The Horologicon: A Day's Jaunt through the Lost Words of the English Language by Mark Forsyth Page A
Authors: Mark Forsyth
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anybody ever tells you about the enthusiasm and ecstasy of the early Christians. Indeed, if there were any justice in this world or the next, Eutychus would by now be the patron saint of people who doze off during sermons.
There are all sorts of precise and technical words for exactly how somebody might bore you. For example, Henry Cockeram’s
English Dictionarie
of 1623 has the word
obganiate
, which he defines as ‘to trouble one with often repeating of one thing’, and which comes from the Latin for ‘growl’. So once the same point has been made for the umpteenth time in the umpteenth different way, you can nod and murmur ‘Obganiation’ as though it weren’t rude.
If the obganiation comes down to the repetition of a particular word – like ‘teamwork’, ‘delivery’, or ‘chryselephantine’ – it becomes
battology
. Battology is named after an ancient Greekking called Battus, who founded the city of Cyrene but is remembered in the English language only for the fact that he had a stammer. A word can be battologised so often that it relinquishes all meaning or significance and becomes a pure series of sounds that flutter around the meeting table. This is called
semantic satiation
, or ‘lapse of meaning’.
But it is not merely repetition that annoys: there’s some talk that is pointless in the first place. One can, for example, speculate with neither fruit nor point about how a client might react to something that will never happen, or where the company will be in twenty years’ time. Such pointless speculation is technically known as
mataeology
, and such speculators as
mataeologians
. 1 And though this term of abuse is usually applied to theologians, it is as rife in the corporation as the cathedral.
Listening
In all this, the important thing is to look as though you’re listening. If you are actually listening, that’s even better, but let us start with simple goals. Evelyn Waugh, in his later years, used to have an ear trumpet. It probably wasn’t even necessary, but he would hold it conspicuously to his shell-like during conversations, and, when he was bored, would just as conspicuously put it back in his pocket, sometimes while you were in mid-sentence. This is a Bad Tactic, unless you own the company.
Muchbetter is the method adopted by the actor Peter Lorre when he had fled the Nazis and managed to get a meeting with Alfred Hitchcock in London. Lorre knew no English, but as Hitchcock was remarkably enamoured of the sound of his own voice this was not a problem. When Lorre had to speak, he said ‘Yes’. For the rest of the time:
I had heard that [Hitchcock] loved to tell stories and so I watched him like a hawk and when I was of the opinion he had just told the punch line of a story I broke out in such laughter that I almost fell off my chair.
If you take this method and replace laughing with nodding, you have achieved all you really need to do in the morning meeting: you have become
nod-crafty
.
Nod-crafty is defined in the OED as ‘Given to nodding the head with an air of great wisdom’. And once you notice nod-crafties, they’re everywhere. Those who are paid to interview people on television are notoriously nod-crafty. Indeed, as many interviews are conducted with only one camera, which is pointed at the interviewee, they then have to set everything up again for a second series of shots that show nothing but the interviewer nodding. In the trade, these are called
noddies
. W.H. Auden pointed out in 1969 that a lot of doctors are nod-crafty, that’s despite the fact that the OED doesn’t record any uses after 1608. But the best place to observe the nod-crafty is in an art gallery. Here the nod-craftiest will approach a picture, pause, tilt up their aesthete chins for a few seconds of appreciation and then finally, with a small smile, nod. The pictures rarely nod back.
Inan office meeting, being nod-crafty can be combined with
pectination
. This is when the fingers are
There are all sorts of precise and technical words for exactly how somebody might bore you. For example, Henry Cockeram’s
English Dictionarie
of 1623 has the word
obganiate
, which he defines as ‘to trouble one with often repeating of one thing’, and which comes from the Latin for ‘growl’. So once the same point has been made for the umpteenth time in the umpteenth different way, you can nod and murmur ‘Obganiation’ as though it weren’t rude.
If the obganiation comes down to the repetition of a particular word – like ‘teamwork’, ‘delivery’, or ‘chryselephantine’ – it becomes
battology
. Battology is named after an ancient Greekking called Battus, who founded the city of Cyrene but is remembered in the English language only for the fact that he had a stammer. A word can be battologised so often that it relinquishes all meaning or significance and becomes a pure series of sounds that flutter around the meeting table. This is called
semantic satiation
, or ‘lapse of meaning’.
But it is not merely repetition that annoys: there’s some talk that is pointless in the first place. One can, for example, speculate with neither fruit nor point about how a client might react to something that will never happen, or where the company will be in twenty years’ time. Such pointless speculation is technically known as
mataeology
, and such speculators as
mataeologians
. 1 And though this term of abuse is usually applied to theologians, it is as rife in the corporation as the cathedral.
Listening
In all this, the important thing is to look as though you’re listening. If you are actually listening, that’s even better, but let us start with simple goals. Evelyn Waugh, in his later years, used to have an ear trumpet. It probably wasn’t even necessary, but he would hold it conspicuously to his shell-like during conversations, and, when he was bored, would just as conspicuously put it back in his pocket, sometimes while you were in mid-sentence. This is a Bad Tactic, unless you own the company.
Muchbetter is the method adopted by the actor Peter Lorre when he had fled the Nazis and managed to get a meeting with Alfred Hitchcock in London. Lorre knew no English, but as Hitchcock was remarkably enamoured of the sound of his own voice this was not a problem. When Lorre had to speak, he said ‘Yes’. For the rest of the time:
I had heard that [Hitchcock] loved to tell stories and so I watched him like a hawk and when I was of the opinion he had just told the punch line of a story I broke out in such laughter that I almost fell off my chair.
If you take this method and replace laughing with nodding, you have achieved all you really need to do in the morning meeting: you have become
nod-crafty
.
Nod-crafty is defined in the OED as ‘Given to nodding the head with an air of great wisdom’. And once you notice nod-crafties, they’re everywhere. Those who are paid to interview people on television are notoriously nod-crafty. Indeed, as many interviews are conducted with only one camera, which is pointed at the interviewee, they then have to set everything up again for a second series of shots that show nothing but the interviewer nodding. In the trade, these are called
noddies
. W.H. Auden pointed out in 1969 that a lot of doctors are nod-crafty, that’s despite the fact that the OED doesn’t record any uses after 1608. But the best place to observe the nod-crafty is in an art gallery. Here the nod-craftiest will approach a picture, pause, tilt up their aesthete chins for a few seconds of appreciation and then finally, with a small smile, nod. The pictures rarely nod back.
Inan office meeting, being nod-crafty can be combined with
pectination
. This is when the fingers are
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