On the Tip of My Tongue The perfect word for every life

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Introduction
 Words are personal. As personal as it gets. We are as defined by words
we refuse to use as by our favourites. Some words date and some are
timeless. Some words wear their etymology like a glistening pendant and
others hide it, pretending they have no relationship with it whatsoever.
Words, I put it to you, are at least a thousand times more personal than the
garments we wear or the pictures we hang.
We amass our collections of words and phrases throughout our lives. You
may be a spry sapling of 30 who decides to ‘spend a penny’ rather than go to
the loo because of your fondness for your maternal grandmother who uses
the idiom often. You may love JOMO (joy of missing out) because it is less
ubiquitous than FOMO (fear of missing out). You may have been ‘triple
jagged’ because you live north of the Scottish border, whereas I have merely
been jabbed. You may be flirting with giving ‘leather-lunged-spouter’ a
renaissance when describing Adele, having heard Tallulah Bankhead say it
about singers of her day and feeling – more than anything we currently say –
it is la phrase juste. You may borrow from other languages when they put it
more succinctly, or perhaps just to be a touch outré. You may have a special
relationship with words like queer, woke, lib, revisionism because of your
life, identity and history.
In short, our lexical cherry-picking depends on everything that makes us
unique. My dearest chums and close family tell me that the question they are
most frequently asked about me is, ‘Does he talk like that all the time?’ to
which the answer is a sincere ‘yes’. Mistaken on the radio for Fenella
Fielding, Honor Blackman and Angela Lansbury, I have a penchant for a
polysyllable, inherited from my father, a former English teacher who also
delights in language. After a recent lunch, he said ‘This has been lovely but
all-too-brief . . .’ then, as often happens, he was arrested by the dance of the
synonyms ‘ . . . fleeting, short-lived, ephemeral’. You can see how my
condition started. It is incurable, as my father will attest. My mother is an
impish, irreverent spirit. She is almost allergic to earnestness. If she can, she
will stick a pin in anything approaching it. If someone, in awe or surprise,
says, ‘Well, well, well!’ she is apt to respond, quick as a flash, ‘Three holes
in the ground!’
The best, most intimate portrait of our character is on the tip of our
tongue. Within these pages lie some of my favourite examples. Some are my
own, some are legendary, some are obscure and some I thought it egregious
not to exhume. So, at this juncture, I invite you to tear open my etymological
chocolate box, forget etiquette and simply guzzle.
Bon appétit!
vuhb • ih • vaw noun
Someone who enjoys words and wordplay.
 How to tool up before we get started
‘Fret not nor fear’, as my dad would say, these pages are not ferociously
technical. In fact, I could not cope if they were. They are, foremost,
designed to divert and tickle. I always aim to tickle. However, for ease of
use, I have included some phonetic (fuh·neh·tuhk) pronunciations and
grammatical parts of speech – noun, adjective or verb. You may also need
the following words in your arsenal, as I am sure they will appear and I will
have forgotten to define them, or it might spoil the flow if I did. Let us start
with . . .
Acronym
a • kruh • nim noun
Acronyms take the first letter of each word and assemble an
independent word that represents the whole phrase. Time saving and catchy.
My grandmother’s FUFTB springs to mind (Full Up and Fit to Bust, see here)
although for every FUFTB, I have 301 GOOMMS (Go On One More Morsel).
Aphorism
a • fuh • ri • zm noun
You could call this a truism, but an aphorism is ever so slightly more
than that. It is a truism most beautifully wrapped. It comes from the Greek
aphorismos, ‘a pithy, punchy definition’. An aphorism is always succinct
and, in its lyricism, seems to crystalise ideas. The early bird catches the
worm is a popular example. For my favourite from these pages, we must
thank the endlessly quotable Mary Poppins for Enough is as good as a feast
(see here).
Coining
koy • nuhng verb
Coin is an Old French word meaning ‘wedge’. Money could be made by
inking the wedge and stamping the money with a permanent mark. You
could leave your mark on language in the same way, by creating a word and
inking it into the history books. Shakespeare did it all the time and we owe
oodles of words to him. More on the Bard in short order (see here–here).
Compound noun
kuhm • pownd nown noun
 Compound nouns are common because it is human nature, when new
things, roles or places are created, to describe them using existing things,
roles or places. So, a lighthouse is like a house but with a giant, swiveling
light in it. A spaceship is a ship that can sail through space. Sometimes they
are hyphenated, sometimes each stands alone while gaily flanking each
other, like my favourite, appearing shortly, powder room (see here).
Contraction
kuhn • trak • shn noun
When a muscle contracts, it shortens, but still contains the same amount
of tissue. This can happen with words, too. My Liverpudlian brother-in-law
might offer me a bevvy when I visit. This is a very attractive contraction of
beverage, meaning ‘drink’. Although he has truncated the word, it has
retained its full meaning.
Eponym
ep • uh • nim noun
An eponym is a word that comes from a person’s name. A contraption
might bear the name of its inventor, a profession the name of one of the first
successes in the field, as we will discover with thespian (see here). A flower
may even be an eponym, if the curls of its petals resemble the curls of its
namesake’s hair, as we will discover with hyacinth (see here).
Etymology
eh • tuh • mo • luh • jee noun
Not to be confused with entomology, the study of bugs, etymology is
the study of the origins of words. An etymologist takes the complete jigsaw
that every word offers and breaks it into pieces to see what each constituent
part contributes to the whole.
Homophone
ho • muh • fown noun
Homophones are simpler than they sound and are all to do with sound
as opposed to (often) appearance. From the Greek homos, meaning ‘same’
and phone, meaning ‘sound’, the same roots found in homosexual,
romantically drawn to the ‘same sex’, and telephone, a device for hearing
‘far-off sounds’. Homophones sound the same but may not share the same
spelling or provenance. Knights and nights to the ear are identical but to the
eye are not. Bats with wings and bats for cricket are identical to eye and
ear, so these homophones are dependent on context, whether scribbled or
uttered.
Idiom
i • dee • uhm noun
Idioms are collections of words where the words themselves lose their
respective identities to serve the meaning of the whole. An idiom that
immediately springs to mind from these pages is green gowning (see here).
It has nothing directly to do with greenness or grass, but instead is a nod to
the activity denoted by green grass stains on the garments of lovers
emerging from a field.
Lexical
lek • suh • kl adjective
Lexicon comes from the Greek legein, meaning ‘speak’. Our lexicons
are, in fact, the words we speak. You could call this whole book a lexical
web, connecting and gluing together the stories of words.
Onomatopoeia
o • nuh • ma • tuh • pee • uh noun
Onomatopoeic words are such fun to say because they are words that
have been invented as soundalikes. Squelch sounds like the noise created by
stepping in a cowpat, burp sounds like that bugle ring that comes out of you
when you ingest something fizzy too fast, and plop sounds like a pebble as
it makes contact with a pond and disappears from view.
Portmanteau
pawt • man • tow noun
We have Lewis Carroll, author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and
Alice Through the Looking Glass to thank for this one. You may remember
the scene in the book where Alice meets Humpty Dumpty and asks the
rather irascible egg to dissect the poem ‘Jabberwocky’. Much of Humpty’s
elucidation comes from decoding the fused-together words. He explains
that chortle is a combination of ‘chuckle’ and ‘snort’ and slithy is a
combination of ‘slimy’ and ‘lithe’. In Carroll’s day, writers would keep their
manuscripts in order by carrying them in a portmanteau, a smart carry case
of two constituent parts, linked by an elegant clasp in the centre. It occurred
to Carroll that his cleaving and re-stitching of words in ‘Jabberwocky’ was
the lexical version of this case, so ‘portmanteau’ gained a second definition,
one pertaining to words.
Skeuomorph
skyoo • uh • morf noun
Here is another portmanteau! From skeuos, ‘container’ and morphē,
‘shape’, it is something that contains, conjures or imitates the shape and
aesthetic of a different thing but not, necessarily, that thing’s behaviour. The
linguistic variety usually happens when time and technology have marched
on, leaving language behind. Take hanging up the phone. No one has a
telephone where you hang the receiver anymore (if you can’t conjure this
image, think Mr Banks in Mary Poppins after telephoning the police) and
yet, when we press that little red circle on our smartphone to end a call, we
still claim to be doing it. We are, linguistically at least, imitating a lost
action. In fact, even the image within the red circle nods, skeuomorphically,
to the obsolete act.
 pal • kruh • nee noun
My own portmanteau for being in wonderful
synchrony with a chum.
 How to...
speak like a thespian
I am an erstwhile thespian. Thespians are, naturally, instinctive
logophiles. Part of the joy of the theatre is masticating on challenging
polysyllables produced by minds that hover in astral planes above us,
cerebrally speaking. In addition to the words found in wonderful plays and
musicals authored for the stage, there is the lexicon of the community that
orbits the stage: directors, actors, stagehands, et al. The first of these was
Thespis . . .
Thespian
theh • spee • uhn adjective noun
The word thespian belongs to one of my favourite word groups: the
eponym. This is when a word comes from a person’s name. There are
oodles! Bloomers from American post-mistress and feminist, Amelia
Bloomer, cardigan from the 7th Earl of Cardigan, zephyr because of the
Greek god of the wind, and on and on. Thespis is often called the father of
Greek Tragedy. Legend has it that he was the first poet ever to recite on a
public stage. No wonder his name blesses all who have subsequently
scuffed the boards.
Theatre
thee • uh • tuh noun
This word, which has such import in my life, comes from the Greek,
where the theatre’s story began. Theasthai is the Greek stem meaning ‘to
behold’. Theatron was, in turn, the place of united beholding for Greek
audiences. These were, of course, open-air sites of beholding, but ‘houses
of beholding’ were to follow and these, I think, are my personal favourites.
When thespians become movie stars, they may also become matinee
idols . . .
Matinee
ma • tuh • nay noun
Matutinus is from Latin and means ‘pertaining to morning’. The early
bird might engage in many matinal or ‘morning’ activities or, for the even
more highfalutin, matutinal activities. Why then, should a matinee,
famously an afternoon performance, be linked to our root? Because these
performances were originally, and most horrifyingly for the thespians
reading (and writing) these pages, in the morning! French thespians would
play to packed houses in these morning performances. Gradually, however,
the notion of two show days and the convenience of the smaller hiatus,
allowing actors brief surcease to dine between afternoon and evening shows
without travel, seemed to suit management and companies better.
Nevertheless, in theatrical circles, these days are still known as the dreaded
doubles. Actors would be lost without . . .
Consonants
kon • suh • nuhnts adjective noun
Sonor is the Latin root meaning ‘sound’. So sonic is not merely an
adorable little blue hedgehog, but ‘pertaining to sound’. It follows, then,
that sonorous should mean ‘great sound’ that generously pervades the air.
But consonant? The vowels here are key, because, etymologically,
consonant means ‘sounding with’ and, of course, consonants only can be
sounded properly if preceded or followed by a vowel. In our sonorous
world these alphabet chums are truly co-dependent!
Corpsing
kawps • ing verb
One of the legendary perils of the theatre. This is an act of homicide by
the actor. It is killing one’s own character. Turning it into a corpse.
Dictionary definitions of corpsing always describe the three main ways an
actor can murder their creation. The list includes, but is not limited to,
dropping your character’s accent, forgetting your lines or laughing in
unintended places. However, IRL corpsing is only ever used to describe the
latter. I am a very good corpser (or very bad, depending on your POV). The
condition is woefully exacerbated when two corpsers meet. There was one
pantomime in particular, Sleeping Beauty where I met my match. I was
playing the evil fairy Maleficent, renamed Firena. Typically, our matinees
contained local school children in the front three rows of the stalls. One day,
Row A had a cherubic boy of six. I had a scene with my fellow corpser, the
prince, where I delineated part of my heinous plan. As I wrapped up my
wicked plot, the cherub stood and shouted, ‘Fuck off and die.’ I defy milder
corpsers than we to continue giggle-free after that.
Shake the ladder
Ginger Rogers is one of the many actors who talks about this wonderful
Broadway idiom of yesteryear. If you have ever explored the wings of a
theatre, you will know that you invariably find a ladder or seven. Often,
parts will require that an actor enters the stage in a flurry of excitement,
rage or joy. How does one go from zero to 100 while quietly awaiting one’s
entrance in the wings? One answer is a vigorous shake of the ladder in the
wings. It might just get you hot under the collar, red-faced and energised in
time for your entrance to wow spectators with your authenticity!
The Green Room
There are a handful of explanations as to the appellation of this most
deliciously fabled quadrant of the theatre. My favourite is the theory that it
comes from the cockney rhyming slang for ‘stage’: greengage. Beloved
thespian friends of mine are still inclined to say, ‘see you on the green’,
including my lovely chum, Harriet Thorpe, who will always round it off
with the addendum, ‘dear’. I suppose, therefore, it stands to reason that a
communal room for actors that flanks the greengage (or green for short)
should be called the Green Room. Here is another person you might see
strutting their stuff with their hand up a bottom on the green . . .
The ventriloquist
thuh • ven • tri • luh • kwuhst noun
Venter is the Latin root meaning ‘belly’. The ventricles of your heart are
‘small bellies’ because they are stomach-like cavities. How, then, does a
performer who talks without moving their lips pertain to our gut-root?
Because, like a human bagpipe the ventriloquist speaks directly from the
belly, creating ‘belly talk’ and reducing dependence on those oh-so-visible
lips! Who knew that this art was such a close relative of the good old-
fashioned burp? Ventriloquism was considered so magical that there is an
etymological nod to sorcery here, too, in the notion that the puppet’s voice
might belong to a belly-housed spectre.
Tenor
teh • nuh noun
 The tenor is custodian of many of the greatest numbers of theatre
history. The voice part’s appellation is due to tenor roles being characterised
by stretchy, sustained musical phrases. The Latin root ten pops up
everywhere, conveying different kinds of ‘stretch’. Tenuous describes
something slight or insubstantial as though stretched thin, and tender
denotes the vulnerability of the overstretched, liable to tear. The tenor, by
contrast, embodies a glorious stretch: stretching his larynx over long,
rousing musical passages.
Eleven o’clock number
Here is a phrase I use metaphorically all the time. I use it to denote a
climax. In lavish Broadway musicals, Act II was always structured in such a
way that the protagonist’s epiphanic moment would come via a stonking
great song at the shank of the show. Think ‘Rose’s Turn’ in Gypsy or ‘A
Boy Like That, I Have a Love’ in West Side Story. When the shows first
opened on Broadway, these numbers would land at approximately eleven
o’clock and would . . .
Bring the house down
The house is a synonym for the theatre itself. Bringing it down sounds
like something you might wish to avoid at all costs but, in fact, it is the
performer’s goal. It is based on the notion that the laughter is so uproarious,
the clapping so thunderous, the cheers so vociferous that they threaten the
very brickwork. The whole theatre is atremble with the delight of the
crowd.
Dance and sing
These words are included in my descriptions of almost all my corporeal
reactions. A superlative meal will make my tastebuds dance, a crossword
will make my grey cells dance. Great melodies and wonderful voices dance
on my tympanic membrane. Inspiring literature makes my retinas sing, as
does art. A dynamic workout is apt to make my bloodcells dance and my
muscles sing. It seems to me there is a loose rule as to whether my bits and
bobs are singers or dancers. If there are oodles of them – bloodcells,
tastebuds and the like – they will dance because there are enough of them to
comprise a corps de ballet. If there are fewer, or just one of my bits –
muscles, retinas, olfactory nerve – then singing somehow seems more
apropos.