Fifty Shades of Black (15 page)

 

 

If It's Okay with You . . .

I
'd like to write a few lines about a tiny word that is the very glue of the English language, okay? Now, it's entirely okay if you're not personally okay with that, but I got the okay from my editor. Usually she shrugs when I suggest a theme and offers a grudging “okay. ”But this time she really liked it. “O-KAY!” she said. “Go for it!”

Versatile little four-letter combination when you think about it—especially when you realize it can be cut in half and still say the same thing. My dictionary recognizes “O.K.” and even “OK” as legitimate variations. They all sound exactly the same to the human ear.

“Okay” is probably the best-known English word in the world. Venetian gondoliers get “okay”; so do Tibetan Sherpas, Australian outbackers, Colombian drug mules and Chinese moneylenders.

So where does okay come from?

How much time have you got?

Over the years linguists have proposed that the expression was swiped from the Scots (
och aye
), West African slaves (
wah kay
), the French (
au quais
), the Choctaw tribe (
o keh
), the Finns (
oikea
)—even from a US railway freight agent named Obadiah Kelly who was in the habit of scrawling his initials as a signature on bills of lading.

The only thing pretty much everyone agreed on is that usage as an English expression bubbled up in eastern North America sometime in the early nineteenth century.

By 1840, rumours attributed the phrase to US president Andrew Jackson. Detractors said that President Jackson scrawled O.K. on government documents under the illusion he was using a short form for “all correct.” (Orl Korect?)

Cute story, but highly unlikely. Andrew Jackson was a well-educated man.

Whatever the origins, “okay” was perfectly okay to use through North America by the 1850s—so much so that it appears in the written works of Henry David Thoreau in 1854. Now, a century and a half later, the word has been bisected again. People often signify acceptance with a single syllable instead of two.

“You wanna grab a bite at the Taco Bell?”

“Kay.”

Fortunately, thanks to the work of a US professor named Allen Walker Read, we now know the true origins of this ubiquitous phrase. Professor Read figured it out by poring over back issues of eastern American newspapers published in the early to mid-1800s.

Turns out there was a kind of fad that swept the chattering classes of early nineteenth-century Boston society, in which people wishing to appear clever used abbreviations to replace well-known phrases. Thus, people would say (or write) ISBD instead of It Shall Be Done. Boston's leading citizens were referred to as OFMs — Our First Men. And anything insignificant was dismissed with SP — Small Potatoes.

Another craze those early language manglers indulged in was faux illiteracy. They liked to pretend they couldn't spell very well. Thus the Boston aristocracy (Andrew Jackson had nothing to do with it) brutalized the phrase “all correct” into “orl correct”—which got shortened to O.K.

And the rest is history, okay?

 

 

Using Phroper English

I
love this job. It may not pay much but it's full of surprises. Yesterday I rambled into my favourite coffee shop and was instantly accosted by one of the regulars. “Hey, Black!” he said by way of introduction. “You called” (insert Member of Parliament's name here) “a ‘nimrod' in your column last week. You know what a nimrod is?”

A nimrod, I replied, is a fool, a klutz, an idiot, a clown. You think I was too kind?

“Hah!” said my inquisitor. “You're dead wrong! A nimrod is a mighty hunter!”

Well, literally and technically, yeah. “Nimrod,” according to the Bible, was a great-grandson of Noah. He became a king and founded Babylon. He was also, legend has it, a guy who knew his way around a bow and arrow, a spear, a dagger and other instruments of interspecies domination.

“Nimrod” ought to reflect that heady lineage and be a word of praise but it's not. It means, in fact, precisely the opposite. If somebody calls you a nimrod, they are probably Not Your Friend.

Elmer Fudd—especially when he's duded out in a deerstalking cap, his Eddie Bauer hunting vest and toting a shotgun through the bush, fruitlessly flailing the bushes in search of Bugs Bunny—is a nimrod.

So what do you call a word or a phrase that actually means the opposite of what it's supposed to mean? You call it a “phrop.” A fascinating chap by the name of Sir Arnold Lunn (mountaineer, world-class skier and amateur wordsmith) made up the word by combining “phrase” and “opposite” and lopping their tails off, nimrod-style.

We use phrops from time to time—at least I know I do. When I say to the annoying lapel-clinger who's been dogging me at a party, “We must do lunch one day,” what I really mean is, “If I can help it, this is the last time in recorded history that we will be in one another's presence, unless we have the misfortune to share a common graveyard.” Similarly, when someone launches into a critique of something I've written with the words, “With all due respect,” I know that I'm about to be linguistically cross-checked, head-butted, rabbit-punched and groin-kneed and “due respect” will not be much in evidence.

Canadians resilient and adventurous enough to watch the cable TV public affairs channel CPAC may happen upon
Question Period
from the House of Commons in Ottawa. There they will see phrops flying back and forth like badminton birdies. A reference to a challenge from “my learned colleague” sitting across the floor really means, “I can't believe I have to waste my time responding to this pompous gasbag.” And when Stephen Harper addresses Thomas Mulcair as “the Right Honourable Leader of the Opposition,” his tone, his body language and those rattlesnake eyes portend a classic phrop in the making.

Canadian politicians, alas, are not in the same league as a silver-tongued phropist like the nineteenth-century British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, who wrote to a novelist seeking his endorsement, “Thank you for sending me your book. I shall waste no time reading it.”

But you don't have to go to the House of Commons, British or Canadian, to hear a decent phrop.

When someone butts in front of you with, “I hope you don't mind . . .” he doesn't really give a bleep what you think.

When someone says, “I don't wanna brag, but . . . ” he's about to brag.

When someone says, “To be perfectly frank . . . ” she's about to lie.

When someone says, “I'm telling you this for your own good . . .” (see “With all due respect” above).

But a phrop is not always a weaselly linguistic manoeuvre. Sometimes it's so perfect that it's sublime. A few years ago, an Oxford language philosopher by the name of J.L. Austin was lecturing a class on the phenomenon of double negatives—when two “no” words are used in the same clause. He told his listeners that many languages use double negatives to make a positive but double positives are never, ever used to make a negative.

From the back of the class came a muttered, “Yeah. Right.”

 

 

Words at Work

I
f the English language made any sense “fish and chips” might be spelled “ghoti and tchoghs.” (Fish: “gh” as in rough, “o” as in women, “ti” as in ration. Chips: “tch” as in catch, “o” as in women, “gh” as in hiccough.) If English made any sense there would not be eight different ways to pronounce the letter sequence “ough” (through, thought, though, cough, rough, bough, thorough—and don't forget hiccough).

But English, bless 'er, seldom makes sense. Our language is like a rogue blue whale on a methamphetamine run, thrashing through the Sea of Tongues gobbling up choice morsels left and right while wreaking tail-smacking havoc on other etymologies. As the Canadian writer James Nicoll says, “English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”

That's how we picked up algebra (Arabic), skeleton (Greek), grotesque (Italian), mosquito (Spanish), keelhaul (Dutch), pyjamas (Urdu), zombie (West African), ski (Norwegian), blitzkrieg (German) and potlatch (Nuu-chah-nulth)—just to name a handful.

But we don't just steal words, we invent new ones all the time. Some words that gained official status in the
Oxford English Dictionary
recently include: wonky, WiFi, looky-loo and low-rent. Some words the OED honchos tossed over the side to make room for the newcomers: abstergent (cleansing), caducity (perishableness) and griseous (streaked with grey).

I won't miss those words (mainly because I never knew they existed) but the authorities also deep-sixed a number of worthies that I think still have plenty of tread on their tires. What's wrong with “embrangle” (to confuse or entangle)? Why are we ditching a splendid word like “niddering” (cowardly)? And isn't “fubsy” (short and stout, squat) just too good to kill? A malison (curse) upon the heads of the butchers who excised these words from our lexicon. And yes, “malison” is also on the chopping block.

Speaking of chopping block, the British Sociological Association, an umbrella group for many professors, lecturers, researchers and other sundry British academics, has announced that its members will henceforth be enjoined from using the term “Old Masters” when referring to, er, Old Masters. Why? Too sexist, old chap. What about all those Old Mistresses, eh wot? The BSA (ironic abbreviation, that) is also banning the “racist” words “immigrant,” “developing nations” and—I'm not pulling your leg—“black.”

I guess name-wise, the BSA has left me SOL.

Not to worry. I consider the English tongue to be—at the risk of being slammed for sexism—a feisty old broad who's outmanoeuvred tougher foes than the British Sociological Association.

She has to be tough—look at the idiots who abuse her. From monosyllabic teenagers who can't string a thought sequence together without slapping on bandages and twist ties like “awesome” and, well, “like” . . .

“So she wuz like, ‘You know that dude? Awesome!' An' I wuz, like, ‘Whatever.'”

. . . to Bureaucratese. How would a civil servant suggest that someone might be lying? Here's how Sir Humphrey Appleby did it in
Yes, Minister
:

“Sometimes one is forced to consider the possibility that affairs are being conducted in a manner which, all things being considered and making all possible allowances is, not to put too fine a point on it, perhaps not entirely straightforward.”

Words, all words. “Words are like loaded pistols,” according to Jean-Paul Sartre. Rudyard Kipling called them “the most powerful drug used by mankind.”

More than eight centuries ago a Zen master named Dai-O Kokushi explained words in a koan:

 

Wishing to entice the blind,

The Buddha playfully let words escape from his golden mouth;

Heaven and earth are filled, ever since, with entangling briars.

 

Or, as George Carlin put it: “I don't have to tell you it goes without saying there are some things better left unsaid. I think that speaks for itself. The less said about it the better.”

 

 

Name That Town

W
hen it came to slapping names on chunks of this country our forefathers (and mothers) were a relatively adventurous lot. They tapped royalty (Victoria, Regina, Alberta), explorers (Vancouver, Hudson), local topography (Montreal, after Mount Royal), forgettable politicians (Kitchener, Hamilton) and saints (Sault Ste. Marie, St. Catharines, St. John and just in case we missed the point, St. John's).

Occasionally they aped their betters (London, Warsaw, Paris, Berlin—all in Ontario); other times they realized they couldn't improve on the originals and simply stole the First Nations names already in place: Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Toronto, Mississauga.

Eclectic and wide-ranging—not a dull or boring name in the lot.

Not like, well, Dull and Boring. You'll find the former in Scotland and the latter in Oregon. Dull (population eighty-four) is a tiny village in Perthshire; Boring is a not-so-tiny burg of ten thousand or so Oregonians located about twenty miles south of Portland.

Ironic when you think about it. We Canadians are the ones with the rep for being dull and boring, but you wouldn't know it by the names of our towns and cities. As a matter of fact, a visitor might get the impression Canucks are downright colourful—and unabashedly randy.

From the Far North (Steambath Lake, Yukon; Hump Island, NWT) to the Deep South (Middlesex, Ontario), Canada has a steamy sheet of place names that would make Madonna blush.

British Columbia has a Sin Lake, Moan Creek, Shag Rock and Peekaboo Falls. Alberta can claim Sexsmith and Spanking Lake. Saskatchewan? Well, there's Lust Lake and Climax, for starters. Manitoba gives us Love Lake, Cuddle Bay and Strip Rapids.

In Ontario there's Flesherton, Bottomlands and Peeler Lake.

And Quebec?
Quelle surprise
. La Belle Province teems with suggestive nomenclature—Lac Brassière, Lac de la Caresse, Lac Eros and even Lac Latex.

Plus—gasp!—the Gaspé Peninsula.

The Maritimes won't be left behind in the erotic topography department—not while there's a Kissing Brook or a Lover's Cove to be found on your GPS.

And then there's Newfoundland. Even if the entire upper two-thirds of the North American continent was as dull and boring as, well, Dull and Boring, we'd still have Canada's youngest province whistling and twirling its moustache, winking like the porch light on Hugh Hefner's pad.

Look at the names in that province! Never mind the obvious Dildo and Come By Chance—how about Bare Bum Pond? Naked Man? Leading Tickles? And my favourite: Pinch Gut Tickle.

I'm not sure if that's an S&M option or an illegal wrestling hold but it sounds way more intriguing than Lloydminster or Sydney.

Naming geographical entities is a tricky business; you want to be careful who gets the honour to take it on. There's a city named Å in Sweden and a bay named Y in the Zuider Zee. France has an island named If, a river named As and a lake named Oo.

On the other hand, there is a town in Wales that goes by the name of Llan­fair­pwll­gwyn­gyll­go­gerychwyrn­drob­wllllanty­silio­go­go­goch.

Some people think we'd avoid confusion and misunderstanding if citizens got to vote on the names of towns, rivers, public buildings, etc.

Don't bet on it.

Recently, a Slovakian government opened online voting to name a bridge over the Morava River. Seventy-five percent of the populace came up with the same choice.

And that's why the new span over the Morava River will be known to posterity as Chuck Norris Bridge.