Stone the Crows: Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang edited by John Ayto and John Simpson (Oxford University Press) Foyle’s Philavery: A Treasury of Unusual Words collected by Christopher Foyle (Chambers)
Gallimaufry by Michael Quinion (Oxford University Press)
There are weighty words, attached to weighty concepts, in New South African Keywords. But words need not always be “heavy” as in “to designate something profound, serious, etc.”
Take POTUS, for example, which can also be rendered as Potus. This nifty noun is a winning space-saver, if not necessarily a comprehension-enhancer. Of the Potus, though, we read, see and hear regularly. After January 20 2009 we shall in all likelihood be even better acquainted with the new Potus, Barack Obama, at present the Potus-elect. As acronyms go, Potus for President of the United States has brevity, if not wit or charm.
You can discover Potus and thousands of other examples of contemporary slang in the eminently dipintoable and ultimately unputdownable Stone the Crows, the new, second edition of slang words that bear the Oxford stamp of approval. It is from this handsome, small hardback that the above definition of “heavy” derives.
A perfect vademecum, Stone the Crows provides endless delectation and edification. British, American, Australian and New Zealand slang predominate, but go to the Ps and you’ll find “phata phata” well defined and illustrated by an example from André Brink’s writing. Whether the late Miriam Makeba would agree with the “period of usage” pointer — 1977 onwards — is moot.
In the introduction to the first edition, reproduced here, Ayto and Simpson emphasise how words cross the great divide from slang to respectability, or the other way round. As an example, they note: “arse — was the normal word for ‘buttocks’ in the Old and Middle English period; only thereafter did it begin to be perceived as ‘rude’.”
There is only elegance in “callipygian”, an adjective defined as “having buttocks that are beautifully proportioned or finely developed”. This word hails from a natural companion volume, Foyle’s Philavery, in which the chairman of Foyles shares the fruits of his particular form of word-collecting, begun in 1990.
Philavery is a new word coined by Foyle’s mother-in-law during a Scrabble contest and is defined in his book as “an idiosyncratic collection of uncommon and pleasing words”. Here you may find “bunco or bunko” — a noun or verb for “swindle”. If the word bug has bitten, you may cross-refer to Stone the Crows, where you’ll find a third spelling, “banco”.
All these odd but beguiling words were once new. Neologisms that failed to make their way into the currency of English are poignantly dealt with in the final chapter of Gallimaufry, subtitled A hodgepodge of our vanishing vocabulary. Despite its verve, Gallimaufry is valedictory, chronicling as it does vanished and vanishing words, and with them ways that humankind used to eat, drink, dress, have fun, heal (and heel) itself, and get around.
Farewells aside, I like to think I listened to the Potus-elect’s post-election speech on a wireless, not a radio.