The Story of English in 100 Words (20 page)

9. A group of US scholars offer a toast to Samuel Johnson, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the publication of his
Dictionary
in 1955. A Johnson Society was founded in 1910, based in his home town of Lichfield, where the Birthplace Museum has a permanent exhibition of his life and times.

The Times
was having none of this. In its issue of 22 September 2008 it launched a campaign: ‘How you can help to save some cherished words from oblivion.’ People could vote to save the words they fancied. Collins, which is owned by News Corporation, the parent company of
The Times
, agreed that words would be granted a reprieve if evidence of their popularity emerged.

It was a curious headline, if you think about it, for if these words were being genuinely cherished, why should they be in this list at all? Nevertheless, there was quite a reaction. Andrew Motion went on record as supporting
skirr
. Stephen Fry was all for saving
fubsy
. Indeed, a ‘save fubsy’ online petition group was set up.

Just because words are left out of a dictionary of standard English doesn’t mean that they have disappeared from the language, of course. Some of the words remain alive and well in regional dialects. I know
niddering
and
skirr
are still used in parts of Scotland and the north of England, and
fubsy
(along with
fub
, ‘stout’) is mentioned in several dialect books.

It’s a daring decision, to leave a word out, because
you can never predict the future with language. A word or phrase can be obsolescent, then suddenly have its fortunes reversed by being used by some celebrity. Or attitudes change towards a word, so that one generation loves it and the next hates it and the next loves it again. But whatever has happened to words in the past, the future is going to be very different. The internet is changing everything, because in an electronic world dictionaries can be of unlimited size, pages are time-stamped and nothing disappears (
§83
). The internet is already the largest corpus of attested historical language data we have ever known. In that dictionary words never die. Even
fopdoodle
, attracting a lowly 8,000 hits on Google in 2011, will live on. If words could talk, they would say they had finally achieved what they always wanted: immortality.

Billion

a confusing ambiguity (17th century)

As scientists extended the boundaries of knowledge, so they needed larger numerals to talk about what they found. A million, known since the Middle Ages, wasn’t enough. They needed billions, trillions and more. Popular usage followed suit. People were already saying things like
a million to one
and
one in a million
in the 17th century. Then inflation set in.
One in a billion
sounded much more impressive.

But what did
billion
mean, exactly? The English thought of the six zeros in a million (1,000,000) as being a functional unit, so the next value up was going to be twice six zeros (1,000,000,000,000).
Billion
in Britain thus meant ‘a million millions’ – a ‘long-scale system’, as it later came to be called. But French mathematicians later went in a different direction. They thought of 1,000,000 as two groups of three zeros, so for them the next unit up was three groups of three zeros – that is, 1,000,000,000. In France,
billion
thus meant ‘a thousand million’ – a ‘short-scale system’.

The history of usage is complicated and varies enormously from country to country. Britain stayed with the long-scale system, but in the 19th century the USA adopted the short-scale system. For over a century, American English dictionaries recommended ‘thousand million’ and British dictionaries ‘million million’. Then, in 1974, Britain capitulated. The prime minister of the time, Harold Wilson, made a statement to the House of Commons:

The word ‘billion’ is now used internationally to mean 1,000 million and it would be confusing if British Ministers were to use it in any other sense.

However, usage doesn’t take kindly to government statements. Although officially a billion is now a thousand million in the UK, people are still aware of the older use, and uncertainty is common. So whenever I use
billion
, I gloss it. If I say that ‘English is spoken by 2 billion people’, I immediately add, ‘2 thousand million’, to be on the safe side.

It’s the normal state of affairs in a language for everyday words to have more than one sense. We only have to look in a dictionary to see that. There’s usually no ambiguity, because when we use the words in sentences we see which sense is involved. On its own,
bed
is ambiguous: it could mean (for example) a place where we sleep or a place where we plant flowers. But we have no problem interpreting
I stayed in bed until ten
or
Look at that lovely bed of roses
.

It’s unusual to find a scientific term developing an ambiguity of the kind displayed by
billion
. Normally, when scientists create terms, they’re accepted by the whole scientific community. There are standard definitions of such words as
hydrogen
,
atom
and
pterodactyl
, and we don’t expect to find differences between American and British usage. But here’s a mathematical term which is not only ambiguous but where the ambiguity doesn’t disappear when we put it in a sentence. When we read, ‘The disaster has lost the company a billion pounds’, we can’t tell how much has been lost.
Billion
reminds us of the ever-present dangers of ambiguity in the history of the language.

Of course, for most of us, the difference isn’t important. It’s simply ‘a lot’. And the language has come to reflect this ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude. The
-illion
ending is now used to express very large but indefinite amounts. In the mid-20th century we find
zillion
and
bazillion
, later
gazillion
and
kazillion
. People with really huge amounts of money were
zillionaires
.
The Record
, a New Jersey newspaper, took
the coinages to new heights when it talked about an economic crisis in 1990:

The savings-and-loan industry bailout, which as of yesterday was expected to cost taxpayers $752.6 trillion skillion, is now expected to cost $964.3 hillion jillion bazillion, not including the Christmas party.

Doubtless these words got a new lease of life during the banking crisis twenty years later.

Yogurt

a choice of spelling (17th century)

How do you spell
yogurt
? When the word arrived in English from Turkish in the early 17th century, people made several stabs at it. The first recorded usage is
yoghurd
. Then we get
yogourt
. Then
yahourt, yaghourt, yogurd, yoghourt, yooghort, yughard, yughurt
and
yohourth
. In the 19th century, there was a trend to simplify, and
yogurt
emerged as the front runner. It still is. In 2011 it was getting some 14 million hits on Google, with
yoghurt
8 million and everything else a long way behind.

Preferences vary somewhat between countries, however.
Yogurt
is the norm in the USA. In the UK, both are used, but
yoghurt
is three times more common than
yogurt
.
Yogourt
has achieved some presence in Canada, because of its French-looking character, but even there
yogurt
is more widespread. In Australia and New Zealand,
yoghurt
is commoner than
yogurt
, but
yogurt
is catching up, probably because of exposure to American and internet usage.
Yogurt
is catching up in the UK too. You have to be careful where you look, when you consult a dictionary. Some give
yogurt
as the headword, which places it after
yogi
and
yogic
. Others give
yoghurt
as the head-word, which places it before.

Yogurt
is not the only word that turns up at different places in a dictionary depending on how it’s spelled. The differences between British and American spelling can lead to very different locations. Depending on the dictionary you use, you’ll look under either MO- or MU- for
moustache/mustache
, under PY- or PA-for
pyjamas/pajamas
and under FO- or FE- for
foetus/fetus
. The problem is especially noticeable when the first letters of a word are affected. At least
aeroplane
and
airplane
keep you in letter A, and
tyre
and
tire
in T. But we have to make some big jumps with
oestrogen
and
estrogen
,
aesthetics
and
esthetics
and
kerb
and
curb
. A good dictionary will always anticipate the problem and include a cross-reference to get you from one place to the other.

Probably the commercial use of the word will condition the ultimate success of one
yogurt
spelling over the others. If you explore the yogurt-making world, you’ll encounter a whole family of derived forms. There are compound words such as
yogurt machine, yogurt maker
and
yogurt freezer
. Adjectives such as
yogurt-like, yogurtish
and
yogurty
. And brave new worlds too, it seems, judging by the name of an American international chain of frozen yogurt stores –
Yogurtland
.

Gazette

a taste of journalese (17th century)

The year 1665 is known for the Great Plague. Charles II moved his court out of London to Oxford. But how would the court keep in touch with the news? Publisher Henry Muddiman was authorised to produce what is often called ‘the first English newspaper’, the
Oxford Gazette
. When the danger was over, and the court moved back to London, the paper changed its name, becoming the
London Gazette
in February 1666.

The word
gazette
had come over from the continent, where it was used to describe a popular – though by all accounts not very reliable – news-sheet. One commentator described gazettes as including ‘idle intelligences and flim flam tales’ – frivolous nonsense. Perhaps for that reason, it was soon displaced in everyday usage by the word
newspaper
, whose first recorded use is in 1667, written as two words:
news paper
. However,
gazette
remained as the name of various official journals. If you were
gazetted
, you were the subject of an official announcement. And the journalists who wrote for them were called
gazetteers
.