Some aptagrams are clever but don’t quite work: ‘schoolmaster’ doesn’t really mean ‘the classroom’, though both use up the same set of letters. (On the other hand, if the schoolmaster gives an errant pupil ‘nine thumps’ in the classroom, that could be aptagrammed into ‘punishment’!)
The animated television series The Simpsons had a character who created aptagrams out of famous people’s names that described them well—thus ‘Alec Guinness’ became ‘genuine class’. Not long ago, BJP supporters put it out that, following this rule, ‘Narendra Modi’ was ‘a Rare Diamond’. They were quickly corrected by language mavens who pointed out that the prime minister’s name contained an extra N and the correct aptagram would be ‘Rare Diamond? Na!’ Political opponents of the PM leapt at the opportunity to come up with ‘a modern drain’ and ‘a modern nadir’. The nastier ones wrote, ‘Married and No!’ The PM’s fondness for the Indian diaspora led to suggestions of ‘Adore Damn NRI’ and ‘Dear Nomad NRI’. Of course, his supporters also hit back with ‘Dream and Iron’ as the qualities he represents to the nation.
The Harry Potter series has a character called Tom Marvolo Riddle whose name is an aptagram of ‘I am Lord Voldemort’, the series’ villain. This ‘inside joke’ is a key part of one book’s storyline, but with the Harry Potter books being translated into sixty-eight languages, publishers around the world were forced to devise ingenious apatagrams that would mean the same thing. They found the solution in changing the name of the character to something that could be aptagrammed into ‘I am Lord Voldemort’ in their own language. (So in French, for instance, Tom Marvolo Riddle becomes Tom Elvis Jedusor, so that his name is still an aptagram of ‘Je Suis Voldemort’.) This worked in all the Romance languages, which changed the character’s names into various aptagrams of the phrase ‘I am Lord Voldemort’ in their own languages—but when it came to Chinese, which uses characters and not letters, the translator was stumped. The publisher had to resort to a footnote to explain that English has something called aptagrams!
The cleverest aptagram of all, perhaps, is transforming ‘eleven plus two’ to ‘twelve plus one’, which apart from using all the letters, is also mathematically accurate. The more you try, however, the more contrived the exercise becomes (‘brush’ as ‘shrub’, for instance) which is why aptagrams haven’t widely caught on. It could still work as a party game for bored English ‘teachers’, who could become ‘cheaters’ by using the Internet to do their work for them!
4.
Authorism
noun
A WORD, PHRASE OR NAME CREATED BY AN AUTHOR, WHICH PASSES INTO COMMON USAGE
USAGE
The works of Shakespeare include hundreds of authorisms, including words now commonly used but unheard before his time, like ‘bump’, ‘hurry’ and ‘critical’.
Authorism is actually a neologism, a new word coinage. It was invented—or at least first used in this sense—by the language scholar Paul Dickson for the express purpose of giving a name to his book on words invented by authors, Authorisms: Words Wrought by Writers, published in 2014 on the occasion of William Shakespeare’s 450th birthday. (The word had been used in the past to relate to the state of being a writer, as when Horace Walpole, in the late eighteenth century, discussed a writer too satisfied with his ‘authorism’.)
Shakespeare was the uncrowned king of authorisms. His written vocabulary, Dickson tells us, consisted of 17,245 words, many of which he simply made up for his plays. These included terms that are so essential to our everyday conversation—like ‘bump’, ‘road’, ‘hurry’, ‘critical’ and ‘bedazzled’—that one wonders how English coped without them before Shakespeare dreamt them up. Scholars have tripped over each other in the effort to count Shakespeare’s authorisms: some put the total at 500, others come up with the extraordinary number of 1700. Aside from individual words, Shakespeare’s authorisms include famous phrases that have come into common use since his day, like ‘brave new world’, ‘all’s well that ends well’, ‘setting your teeth on edge’ and ‘being cruel only to be kind’. No wonder George Bernard Shaw created an authorism to describe excessive worship of Shakespeare: bardolatry.
If Shakespeare coined the most authorisms, the poet John Milton offers the most competition, with this tally clocking in at 630 new words, including such familiar words and phrases as ‘earth-shaking’, ‘lovelorn’, ‘fragrance’, ‘by hook or crook’ and ‘pandemonium’. Mind you, not everything Milton came up with stood the test of time, or that of necessity: few later generations found much use for many of Milton’s authorisms such as ‘ensanguined’, ‘emblazonry’ and ‘horrent’!
The early litterateurs had the opportunity to establish themselves in a language that was still growing. Geoffrey Chaucer, Ben Jonson, John Donne and Sir Thomas Moore also are credited with several authorisms each. Chaucer gave the English such essentials as ‘bagpipe’ and ‘universe’, while Moore contributed ‘anticipate’ and ‘fact’. Ben Johnson is said to have invented 558 words, John Donne 342. English grew beautifully in their care.
Later writers had to contend with the fact that so many words had already been invented that there was less need for neologisms. Still, Charles Dickens came up with many original terms and phrases, gleaned, it is suggested, from expressions he had heard around the poorer quarters and criminal classes of London. Mark Twain, Dickson tells us, didn’t take credit for any authorisms at all, but did claim that he popularized the language of the Mississippi River and words derived from the Gold Rushes of Nevada and California (for example, ‘hardpan’, ‘strike it rich’ and ‘bonanza’). It is said that Twain’s talent for creative usage gave new meanings to existing words—like ‘hard-boiled’, which he is credited for turning into a synonym for ‘tough’.
By the twentieth century one would imagine the scope for totally new authorisms declined. The popular American writer Sinclair Lewis tried hard to create authorisms that might stick, but none of his invented words—from ‘Kiplingo’ for Rudyard’s bombastic prose to ‘teetotalitarian’ for advocates of Prohibition to ‘philanthrobber’ for a robber baron who dabbled in philanthropy—passed into popular usage, let alone endured. George Orwell’s 1984 (a date derived from reversing the last two digits of the year it was written, 1948) takes the prize, though, for imparting chilling new meanings to commonly used words and combining some ordinary words into sinister new phrases. These ranged from ‘Big Brother’ as a term to describe a totalitarian dictator, to the more specific ‘doublethink’ and ‘newspeak’ which anticipate the ‘post-truth’ and ‘fake news’ of our times.
5.
Brickbat
noun
AN UNFAVOURABLE CRITICISM,
UNKIND REMARK OR SHARP PUT-DOWN
USAGE
The politician’s performance in his constituency merited the several brickbats thrown at him by his critics.
As one can imagine, the word ‘brickbat’ began its innings literally rather than metaphorically in the mid-sixteenth century, describing a piece of brick (half a brick or less, but always, according to purists, retaining one unbroken end of the brick) used as a handy projectile, especially where stones were scarce, to throw at people one disapproved of. The word comes, of course, from the words brick and bat, the latter in the sense of a lump, or a piece (I know we think of a bat as a club we wield in cricket, but the ‘lump’ meaning still exists, as in the lumps of cotton wadding used in quilts that are still called ‘batting’).
Soon enough the literal sense gave way to the figurative, so that rather than using a brickbat as a missile, it began to refer to comments, insults, and the like. By 1642, the poet John Milton was using the word in a figurative sense to mean an uncomplimentary remark or a harsh criticism (‘I beseech ye friends, ere the brick-bats flye, resolve me and yourselves . . .’). Literary and theatre critics are particularly fond of flinging brickbats at the works and writers they don’t think highly of, and doing so literally might land them in jail, so brickbat-as-metaphor
is the usage we usually come across.
In this sense a brickbat is more nasty than a mere negative word; its use implies an insult hurled at a target with an intent to wound, and therefore can only be applied to extremely blunt criticism. It is often mated with its contrasting opposite, ‘bouquet’—as in, ‘Poor Shashi Tharoor has both bouquets and brickbats showered on his head daily for anything he says!’ This is a twentieth-century usage that may have faded with that century, because one comes across the pair far less often than one sees brickbats flying by themselves. Perhaps we are just an unkinder species now!
Some of you will recall the adage ‘bricks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me’. Whoever said that, and the many who thought it wise enough to pass it down over the generations as a proverb worth citing, needs to have a brickbat thrown at them. A broken bone heals far more quickly and durably than the emotional and psychic injuries inflicted by a savage word, which is where the brickbat derives its power. The many libel and defamation suits that litter the courts show that the figurative brickbat hurts just as much as, if not more than, the literal one. The pen may or may not be mightier than the sword, but it can indeed be as painful and offensive a weapon as the brickbat.
6.
Claque
noun
A GROUP OF PEOPLE HIRED TO APPLAUD
USAGE
No one thought much of his speech, except
the usual claque of party hacks who applauded
his every line vigorously.
With the general elections mercifully behind us, we will have fewer political speeches, less bombastic rhetoric and (one hopes) less abuse of historical figures to deal with in our daily lives and dominating our news media. But it’s also time to wonder why so much of such arrant nonsense is regularly spouted by political leaders with such scant regard for the effect their words have on normal people. If they realized how they sounded to people with average sensibility and decency, surely they wouldn’t speak like this?
Ah, but you’re forgetting—it’s not normal people they are addressing their offensive words to; it’s the claques that constitute the echo chambers for their invective. Every
political party has them, but some have more claques than others because they can afford to pay more for the rent-a-crowd audiences their leaders need to feel encouraged and
emboldened by.
The word itself goes back to the mid-nineteenth century, and comes from the French expression claqueurs, a band of men hired by a theatre management and distributed through the audience in the hall to applaud the performance of the actors. This method of helping ensure the success of public performances is pretty old; it is said that the Roman Emperor Nero fancied himself a bit of a thespian, and whenever he acted, ensured that 5000 of his paid soldiers were on hand to lead a thunderous ovation for his performances. But it seems to have really become an organized system, set up and controlled by the claqueurs themselves, in Paris in the early years of the nineteenth century, when an agency was set up in that city in 1820 by a Mr Sauton to manage and supply claqueurs.
Since the word is derived from the verb claquer, meaning ‘to clap’, the term leaves no doubt about the principal task of the profession. Claque members received money and free tickets to the early performances of plays, opera performances and the like; they were instructed to laugh, cry, shout and, of course, clap at just the right moments, with a view to setting an example for the rest of the audience, and in the hope of igniting similar responses and influencing them to do the same.
The practice began to die out by the early twentieth century, not least because claques became expert at extortion, threatening to boo instead of clap if they were not paid more. The transition from theatre to politics is more metaphorical than literal: few politicians can actually afford to pay a claque just to applaud them. But the tribe of hangers-on that politicians maintain with a variety of incentives (party positions, minor government offices, titles, sometimes pay) are happy to play the role of the old claqueurs when required.
Surrounded by cliques and applauded by claques, no wonder so many of our political leaders are so out of touch with reality—and with the public they claim to represent.
7.
Contronym
noun
A WORD THAT CAN ALSO MEAN THE OPPOSITE OF ITSELF, A FEATURE MORE COMMON IN eNGLISH THAN IN ANY iNDIAN LANGUAGE
USAGE
When the media said President Trump had sanctioned Iranian oil supplies, I wasn’t sure what they meant, since ‘sanction’ is a contronym.
In this instance, confusion is understandable, because the headline could mean the president had permitted the oil supplies to flow, or that he had prohibited them. If you get a sanction from an authority to do something, it means the former; but if you impose sanctions on someone or something, it means the latter. The word ‘sanction’ can either refer to approval for a course of action or a penalty for disobeying an injunction. That’s why it’s a contronym, also sometimes known as a ‘Janus word’ (after the Roman God
with two faces).
Confused? ‘Sanction’ is not the only case of a word that can be used to mean its own opposite. We use contronyms all the time without realizing it; the most common contronym might be the word ‘off’, since ‘setting off’ an alarm activates a warning bell, while ‘switching off’ the alarm deactivates it—and both use the same ‘off’. If you find too many objects gathering dust at home, you can tell your maid that she needs to dust more so there is less dust (that’s not a contradiction, just a contronym!) Similarly, strike can be used to mean to create (as in ‘strike a deal’) or to eliminate (‘strike that line from the record’). And if you say you have ‘finished’ something, is it completed or destroyed?
A puppy can leap at a target with a single ‘bound’, but if it’s ‘bound’ to a post, it is restrained and restricted. When you go fast, you are moving rapidly, but when you hold fast, you are unmoving and unmoved. If you have a ‘handicap’, it’s a disadvantage that impedes you; but in many sports, especially golf, a handicap is an advantage. At a party you can be told there are ‘just a few dishes left’, which means they remain to be consumed, while some people have left, which means they’ve gone. ‘Left’ is even more complicated because of its political meaning—a person from the left can be sitting on the right (and vice-versa!)
When the United Nations created an in-house inspectorate and named the department the Office of Internal Oversight Services, I warned my colleagues, only half in jest, that every time the new office messed up, they could say, ‘Hey, it was just an oversight.’ Oversight is also a contronym: it can mean watchful supervision, but also an inadvertent error. Similarly, the word cleave can mean both ‘to cut apart’ (‘the warrior cleaved his enemy’s head from his neck’) or ‘to bind together’ (‘the infant cleaved to his mother’s bosom’). So can ‘clip’ mean to cut something (as in a newspaper clipping) or to hold them together (‘Can you clip those clippings together please?’) A criminal might ‘bolt’ (meaning he runs away or ‘exits quickly’) but you can bolt the door shut (meaning fix it in place to immobilize it).
There are contronyms that demonstrate the truth of the adage that America and Britain are two countries divided by a common language. For example, ‘table’—to table a bill means ‘to put it up for debate’ in British English, while if you table a bill in the US Congress, it means ‘to remove it from debate’. A ‘moot’ point is one that requires discussion and debate in Britain, whereas in America, if an issue is moot, it is dead and unnecessary to discuss.
American usage multiplies the range of contronyms. A ‘hold-up’, in the US, can either support or impede: wooden beams might hold up the ceiling, but a mugger might trap you in a hold-up at gunpoint (or traffic can create a hold-up on the road). Also in America, you can use bills to pay bills (what we call ‘notes’ are ‘bills’ in the US, so ‘dollar bills’ can be used to settle your restaurant bills!).
‘Variety’ can mea
n a particular type (‘Alphonso? That’s a great variety of mango you’re eating’) or many types (‘India grows a variety of mangoes’). You can ‘execute’ a plan to carry it out, but if you execute the planner, you are terminating him. If you ‘buckle’ your belt or a horse’s saddle, you fasten it; but if your knees buckle, you are about to collapse. ‘Give out’ is our final example: a charity can give out aid to flood victims, or an exhausted victim fleeing the floods can collapse when his legs give out.
My space has just given out, so I’ll call it a day. That’s perhaps
the most common contronym of all—you usually call it a day
when it’s night!
8.
Cromulent
adjective
APPEARING LEGITIMATE BUT ACTUALLY BEING SPURIOUS
USAGE
The government’s statement to the Supreme Court on the migrant workers’ crisis made a cromulent case, based on the argument that no migrant worker had perished on the way home—which in fact turned out not to be the case, as media reports of their travails flowed in.
As we all know, the Supreme Court came in for a lot of flak from lawyers for taking the solicitor-general’s word on the issue of the migrant workers. It was only some weeks later that, in the face of widespread criticism, the court instructed the government to transport all the migrant workers home within fifteen days. But initially the Supreme Court was taken in by the government’s cromulence.
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