's bound to cause all sorts of problems.

What about new words that come along? It's almost impossible to keep up with everything. In 1999, for instance, Judge Francis Appleby had to stop a case involving the theft of a Teletubby to ask what it was.

In this instance, the important thing, of course, is not that Judge Appleby didn't know what a Teletubby was, but that before the case was over he did. 


Word To Use Today: forensic. This word comes from the Latin word forēnsis, which means public, from forum, which means public place. 

The phrase forensic linguistics first appeared in 1968. It was coined by Jan Svartvik.

Thing To Do Today: sneeze.

Do you have a cold?

No?

Well, I hope you've got some pepper, then.

What? You do have a cold?

Oh dear, I'm sorry. I hope it'll soon be over. Honey and lemon are very good. I can't guarantee they'll cure you, but as medicines go they're not to be sneezed at (though why on earth anyone would sneeze when confronted with something horrible I have no idea at all).

In China you sneeze when people are talking about you. One sneeze means that they're saying something good, two sneezes something bad, three sneezes means they're in love...and four sneezes means you've got a cold.

In the Odyssey a sneeze is all good news. Telemachus's sneeze is taken by his mother Penelope as a sign the Gods will help them in their revenge on Penelope's suitors.

Yes, I know it sounds a little mad, but as it happens Penelope is right. 

Sneezewood comes from the tree Ptaeroxylon utile, which comes from South Africa. The wood is especially tough, smells of pepper (hence, presumably, the sneeze bit) and is used for making bridges, piers and fence posts.

Sneezewort is a Eurasian plant, Achillea ptarmica. The leaves, when dried and powdered, make people sneeze. As, surely, would any other powdered leaf, but hey...

Bless you, anyway.

Thing To Do Today: sneeze. This word is related to the Old Norse fnȳsa and the Greek pneuma, which means breath.

Spot the frippet: counter.

Yes, I know, it's Monday morning and your brain, throbbing gently like an expiring octopus, is still under the impression that it's the middle of last night.

Never mind. This really is the easiest spot the frippet ever.

Counter.

No, I don't expect many of you to be at gaming tables this early in the morning. I don't expect you to spot that sort of a counter.

No, nor the serving table in a shop, or the worktop in a kitchen. Who has their eyes open at breakfast time on a Monday morning?

I suppose if you'd tried to find out how many cars passed you on your way to work or school today then you yourself would be a counter...but, come on! It's Monday morning! It was quite enough effort working out how many socks you needed to cover your feet, wasn't it.

No, look:

counter

Do you see the hole in that o? And the smaller one inside the e?

To someone who knows about type, then those holes are called counters.

So well done, you lot.

Mission accomplished.

Now pat yourself on the pack and sink gently back into your torpor, do.

Spot the frippet: counter. The word meaning gaming disc or table comes from the Old French comptouer, from the Latin computāre to compute. The word meaning hole in a letter comes from the Latin contrā, which means against.

Sunday Rest: Word Not To Use Today: jejune.

I'm rather fond of the letter j, with its elegant tail and adorable dot, and this horrible word is not to be blamed on the twin j s.

Jejune (the j s are pronounced as in June, and the stress is on...well, mostly on the listener, but also on the second syllable).

It means simple, naive, dull, dry, insubstantial or barren. There we are: six much more usable words than the ghastly jejune.

The facts are simple: use the word jejune and everyone will hate you.

Got it?

Good.

Word Not To Use Today: jejune. This word crept into the language in the 1600s, presumably whilst all sensible people were looking the other way. It comes from the Latin word jējūnus, which means hungry or empty.

Saturday Rave: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

It is the fate of some books to be hated passionately. It's usually because they have been inflicted on poor little children at school, or poor little students at university.

Heart of Darkness is one of those books.

It doesn't help that the first few pages of Heart of Darkness are brain-numbingly dull (well, I think so, anyway: it took me three attempts over the decades to get past the story-of-the-man-who-tells-the-story) and it doesn't help either that there are no hi-speed helicopters, no high schools, nor any noticeable humour.

Oh, but that heart of darkness. Once you've been there, once you've smelled it, once you've felt it close around you, the brightness of the outside world will forever be more vivid against its shadows.

And as for the shadows...oh, the shadows will never, never go quite away.

Word To Use Today: darkness. This is a wonderful word which needs more careful exploration than I have space for at the moment. It comes from the Old English word deorc which is related to the Old High Grerman terchennan, which means to hide.

Word To Use Today: umbrage.

I find The Word Den really a rather cheerful place, but here's a chance to walk on the dark side.

Umbrage.

It's rather a silly word, is umbrage. Someone who takes umbrage is certainly offended, but the chances are that his revenge won't go further than a little outraged gossip or the pointed closing of a door.

Or just possibly an email beginning Dear Mr Bogworthy. That sort of thing.

(I remember a neighbour once saying to me ooh, I can't wait for him to speak to me so I can ignore him. Bless.)






If that sort of umbrage isn't dark and cloak-swirly enough for you then there's always the shadier sort of umbrage, umbrage meaning, well, shade. Umbrage meant first of all the foliage of trees, but it's also come to mean shade, as cast by leaves.

Darker still? Well, in that case you can have umbrage meaning a shadow or a semblance.

The sort of thing that leans forward silently, grinning from the shadows as you pass...

Hm.

I think I'll stick with the foliage, myself.

Word To Use Today: umbrage. This word comes from the Latin word umbrāticus, realting to shade, from umbra, which means shade or shadow.