The Story of English in 100 Words (33 page)

New words continue to arrive. The 20th century brought
lolly
(probably from
lollipop
) and
dosh
(perhaps related to a
doss
, ‘a place to sleep in a common lodging-house’). A surprising development was
archer
for ‘£2,000’. It came from the court case involving British author Jeffrey Archer in which a bribe of this amount was alleged to have been used. It probably won’t be part of the language for long.

The vast majority of these words stay in their country of origin. We don’t find Americans describing dollars as quids or the British describing pounds as bucks. That’s why
grand
is so interesting. It’s one of the few money words to have travelled. First used in the USA in the early 1900s, meaning ‘$1,000’, it was very quickly shortened to
G
. The term then transferred to British usage, meaning ‘£1,000’. British people happily talk about something costing
a grand
. But the digital age seems to have pushed
G
out of fashion. During the 1980s
K
, influenced chiefly by
kilobyte
, became the abbreviation of choice for ‘thousand’ in business plans and job advertisements. No city gent seems to earn
Gs
any more.

Mega

prefix into word (20th century)

Mega-
became a popular prefix towards the end of the 19th century. Scientists found it a useful way of expressing something that was very large or abnormally large. So, a relatively large bacterium was called a
megabacterium
. As a unit of measurement, it expressed a millionfold increase, as in
megawatt
. And in the 20th century, from around the 1960s, it came to mean anything of great size or excellence. In the city, takeover bids involving large sums of money were
megabids
. Large shopping complexes were
megacentres
. An extremely successful song or film was a
megahit
. People attended
megafestivals
.

With all this
mega-
about, the stage was set for the prefix to become an independent word. And in the late 1960s, we find it being used to mean ‘huge’ (
Those are mega achievements
), ‘excellent’ (
That’s a mega idea
) and ‘very successful’ (
She’s mega in France
). It could even be a sentence on its own. A reaction to a brilliant stage performance might simply be an awed
Mega!

Quite a few prefixes have started a life of their own as words. Garments and vehicles have been called
midis
,
minis
and
maxis
. If someone proposes a
course of action, we can be
pro
or
anti
(or
con
). We can weigh up the
pros and cons
. If you’re
an ex
, you’re a former something – usually a former husband or wife, though any previous office-holder or member of an organisation could in principle be called one.

The words can go in various directions. If we hold extreme views, especially in politics or religion, we might be called
ultra
, or labelled one of the
ultras
. But
ultras
are also people who have extreme tastes in fashion. And since the 1970s a long-distance run of great length, especially one that is much greater than a marathon, has been called an
ultra
.

Multi-
is another prefix that has developed a wide range of meanings as an independent word. If we heard the sentence
Multis are everywhere these days
, the speaker could be referring to cinemas (
multiplexes
), yachts (
multihulls
), buildings (designed for several families –
multi-family
houses), fashions (
multi-coloured
), very rich people (
multimillionaire
s), bridge players (making an opening bid of two diamonds –
multi-purpose
), international businesses (
multinationals
) or products that contain a range of vitamins (
multivitamins
). This is really quite an exceptional range of senses, and all came to be used in the second half of the 20th century.
Multi
, in short, has become mega.

Gotcha

a non-standard spelling (20th century)

When
The Sun
reported the sinking of the Argentine cruiser
General Belgrano
in 1982, the headline attracted almost as much attention as the event itself: GOTCHA. And a generation on, it is the headline that has stayed in the popular mind. It was the non-standard spelling that caught the public imagination. The effect disappears when we re-spell it as GOT YOU.

Not everybody liked it.
Gotcha
has playful connotations. We say it when somebody is caught out in an argument or discovered in a game of hide-and-seek. Yet this was a story about war, with lives being lost. Many thought non-standard usage wasn’t an appropriate choice for such an event. But few headlines have had such staying power.

A surprising number of words appear in non-standard spelling in newspaper headlines, novels, advertisements, graffiti and other written genres.
The Sun
has many famous instances, such as its claim after the 1992 election, IT’S THE SUN WOT WON IT. Often it’s a pun that motivates the spelling, such as the headline reporting cases of swine flu in Britain: PIGS ’ERE.

There comes a point when a non-standard spelling becomes so frequently used that it gets into the dictionaries as an ‘alternative’ (
§61
). We’ll find
gotcha
and
gotcher
in the
Oxford English Dictionary
, first recorded in 1932, as well as
geddit?
(‘get it?’, 1976),
ya
(‘you’, 1941),
thanx
(‘thanks’, 1936),
gotta
(‘got to’, 1924) and
gonna
(‘going to’, 1913). In the 19th century we find
luv
(‘love’, 1898),
wanna
(‘want to’, 1896),
wiv
(‘with’, 1898),
dunno
(‘don’t know’, 1842),
wot
(‘what’, 1829) and
cos
(‘because’, 1828).
Sorta
(‘sort of’) is recorded as early as 1790.

19. The front page of
The Sun,
4 May 1982.

Have non-standard spellings ever become standard in recent times? The recorded examples suggest that their public presence is still quite limited. Because non-standard English is strongly associated with informal, jocular and intimate subject-matter, they typically occur in the creative, leisure, sports and comment pages of newspapers.
The Sun
is exceptional in using them for news.
Thru
for
through
has made great public progress in American English, where we also find it in compounds, such as
drive-thru, see-thru, sell-thru
and
click-thru
. But other forms seem to be restricted to special usages, such as Mr Chad’s graffiti use of
Wot
(
§10
) or forms representing colloquial speech, such as
Sez who?

Most often a non-standard spelling is an attempt to show a regional accent:
There’s gold in tham thar hills, A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do
,
Gawd help us.
But we mustn’t fall into the trap of thinking that only lower-class accents are the source of non-standard spelling. Upper-class speech can find its way into a non-standard spelling too:
huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’
;
dontcha know
;
she’s a nice gel
.

PC

being politically correct (20th century)

Political correctness has been with us longer than its current vogue might lead us to think. The phrase
politically correct
turns up in the US Supreme Court as early as 1793, though not with reference to language.
Politically incorrect
is much more recent: the first recorded usage in the
Oxford English Dictionary
is 1933. And the abbreviation
PC
is the most recent of all: 1986.
PC
began its life with many positive associations. Today, when someone says that a word is
PC
, the connotations are almost always negative. What happened?

Political correctness is a linguistic movement which went out of control. Its supporters started out with the best of intentions, drawing attention to the way language can perpetuate undesirable social discrimination in such areas as race, gender, occupation and personal development. Feminists, for example, pointed to the way masculine words, idioms and word-endings reinforced a world-view in which women were ignored or played a secondary role (as seen in
all men are created equal, the man in the street, fireman, chairman
). The ‘innocent’ historical use of these expressions, they argued, was no guide. The goal had to be an inclusive language, which would avoid bias and give no offence.

In some cases, the solution was easy. It wasn’t linguistically difficult to change
fireman
to
firefighter
or
all men
to
all people
. Other changes required more ingenuity (
air steward(ess)
to
flight attendant
), and in some cases (such as
man in the street
) the language provided no idiomatic equivalent at all. Some changes (such as
chairman
to
chairwoman, chairperson
or
chair
) proved controversial, on both sides of the gender divide, and some proposed replacements were disliked because of their awkwardness (such as using
he or she
for
he
). Many argued that the alternatives often did nothing to remove any prejudice there might be about the condition: what was the advantage of
persons with disabilities
over
the disabled
? The negative associations simply transferred to the new term, as seen with the search for a PC expression to describe people who are
handicapped/disabled/physically challenged/differently abled
… or people who are
black/negro/coloured/Afro-American/African-American
… And what was the point of changing a label if social conditions didn’t change?