This one isn?t about books. It?s about words that, strangely enough, do not exist. Yes, that?s right, they should be there in the dictionary but aren?t.
I am not talking about what the late Douglas Adams and his friend John Lloyd did in their incomparable The Book of Liff (It?s downloadable free off the net; hours and hours of pure unadulterated fun guaranteed). They assigned words-actually names of places-to ?many hundreds of common experiences, feelings, situations and even objects which we all know and recognise, but for which no words exist.? Their logic: ?On the other hand, the world is littererd with thousands of spare words which spend their time doing nothing but loafing about on signposts pointing at places. Our job, as wee see it, is to get these words down off the signposts and into the mouths of babes and sucklings and so on, where they can start earning their keep in everyday conversation and make a more positive contribution to society.? So, glasgow is ?the feeling of infinite sadness engendered when walking through a place filled with happy people fifteen years younger than yourself?; massachusetts is ?those items and particles which people, after blowing their noses, are searching for when they look into their hankies?. And my personal favourite: kurdistan, ?hard stare given by a husband to his wife when he notices a sharp increase in the number of times he answers the phone to be told, ?Sorry, wrong number.??
No, I am not talking about words like that. I am referring to words like ?turb?, ?gruntle? and ?heveled?. What logic on earth allows one to be disturbed without also proffering the possible solace of being turbed? Two hairs out of place, and a food stain on your shirt front, and the interview board can decide that you are too disheveled a person for that sales job. Yet, there is no way you can be rewarded for being heveled, because?because the word does not exist. Only the great P.G. Wodehouse perhaps understood the unfairness of the situation when he wrote in one of his books: ?I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.?
It?s all very confusing. I can be disappointed and feel let down, but if I am appointed, I need to go to work. I can be disarmed by your charm, but if I were armed, you possibly need to run for the nearest exit. You can disclose the truth about your childhood traumas to me, but you can?t close to me, merely get too close for my comfort. One can discern the facts, but there?s no way you can get any sympathy from anyone if you cerned. I can be disgusting, but I can never gust, however, well, disarming I am.
It?s all very confusing. I can be disappointed and feel let down, but if I am appointed, I need to go to work. I can be disarmed by your charm, but if I were armed, you possibly need to run for the nearest exit. You can disclose the truth about your childhood traumas to me, but you can?t close to me, merely get too close for my comfort |
You can dissent, but never sent when you agree, just as you can have a dispute but never be able to pute with your friends. You can spot any number of discrepancies between two versions of an event, but try as you might, you can?t acknowledge the crepancies. A bank can disburse money but can?t burse it even if every instalment is paid on time. The mechanic dismantles the entire engine of your car into small parts, but he can?t mantle it back. You can travel to distant lands as long as you have the money, but try even walking over to the tant corner shop to buy cigarettes. You can be dissipated by jaundice, but the best medicines on earth cannot sipate you and get you up and going again. And of course, whatever you do will only have disastrous consequences. No hope at all for your efforts resulting in an astrous finale.
These are words they missed out when they invented English. And clearly, the people who invented the language were a bunch of grim people who expected the worst from every day of their lives. They were not an appointed lot; they were not gusted by the weather and the periodic invasions from distant lands by Germanic tribes and the Romans; their long-term expectations from life, the universe and everything were not astrous.
The confusion which their world aroused in them can be discerned from two particular words. The word ?ravel? means all of these: to disentangle, to tangle, to make clear, to perplex and confuse! If that wasn?t raveling enough, they added on the word ?unravel? to the lexicon. Take the word ?cleave? now. It means ?to adhere closely, stick, cling? and also ?to split and divide, to cut off, to sever, to part or split?. No, they were not the turbed sort, and clearly cerned the human condition.