CabbieBlog

Lost for words

Doctor Samuel Johnson must have found this when, after working for nine years from a little house in Gough Square, in 1755 he published the world’s first major English dictionary.

Researchers on the BBC’s Planet Word interviewed 2,000 people and discovered that the English language is continually evolving. Many new words have been invented some of which some are just abbreviations the result of “text speak”, while equally many are falling from favour. So as a last Hurrah the text below includes the top 20 which have fallen from favour, and some in the most at risk category.

It was spiffing to receive felicitations from Melissa at Smitten by Britain which lauded praise on me concerning some bally guest post written by yours truly concerning the tomfoolery we Londoners engage in just to hail a cab.

Some of that posts readers might have thought that I was writing balderdash for no raconteur am I like that cad Stephen Fry, but verily it is arcane to many Americans the polite way that we, in London, hail a cab compared with the rumbuncious way they do so in New York.

Not wishing to appear a laggard in the world of social media I’ve found that tweeting @CabbieBlog a swell way to engage with a wider audience regaling them of the dopsy-daisy world of the cabbie. But while I didn’t trouser any dosh writing about the shenanigans of driving a cab for Smitten by Britain, so I want to quash that diabolical idea that I received some remuneration while engaging with the myriad of Colonial Cousins we have across the water.

Now our language is betwixt writing long and complicated words and the abbreviated text speak now used on Twitter when sending salutations to each other across Cyberspace. For experts have found that texting has smitten many words from our lexicon.

Cripes text speak has now become the norm for many even in their verbal language, such as lol (laughing out loud), jel (jealous) and soz (sorry), the malaise when communicating with one’s betrothed via a mobile phone using just 140 characters makes many Old English words , well . . . knackered.

The survey found that almost three-quarters believe longer words have become outdated since social networking became de rigueur, and the English grammar of P. G. Wodehouse is obsolete. Although not all Twitterers have abandoned their belief in good English, only last week I was taken to task for my bad grammar whilst using the allotted 140 characters, and all that in the same week that the bookseller Waterstone’s dropped its apostrophe. So here are the top 20 forgotten words:

1. Bally: A British word from 1885 which is a euphemism for bloody

2. Laggard: An 18th Century word to describe someone who lags behind or responds slowly

3. Felicitations: From the noun of action felicitate, you would use this word to express congratulations

4. Rambunctious: Boisterous or unruly, the word is believed to have originated in 1830

5. Verily: From Middle English simply means true or in truth

6. Salutations: A welcome greeting

7. Betwixt: Originated before 950, and means neither the one nor the other

8. Lauded: From the Latin laudare, to praise

9. Arcane: Known or understood by very few

10. Raconteur: A person skilled in telling stories, originated in the 19th Century, from the French verb, raconter, to tell

11. Cad: An ill-bred man, originates from 19 Century, derived from the word Caddie

12. Betrothed: The person to whom one is engaged

13. Cripes: Twentieth Century slang for an expression of surprise, euphemistic for ‘Christ!’

14. Malaise: A vague or unfocused feeling of mental uneasiness

15. Quash: To put down or suppress completely; quell

16. Swell: Originates before 900 from the Middle English verb swellen, meanings include the verb to inflate and an adjective which describes if something is excellent

17. Balderdash: From the 1590s it was originally a jumbled mix of liquors (milk and beer, beer and wine, etc.), before being transferred in 1670s to ‘senseless jumble of words’

18. Smite: To strike, deal a blow

19. Spiffing: From the word spiff, meaning well-dressed, means superb

20. Tomfoolery: Foolish behaviour

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