DIALECT AND WORD MEANINGS

[Stanley]

I sometimes suspect that misappropriate use of words is down to the decline of serious reading which of course gives you a different vocabulary than that from verbal or casual communication. I saw denigration used instead of degradation in the BET yesterday in a column by Mr Lee on the decline of the use of correct language due to texting.... He is an experienced journalist.

[Tripps]

Sorry - can't resist this. The most 'serious reader, I know just wrote alicited when he meant elicited. It can happen to the best of us.

[David Whipp]

Probably just a typo...(!) 'A' and 'E' have both worn off on my keyboard.

[Tripps]

Yes of course David - you are right.

I mentioned "existential" yesterday. Blow me - now Ian Brady has today described his awful crimes as an "existential experience". Let's hope that usage puts off others from using the word. I like it even less now.

[Stanley]

Yes, one of the consequences of going blind. Give me a break until I get my eye operations done.....

[Bruff]

Rammell.

I word I heard a lot in Sheffield. 'Stuff' is rammell, particularly cheap or rubbish stuff. So, if you got to the Central Market late all the good veg would have gone and you'd be left wi' all t' rammell.

Richard Broughton

[chinatyke]

A few ex-pats met for lunch today and I mentioned the word beck. There were 2 people from Australia, 2 from USA, 1 from Canada, 1 from Northern Ireland, 1 from Holland, 1 from New Zealand, and 3 from UK (Brighton, Cambridge, London) and a few from China. No-one knew the word. I was flabbergasted because I thought it was in common usage throughout the UK, but seemingly it is a northern word. The man from Holland guessed it because in Dutch there is the word becc meaning the same thing.

We used t' laik in beck when we were kids! They wouldn't understand that.

[PanBiker]

Beck jumping, a favourite pastime also when laikin out.

[hartley353]

Yes of course David - you are right.

I mentioned "existential" yesterday. Blow me - now Ian Brady has today described his awful crimes as an "existential experience". Let's hope that usage puts off others from using the word. I like it even less now.

My understanding of the word is that it is an experience that cannot be shared, lets hope that he is the final person to have that occurence.

[Tizer]

We still use `gallivanting' frequently. I'm disappointed to hear that the word `channel' is now being abused, so many of our words are going that way we soon won't be able to understand each other (or rather we will on OG but out there the ordinary folk won't be able to understand the trendy folk). Talking of words, I've just received an article from a Dutch colleague which he has submitted to a professional journal and wants me to review it and give my comments. It's a discourse on the hyphenation of words at the end of printed lines! I'll be telling him about the problem The Times has had with words split like this:
Arse-
enal
and this:
mans-
laughter
and this:
the-
rapist

Ian, beck jumping....many years ago I was sent on an outward bound course on Dartmoor. I was one of the smallest, least athletic and most cautious of the group and was very nervous about abseiling, tipping myself upside down in a canoe etc. But when it came to us being faced by needing to cross the River Dart I had to lead the way. It meant using steeping stones...but they were submerged just under the surface of the water and no-one else seemed willing to try them. I couldn't see what the fuss was about and just walked across - then everyone else followed. If there had been an alien spaceship watching from above they would have thought we were sheep!

[Stanley]

I've heard rammel but never used it or heard it up here. Many words not known in the southern half of England are from Norse roots, a consequence of the heavier settlement up here by Vikings.

[Tripps]

Another example of the modern usage of the word channel....

"First lady Michelle Obama on Saturday challenged young adults in South Africa to channel the hope that former President Nelson Mandela held while imprisoned for 27 years during racist white rule."

Does that mean anything? I doubt it.

[Tizer]

No it's meaningless. It's the usual double talk used by politicians and celebrities to impress the gullible!

[Stanley]

Private Eye do a factoid on garbled communication each week. They call it 'Birtspeak'.

[Cathy]

Thought this was funny...
MINISTRY MISPRINTS Oh dear! The Church Bulletin needed proof-reading before being sent out. Here are some of the blunders:

Don't let worry kill you - let the church help.
Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet on Thursday. Please use the back door.
Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our community.
The church will host an evening of fine dining and gracious hostility.
The senior choir invites any member of the congregation who enjoy sinning to join the choir.

What a difference a word makes,

[Stanley]

Too right Cath. I love bloopers and typos!
I had an involuntary ejaculation yesterday when I spilled some coffee. Without thinking I said "shit and derision". It struck me that this is something I have picked up somewhere but can't for the life of me understand how it came about. Anyone else ever heard it?

[Tizer]

For anyone of a sensitive disposition or lack of English language, `ejaculation' = `an abrupt emphatic utterance or exclamation' (Collins dictionary) as well as the other meaning!

I heard a BBC journalist this morning referring to `the enormity of Andy Murray's victory'. This is an unfortunate mistake because enormity means `the quality or character of being outrageous', or `an act of great wickedness; an atrocity'. It has crept into informal use recently to mean `vastness of size or extent' but this is because of confusion with `enormousness'. Mis-use of `enormity' is one of the things Oliver Kamm campaigns against in The Times; I've mentioned elsewhere how Kamm is quite flexible in his attitude to things like split infinitives but he's concerned to preserve the specific meanings of words. And quite right too, otherwise our language and communication become less precise.

[Stanley]

Quite right Tiz. I knew that some people would automatically assign a different meaning.....
You are also right about the value of flexibility in syntax but at the same time preserving the use of words in their original context. For instance, ejaculate!

[Tizer]

I had a friend in Blackburn whose father was old-fashioned and also tended to mix up his words. I seem to recall the father in the 1950s saying that it was better now for fighter pilots because if anything went wrong with the plane they could ejaculate. (The father also told people his son worked with commuters...he was a programmer.)

[Cathy]

Not sure if we have had this bit of info before

The word dictionary comes from Dictionarius, a short work written about the year 1200 by the medieval English grammarian John of Garland but it wasn't a dictionary as we know it. He wrote, in Latin, lists of trades and tradesman for the use of his students at the University of Paris. The earliest meaning of Dictionarius was 'collection of words and phrases' from Latin dictio 'word'.

[Stanley]

On a summer's morning when there was some mist of fine drizzle about my mother used to say not to worry, it was just 'Pride of the morning'. Anyone else heard that saying?

[PanBiker]

My dad used to say it also.

[Tizer]

Yesterday I described the swifts over our house as `going hell for leather'. Where does that phrase come from, I wonder?

[Stanley]

Bit like 'hell in a hand basket', runs well off the tongue. No idea if there is any firm origin. Webster, Morris and Brewer are no help.

[rossylass]

Think it's a play on words... L ('ell) for leather. May be wrong though.