Professor Yaffle

Just a little something for those who remember Bagpuss: a yaffle is, or was, a Kentish dialect term for the Green Woodpecker.

A Churl on a Gentleman

For as long as I can remember I have known the old drinker's rhyme:

Beer and wine:
Feeling fine.
Wine and beer:
Oh dear.

There are even equivalents in other languages, although I can't now remember what they are. However, I did find a rather lovely alternative in Brewer's: Don't put a churl on a gentleman.

Churl is an old word for a fool, and before that it meant peasant, and before that, way back in the days of Old Norse when it was spelled karl, it just meant man. That's also where we get the names Carl, Charles, and (oddly given that it means man) Caroline.

Even more oddly, Charlemagne is a variant of Charles/Carl and because of that the Czech word for king is kral, the Polish is krol, and the Lithuanian is karalius. So a churl is, etymologically, both a man and a woman, a peasant and a king.

And, for what it's worth, I've always said:

Beer, wine and whisky:
Feeling frisky.

Would it be churlish to point out that this song is about an eleven year old?

Ossian, Oscar, and Ocker

Back in the eighteenth century, European culture was obsessed with the idea of the noble savage, particularly the Celtic variety. They loved the idea of some kilt-clad warrior striding around a misty moor or foggy fen, playing lonely bagpipes and gazing down the glen.

There was a slight problem, though: no actual account of a noble Scotsmen had ever been found*. So a wily poet called James Macpherson decided to make one up. He claimed to have discovered and translated an ancient Scots epic about a chap called Ossian. It was a complete fraud, and those parts of it that I've read are terrible, but it was the fraud that the literary world wanted, and they lapped it up.

Goethe loved it and mentioned it in Werther. Napoleon was so obsessed with the poem that he carried a copy with him everywhere. He even insisted that his godson (who later became king of Sweden) be renamed after one of the characters in the poem, who had the then obsolete moniker of Oscar.

Thus did the name Oscar suddenly become popular all over Britain and Scandinavia.

A few decades later an Irish nationalist called Jane decided to give her son the silliest possible old Celtic name she could imagine to fit in with her political principles. So she called him Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde.

Oscar Wilde was convicted of Uranian lust in 1895 and the name Oscar took a bit of a hit in its popularity, but only in Britain. In Scandinavia Oscars thrived. And in Australia.

In fact, Oscar was such a common Australian name that when, in the sixties, a comedian called Ron Frazer wanted to create a character who would embody all the quintessential Australian virtues of boorishness and barflying, he called him Oscar, or more precisely he used the Australian shortening of the name: Ocker. Here is a video of Ocker in action.




As you can see Ocker isn't actually that bad a fellow. However, the word has moved on. Most Australians today are unaware of the original comedy sketches and use the word ocker (uncapitalised) as an adjective to refer to the most boorish, beer-swilling, prawn-barbying, becorked-hatted bush-whacker imaginable. It's the Australian equivalent of redneck.

It's therefore an immensely useful word if you wish to abuse Australians in words of their own invention, and who doesn't want to do that?

Ocker Oscar

*This is unchanged.

Uncle Sam of the U.S.

I sometimes wonder as I post these things, whether everybody else knows this stuff already. But to continue with our theme of uncles, I never realised that Uncle Sam's initials are U.S., or United States; and though nobody is utterly sure of the origin, the OED says

The suggestion that it arose as a facetious interpretation of the letters U.S. is as old as the first recorded instances, and later statements connecting it with different government officials of the name of Samuel appear to be unfounded.

So there. I set off to do a bit of research and started reading an 1816 book called The Adventures of Uncle Sam in Search of his Lost Honour, but aside from the phrase "Thus ejaculated the chief steward" it's terribly tedious. It does, though, have a nice bit at the beginning about how important it is for a book to be printed, otherwise:

Deeds of fame hard earned in iron fields of argument flutter on to future times, like the treaties of savages, on the tongues of women, mutilated, distorted, exaggerated and defrauded of half their beauty...

Which seems a terribly ungentlemanly attitude towards the tongues of women. Speaking of books being in print, did I mention that my book - The Etymologicon - is being published in three and a bit week's time? Did I mention that it's filled with all sorts of fascinating and entrancing etymological tales? Did I mention that you can pre-order it from this site with free shipping to anywhere in the world?

I did? Oh well.

This says "Friends-Democrats, Uncle Sam and Ivan". It's from a Tsarist pro-American propaganda campaign that started in 1917, and was then cut short.

The Inky Sage

Not so much a post today, as a photograph. On the right you will see a picture of the great man Laszlo Biro. Biro (1899-1985) was a Hungarian journalist who noticed that newspaper ink dried more quickly than the ink in fountain pens. However, it was too viscous to put the one inside the other. So he and his brother came up with the ballpoint which is known today as the biro, although technically Biro should be capped up as, like Hoover or Photoshop, it remains a proprietary name.

As a strange point of linguistic imperialism, Biro was bought out by a Frenchman called Marcel Bich, who started manufacturing Bic Biros. I once bought a Bic Biro and noticed that it said on the side Made in France. What amused me was that this was a French company making a French product and I had bought the Biro in France. But it still said Made in France in English.

Anglophone Saxophones

The English-speaking world is anglophone because England (or Angle-land) is named after the Angles who invaded along with the Saxons when the ages were Very Dark Indeed. But what of the poor dear Saxons? Why didn't they get a phone?

Well, they sort of did. You see, the surname Sax or Saxe means Saxon, and does all across northwest Europe. So Adolphe Sax (1814-1894) must have come by a straight male line of descent from a Saxon. So when he patented the saxophone in 1846, the anglophone world was finally reunited with its etymological twin.

Anglophone and saxophone.

Lohan

Being an up-to-the-decade aficionado of pop culture, I was intrigued to discover the existence of a creature called "Lindsay Lohan". Apparently, he/she is terribly famous. Luckily, I didn't need to find out anything more about this creature as, being a clever chap, I already know what a lohan is.

Lohan is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as A Buddhist saint of the highest rank. It's somebody who has achieved the highest level of enlightenment and freedom from suffering and desire*.

As we know, the OED is never wrong. Or, at least, it carries such authority that, when it is a little mistaken, it is the world that is corrected.

A topless lohan

*Well technically it depends what sort of Buddhism you're into. A lohan is the same as an arhat.

Nothing to do with ABBA

A fellow was shot today in Abbottabad. It may have been yesterday. I'm not sure. What I can say for certain is that it is no coincidence that Abbottabad sounds like the English word Abbot, for the town is named after an English general named James Abbott.

This brings us to the central mystery of the shooting in Abbottabad: how did the surname Abbott come about. 'Simple!' I hear you cry. 'One of his ancestors must have been an abbot.'

Not so simple. The earliest Mr Abbot (Alwoldus Abbas) is recorded in 1111 AD, by which time priests were absolutely and completely banned from getting married and making babies. Of course, they still did have babies, but the babies were illegitimate.

Abbot as a surname probably arose not as a description of a profession (like Smith or Baker), but as a nickname, presumably for somebody rather pious and fatherly.

For abbot, ultimately means father. It comes from the Latin abbatem, which is the accusative of abbas, which comes from the Greek abbas, which comes from the Aramaic word abba.

How did an Aramaic word get into Latin? From Jesus, or more specifically from Mark's Gospel. Jesus would have spoken Aramaic, but the Gospels were written in Greek. Occasionally, though, the evangelists, for some reason, felt it necessary to mention the original word* that Jesus had used. For example:

And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.

So abba was an Aamaic honorific meaning Father. How Mr Laden felt about living in a place named after a Christian priest and a Jewish father is unknown. I hope that if the special forces were able to get one answer out of him, it would have been that.

None of which has anything at all to do with the Swedish pop maestros ABBA, who are named after a Swedish fish-canning company.

Since 1838

*Well, sort of. The quote actually comes from the agony in the garden, of which there were no waking witnesses. So, like me, it's either odd or inspired.

The Mark of Smith

Cain, as in Cain and Abel, means smith. So the second man on earth was Mr Smith.

It rather changes the feel of the thing, when the murderer has a common-or-garden name like that. The Mark of Smith, doesn't sound quite as harrowing. Raising Smith seems quite a civilised upbringing.

Incidentally, Cain had a yellow beard, symbolic of his villainy. It's mentioned in The Merry Wives of Windsor:

MISTRESS QUICKLY Does he not wear a great round beard, like a glover's paring-knife?


SIMPLE No, forsooth: he hath but a little wee face, with a little yellow beard, a Cain-coloured beard.

It should be noted that the Hebrew q-y-n could mean Smith, and could also mean he who was created. I am following Sir James Frazer here, which I rarely do.

As Jack Charlton asked when told to play in goal for England: "Am I my brother's keeper?"

An all-too-common scene

Fluke

A Word A Day, has just put up the word fluke. Fluke has several meanings: it can be a funny little fish, the point of an anchor, or a stroke of luck. This latter is put down by AWAD as "of uncertain etymology" (1857).

The OED is a little more helpful. It says that fluke was originally a lucky shot in billiards, and suggests that it might have something to do with the Whitby dialect word fluke, meaning guess, although that wasn't recorded until 1876, so it's probably the other way round.

This all made me curious.

I chased up the OED's first citation of fluke. It's from Notes and Queries and is actually about the origin of the word fluke:

Billiards. — In playing at billiards, if a player makes a hazard, & c. which he did not play for, it is often said that he made a crow. It may be derived from the expression of " Shot at a pigeon and killed a crow". Another term is, " He made a flook (or fluke)." It seems to me that, as there are two flooks to the anchor of a ship, and as when the anchor shall be dropped either flook may take hold of the ground (as both do not, so that it is accidental which takes hold), the flook, at playing at billiards, may have reference to the same cause (accident). The favour of an answer will oblige.


A Billiard Player.


Oriental Club.

Good, but not good enough for the OED.

So I did some sniffling around of my own. It turns out that the billiard player at the Oriental Club and the OED have both missed an easy pot: namely a comic novel of 1853, four years before Notes and Queries. It's called The Adventures of Mr Verdant Green, An Oxford Freshman by Cuthbert Bede (well, in truth, it's not by Cuthbert Bede, that was just the pen-name of Edward Bradley, but we'll let that pass); and the relevant passage is herefollowing:

Besides these out-of-door sports, our hero also devoted a good deal of his time to acquiring in-door games, being quickly initiated into the mysteries of billiards, and plunging headlong into pool. It was in the billiard-room that Verdant first formed his acquaintance with Mr. Fluke of Christ Church, well known to be the best player in the University, and who, if report spoke truly, always made his five hundred a year by his skill in the game. Mr. Fluke kindly put our hero "into the way to become a player;" and Verdant soon found the apprenticeship was attended with rather heavy fees.

Now, there are two possibilities here: the first is that the slang word fluke was already around in 1853 and the author wanted to give his character a funny name. This seems unlikely. It's hardly a good joke to use a word so obscure that it had never appeared in print before.

The other possibility is that the word came from the novel. But is this possible? Was it an influential tome? You need to sell a lot of copies to get a word into the language. Did anyone read Verdant Green?

Yes!

According to the DNB:

The first edition of The Adventures of Mr Verdant Green sold out in Oxford on the first day and the continuing success of the three narratives was affirmed when the outright copyright was acquired by James Blackwood in 1858 and a collected cloth-bound edition was issued. (By 1870 it had sold 100,000 copies.)

So fluke, meaning a lucky shot at billiards, could have come from the once-famous, now-forgotten novel. Or was it just a coincidence?

Then I thought of a simple test. If it was a comedy name derived from billiards slang, there wouldn't be any real Mr Flukes (reality tends to elude me rather a lot, like a bitter ex-girlfriend). The name would be like Gradgrind or Micawber or Doasyouwouldbedoneby.

But if it was a real surname then it would be probable to the point of persuasion that the flukey chance derives from a pre-existent surname.

With quivering fingers I Googled the words Fluke surname.

Millions of the damn fellows. So far as I can tell from the Internet you can't move for real people called Fluke. My absolute favourite Fluke is John M. Fluke Jr. who runs the family financial business.

Now, I'm sure that John Fluke is a good and competent man, in fact he must be super-competent to get anybody on earth to invest in a company called Fluke Capital Management.

All of which convinces me that fluke, the chance, comes from Mr Fluke of Christ Church.

Mr Fluke is back right, smoking and chalking.

Passing the Buck

Fool that I am, I had always thought that the buck in passing the buck or the buck stops here was a dollar. Of course, when you think about it, that hardly makes sense. How would passing somebody a dollar shift responsibility? I probably thought that it was a dollar only because the elaphine alternative, that you were passing a male deer, was even less congruous. But that's etymologically closer.

Bucks have horns. The horns can be chopped off (it's best to kill the buck first, or at least get it drunk). Why would you chop off a buck's horn? To make a beautiful knife handle, of course. And once you have your buckhorn knife you can use it to cut things, stab people or mark the dealer in a game of poker.

The question of whose turn it is to deal is terribly important as the dealer can fiddle the cards, choose the form of poker, and has the advantage of placing the last bet. So in the saloons of the wild west and untamed Occident he needed to be clearly marked. This was done by stabbing a knife into the table in front of him. When his deal was done he would pass the buck(horn) to the next dealer.

Here is Mark Twain describing a conversation between a priest and a "rough" in the 1860s:

"Are you the duck that runs the gospel-mill next door?"


"Am I the-pardon me, I believe I do not understand?"


With another sigh and a half-sob, Scotty rejoined:


"Why you see we are in a bit of trouble, and the boys thought maybe you would give us a lift, if we'd tackle you - that is, if I've got the rights of it and you are the head clerk of the doxology-works next door."


"I am the shepherd in charge of the flock whose fold is next door."


"The which?"


"The spiritual adviser of the little company of believers whose sanctuary adjoins these premises."

Scotty scratched his head, reflected a moment, and then said:


"You ruther hold over me, pard. I reckon I can't call that hand. Ante and pass the buck."


"How? I beg pardon. What did I understand you to say?"


"Well, you've ruther got the bulge on me. Or maybe we've both got the bulge somehow. You don't smoke me and I don't smoke you. You see, one of the boys has passed in his checks and we want to give him a good send-off, and so the thing I'm on now is to roust out somebody to jerk a little chin-music for us and waltz him through handsome."


"My friend, I seem to grow more and more bewildered. Your observations are wholly incomprehensible to me. Cannot you simplify them in some way? At first I thought perhaps I understood you, but I grope now. Would it not expedite matters if you restricted yourself to categorical statements of fact unencumbered with obstructing accumulations of metaphor and allegory?"


[In case you're wondering, Scotty's friend has died and he wants the priest to deliver the eulogy at the funeral]

Anyway, a chap called Fred Canfil visited the warden of a prison in Oklahoma and saw a sign above the desk saying The Buck Stops Here. He liked it so much that he had a copy made and gave it to his boss Harry S. Truman who put it up in his office.

Which leads us, dear reader, to one overwhelming question: what was Harry S. Truman's full name?

I'll give you a clue: it's the same principle as Ulysses S. Grant and H. Norman Schwarzkopf.

Hogwarts, Hobbits and Priority

I was leafing through Finnegans Wake on the lavatory (the price of Andrex being what it is) and I came across this little passage:

Are you right there, Michael, are you right? do you think you can hold on by sitting tight? Well, of course, it's awful angelous. Still I don't feel it's so dangelous. Ay, I'm right here, Nickel and I'll write. Singing the top line why it suits me mikey fine. But, yaghags hogwarts and arrahquinonthiance, it's the muddest think that was ever heard dump since Eggsmather got smothered in the plap of the pfan.

J.K. Rowling, j'accuse! This proves what most literate readers have always suspected: that Harry Potter is nothing more than a thinly-veiled reworking of James Joyce's masterpiece.

The word Hogwarts also pops up in the Molesworth books where it is the title of a play that Nigel writes in Latin, the script of which consists pretty much of the word Eheu, meaning alas.

Of course, it's the second simplest thing in the world to look at the phacochoerus africanus, or warthog, and flip the name around in your head until it fits with hogwash. This has been done thrice: by Joyce in 1939, by Geoffrey Willans in 1953, and by J.K. Rowling in 1997.

Just so you know: warthogs have funny, wartish protruberances on their faces, and hogwash is the kitchen leftovers that are fed to pigs.

A much more peculiar question of priority comes from John Aislabie Denham, who was a folklorist in the first half of the nineteenth century. He wrote a list of mythical creatures that ran thus:

...ghosts, boggles, bloody-bones, spirits, demons, ignis fatui, brownies, bugbears, blackdogs, spectres, shellycoats, scarecrows, witches, wizards, barguests, Robin-Goodfellows, hags, night-bats, scrags, breaknecks, fantasms, hobgoblins, hobhoulards, boggy-boes, dobbies, hob-thrusts, fetches, kelpies, warlocks, mock-beggars, mum-pokers, Jemmy-burties, urchins, satyrs, pans, fauns, sirens, tritons, centaurs, calcars, nymphs, imps, incubuses, spoorns, men-in-the-oak, hell-wains, fire-drakes, kit-a-can-sticks, Tom-a-Tuesdays, Elf-fires, Gyl-burnt-tales, knockers, elves, rawheads, Meg-with-the-Wads, old-shocks, ouphs, pad-foots, pixies, pictrees, giants, dwarfs, Tom-pokers, tutgots, snapdragons, sprets, spunks, conjurers, thurses, spurns, tantarrabobs, swaithes, tints, tod-lowries, Jack-in-the-Wads, mormos, changelings, redcaps, yeth-hounds, colt-pixies, Tom Thumbs, black-bugs, boggarts, scar-bugs, shag-foals, hodge-pochers, hob thrushes, bugs, bull-beggars, bygorns, bolls, caddies, bomen, brags, wraiths, waffs, flay-boggarts, fiends, gallytrots, imps, gytrashes, patches, hob-and-lanthorns, gringes, boguests, bonelesses, Peg-powlers, pucks, fays, kidnappers, gallybeggars, hudskins, nickers, madcaps, trolls, robinets, friars' lanthorns, silkies, cauld-lads, death-hearses, goblins, hob-headlesses, bugaboos, kows, or cowes, nickies, nacks necks, waiths, miffies, buckies, ghouls, sylphs, guests, swarths, freiths, freits, gy-carlins, Gyre-carling, pigmies, chittifaces, nixies, Jinny-burnt-tails, dudmen, hell-hounds, dopple-gangers, boggleboes, bogies, redmen, portunes, grants, hobbits, hobgoblins, brown-men, cowies, dunnies, wirrikows, alholdes, mannikins, follets, korreds, lubberkins, cluricauns, kobolds, leprechauns, kors, mares, korreds, puckles, korigans, sylvans, succubuses, blackmen, shadows, banshees, lian-hanshees, clabbernappers, Gabriel-hounds, mawkins, doubles, corpse lights or candles, scrats, mahounds, trows, gnomes, sprites, fates, fiends, sibyls, nicknevins, whitewomen, fairies, thrummy-caps, cutties, and nisses, and apparitions of every shape, make, form, fashion, kind and description...

The odd thing is that that was published in 1859 and there is no evidence at all that Tolkien ever saw it. Hobbits don't appear anywhere else until John Ronald Reuel published The Hobbit, or There and Back Again in 1937.

It's impossible to know what the hobbit that Denham recorded might have been. Presumably the hob is just a shortening for Robin, as in hobgoblin (which appears twice in the list). Robin and therefore Hob was a popular name with demons like Robin Goodfellow. However, the bit is lost to history. Perhaps it just meant small, in which case a hobbit would be a small demon, the infernal answer to a godling.

Incidentally, if that list made you curious (and I recommend reading it through) Wikipedia has it up with lots of links here.

Fiat justitia, ruat copyright!

She Who Must Be The Grand Panjandrum (BA Oxon)

Last night, as the clock struck twelve, I was busily proof-reading when a chap asked me what exactly a Grand Panjandrum is.

There was an eighteenth century actor called Charles Macklin who boasted that he could memorise any speech after hearing it only once. Another eighteenth century actor called Samuel Foote, who had played Othello to Macklin's Iago, decided to write an unmemorisable speech for Macklin. He came up with this:

So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. "What! No soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyalies, and the grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the game of catch-as-catch-can till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.

Perhaps Foote wrote it down. History is mute. Though the speech was composed in the 1750s it wasn't published until 1825 and the authorities seem authoritatively confused as to how the challenge was put. The important thing is that it's a passage that Lewis Carroll would have been proud of. No decent human being could read the words "So he died" without at least smiling.

In conclusion, Grand Panjandrums may be recognised by the little round button at the top.

The Grand Panjandrum, though, should never be confused with the Great Panjandrum, which was a (slightly insane) explosive device invented during the Second World War and never used. It was called a panjandrum in reference to the gunpowder running out at the heels of the boots.

My conversation then turned to She Who Must Be Obeyed, which my interlocutor believed came from Rumpole. She comes from the novel She by H. Rider Haggard. (I always pictured Rider Haggard as a gaunt man on a horse. I was miserably disappointed to find he was a healthy looking fellow with a beard). She is a novel about a couple of jolly brave Victorian fellows who find a secret kingdom in Africa ruled by an immortal and intolerably beautiful lady whom the natives refer to as She Who Must Be Obeyed. She falls in love with one of them and it all ends in tears and wrinkles.

She is one of the most extraordinary books ever written. In essence it is the greatest myth composed in modern times: the sort of story that takes a seat in the reader's soul. In execution it is a rather silly ripping yarn: the sort of thing I loved when I was twelve. Imagine the myth of Oedipus with Biggles in the main part.

Like the Bellman and bad news, I like to work in groups of three. So I shall leave you with the opening paragraph of another African adventure: Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh.

'We, Seth, Emperor of Azania, Chief of the Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas, Bachelor of the Arts of Oxford University, being in this the twenty-fourth year of our life, summoned by the wisdom of Almighty God and the unanimous voice of our people to the throne of our ancestors, do hereby proclaim...' Seth paused in his dictation and gazed out across the harbour where in the fresh breeze of early morning the last dhow was setting sail for the open sea. 'Rats,' he said; 'stinking curs. They are all running away.'

Not haggard

Indiana Jones and Stephen Dedalus

I am convinced that a fictional character should have one dull name and one extraordinary name. It doesn't matter which way around.

David Copperfield

Sherlock Holmes

Keith Talent

Indiana Jones

Oliver Twist

Winston Smith

Stephen Dedalus

Luke Skywalker

There are exceptions. A deliberate dullness may pay, and if the book is fascinating the name will be coloured like the dyer's hand. Try to guess the name blanked out in the following interview. I guarantee that you've heard it a thousand times.

I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find, 'BLANK BLANK' was much better than something more interesting, like 'Peregrine Carruthers.' Exotic things would happen to and around him, but he would be a neutral figure — an anonymous, blunt instrument wielded by a government department.

The answer will be beneath the line break, so you'll have to click on read more.

There are never any real rules in the world, even the rules of physics break down as you get back before the big bang (gravity was reversed, matter outran light). There are none in writing. The only true laws are those of cricket and those of the Medes and the Persians which did not change. But most real names don't work in realist novels. They seem too studiedly normal: too realistic to be true. I mean... well here's what I mean. I just tried to think up normal first name - thought Geoffrey - normal second name - thought Robinson and then realised that there is a Geoffrey Robinson, he's an MP and he was involved in a scandal and he used to own something-or-another and his name just wouldn't work in a novel. Reality rarely convinces.

But Jeremiah Johnson or Mary Poppins?

Incidentally, Dickens was of course the greatest namer that literature has ever known I have some Dickens names that I doubt you know. You see, the cause of Polish independence was terribly fashionable in Victorian London and Dickens was a member of The Literary Association of the Friends of Poland. He used to go to meetings. But, as he complained in a letter, the meetings were often preposterous with people pretending a knowledge of Polish politics that none of them actually had, the speaker would be

talking about celebrated Polish Women, and saying “but when I mention the hallowed name of Titchibowski – or of Lobski – or of Pastocrontik – or of Sploshock – or of Screweyzlunskifi, that wife and mother” – and everybody professing to roar with enthusiasm at every name, as if they knew all about it!



Have you guessed the name yet? Then click on read more.

Unfortunate Names

WATCHDOG ATTACKS BALLS

That's what it said in the Evening Standard. How was I to remember that Ed Balls is the secretary for children of somesuch and that watchdog means something about people who observe standards? It will be a terrible day for headline writers when Balls, Darling et al head off to the great press conference in the sky.

The name should not, though, debar Balls from Downing Street. Kohl, as in Helmut Kohl, means cabbage in German. Indeed, our Teutonic cousins have a saying, Schöne Worte machen den Kohl nicht fett, which literally means fine words grease no cabbages and is the equivalent to that mysterious English proverb Fine words butter no parsnips.

Caesar, from which we derive Kaiser and Czar, meant hairy.

Cicero meant wart.

Hello, Mr Wart