Spectator

Here's an article by me located in today's Spectator.

TCB

The Oxford Dictionaries blog has a post today on the song Respect as sung by Aretha Franklin. I addressed the same song in 2009. Their post is here, and here is mine.

18 Words

Just a link today to this post on 18 words that should never have become obsolete.

The Rise and Fall of Middle England

As usual after a budget, there has been much talk of Middle England. However, this exotic place didn't exist, according to the OED, until 1982. The adjective middle had, of course, been yoked to the noun englandular before, but only geographically. It meant the Midlands.

Then in the 80s Middle England and the Middle Englander emerged (there had been occasional 70s references to Middle Britain). The whole idea seems to have been imported from Middle America.

Anyway, I went off to google ngrams to see what they made of the concept, and it's really rather striking. In 1993, Middle England suddenly took off. It rocketed. It exploded. It careered upwards until 2002, when it suddenly started falling away.

This blog does not do political analysis. But I suggest you take a look at the graph yourself by clicking here.

Budget and Bilge

A budget was, originally, a little leather pouch in which you carried your money. The word first popped into English in the fifteenth century. Before that it was living in France as bougette, a diminutive form of bouge, or leather bag. Bouge came from the Latin bulga, which also meant leather bag.

However, the Norman French took that Latin bulga on in a different way. They had boulge. And from that the English, in about 1200 got the word bulge. Bulge also meant leather bag, but soon it started to mean... well... bulge.

However, when sailors referred to the bulge of a ship's hull, they called it a bilge. Then, when sailors referred to the nasty rotten water that collected at the bottom of a ship's hull, they called that bilge water, or just bilge.

None of which has anything to do with Bulgarians.

I should probably mention that, as ever, the Inky Fool has no political opinions and believes in government by whim.

Or it may be a small budgerigar.

Pontificating on Bridges

As a new pontiff has been elected, I feel it is my duty to pontificate, which of course means to speak with pompous authority, like a pontiff. Originally, pontificate simply meant "to perform the functions of a pontiff", hence Francis I was pontificating on the balcony.

The Pontifex Maximus was actually the title of the chief pagan priest of Rome. When the empire converted the title was simply moved over to the chief Christian priest. This means that the current Pope has a title that was once held by the Emperor Augustus two thousand years ago.

Pontifex itself means bridge-builder in Latin, perhaps because the priest built a bridge between heaven and earth, or between gods and men, or over the Tiber.

Twankleten

The Wurzels

I recently bought West Country English (for the lovely price of £2.50). It's a short collection of words that are, apparently, still in use in the west of England. It includes the exquisite word twankleten, which means melancholy.

Never again shall I be unhappy. I shall instead be twankleten.