Do Geese see God?

Those who dislike seeing graffiti today may be heartened to know that even the ancient Romans suffered from rogue graffiti artists. While excavating the ancient town of Herculaneum in 1738, archaeologists discovered graffiti in the form of the Sator Square, dated to approximately 79 AD, and the earliest palindrome known to be recorded. Rather than a simple ‘Arepo woz ere’, the Sator square arranged the words ‘Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas’ into a square, which read the same in all four different directions. There are so many possible translations of the text that its meaning remains ambiguous, from anything such as ‘Arepo, the sower, guides the wheels with care’ to speculations of an underlying religious message with ‘the Creator holds the working of the spheres in his hands’. Either way, the Sator Square demonstrates that language patterns and palindromes have long fascinated humans.

Chambers 21st Century Dictionary defines a palindrome as “a word or phrase that reads the same backwards and forwards” and quips that the first ever palindrome to be uttered may have been ‘Madam, I’m Adam’. What Eve would have responded is anyone’s guess, although of course her name alone is palindromic. Readers called Anna, Hannah, Bob, Elle or Viv will know the joys of having such a name, while the actor Robert Trebor actually changed his surname from Schenkman just to enjoy the phenomenon.

It is often proclaimed that the longest single-word English palindrome is tattarrattat, used by James Joyce in Ulysses to describe a knock at the door, yet other contenders include detartrated, a contrived chemical term to describe the removal of tartrates, and kinnikinnik, a mixture used by Native Americans as a substitute for tobacco. However, these words have been criticized for being completely fabricated or almost never used. The Chambers Dictionary lists two slightly more useful nine-letter palindromes, Malayalam, “the Dravidian language of Kerala in SW India”, and the trademark Rotavator®, defined as “a motor-powered, hand-operated soil-tilling machine”. The Finnish language is rife with long single-word palindromes, such as saippuakivikauppias, denoting a soap stone dealer, and solutomaattimittaamotulos, which apparently translates as “the result from a measurement laboratory for tomatoes.” Yet while we might borrow some words from the Finnish from time to time, I’m not too convinced that either of those will be entering the English language any time soon.

Perhaps the most popular form of palindrome is the multi-word expression. 1948 saw the popularization of ‘A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!’, attributed to Leigh Mercer, while other historically relevant palindromes include ‘Able was I ere I saw Elba’, purportedly spoken by Napoleon on his first sighting of the island Elba, to which he was exiled in 1814. Personally, my favourite use of palindromic expressions is this song, a parody of Bob Dylan’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’, made up entirely of palindromes. Any song that gets away with asking “May a moody baby doom a yam?” is ok by me.

Deborah Smith

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Getting a word in

A while ago, Michael Quinion, writer and creator of the excellent site World Wide Words, contacted Chambers with a query he had received. His correspondent was curious to find out how you would go about getting a word you had coined into a dictionary.

A surprising number of people have contacted us with a similar query. Neologists can be passionate about the words they create and often view their inclusion in a major dictionary as the ultimate goal.

It is certainly not impossible to coin a word and live to see it entered into a dictionary – every word has started somewhere. However, we often repeat the caveat that we, like other dictionary publishers, don't include words until we have evidence that they have been used by a range of people over a reasonable period of time. No matter how cleverly conceived and logically constructed a word may be, it won't appear in a Chambers dictionary until we are satisfied it is in use.

Lexicographers' decisions on such matters are informed by statistics from corpora – large databases of real language use. At Chambers, we have the Chambers Harrap International Corpus (CHIC), a well-balanced and ever-growing corpus of nearly one billion words. With a little analysis, the citations in such a corpus can show how frequently a word is used and if it is restricted to a small group of users.

It follows that if people do find a coinage useful and start to repeat it, the number and spread of citations will increase and the word could eventually merit a place in the dictionary. So, if you are keen to see a word of your own making entered into a dictionary, you should use it as much as possible, encourage others to do so and, if you have the opportunity, use it in a context with a wider audience, for example a letter to a newspaper or a radio phone-in. Keep a record of when and where you have heard the word because, even with corpus evidence available, there is still room for lexicographers to exercise some personal judgement as to whether a word is likely to become firmly embedded in English. When you have enough evidence to prove that the word has established itself outside your own circle, send all your citations to your dictionary publisher of choice.

If your word makes the cut for the next edition of the dictionary, you can feel content in the knowledge that it has become part of the lexicon!

Mary O'Neill

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"Quotation marks" & "ampersands"

In a recent Chambers blog, it was noted that bad grammar and poor punctuation often annoy people, yet there are websites devoted to some of the more peculiar interpretations of grammar and punctuation rules. One such site is the pleasantly diverting The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks, which collects examples of this phenomenon (think along the lines of Please "close the door" behind you) caught on camera by contributors.

Chambers Perfect Punctuation advises that quotation marks can be used to set apart words you want to distance yourself from, often to indicate that you are being ironic or sarcastic. However, the use of quotation marks to highlight words or phrases presented without a trace of irony or sarcasm is on the increase. There seems to be a widespread notion that you can use inverted commas for straightforward emphasis, as you might use underlining.

A more recently emergent fashion in writing is the use of an ampersand in place of the word 'and' in running text. Conventional usage dictates that ampersands are acceptable in titles, company names and fixed abbreviations such as A&E, but should not be used in formal running text. Now this elegant little symbol is increasingly used – very often in subtitles that appear in rolling news programmes – as shorthand for 'and' in phrases such as a lethal combination of reckless & excessive risk-taking.

But how annoyed should we be by this more indiscriminate use of the dainty device? Perhaps our level of irritation should be correspondent with the level of confusion that a misuse might engender. A misplaced apostrophe or comma, or wrongly used quotation marks for that matter, could result in ambiguity, but there can be no doubt what '&' means in any context. The character was originally a ligature of E and T (Latin et, meaning 'and') used in printing and, as if any reinforcement of its meaning were needed, the word 'ampersand' has a delightfully circular etymology, coming from 'and per se, and', ie, & by itself means 'and'. So, if an ampersand so determinedly and exclusively means 'and', why worry about the context in which people employ such a handy symbol?

In this spirit of objectivity, we can identify the stages of any linguistic bugbear. Stage 1 is irritation when the development becomes apparent. You might question why this construction/word/punctuation mark is being used in such a clumsy and haphazard fashion when its purpose is to provide clarity in a different situation. However, if you are not the type of person to be riled by something as apparently innocuous as a punctuation mark, you might proceed directly to stage 2, amusement. Incongruous incorrect usages can have an unintended comic effect, something that the quotation marks website capitalizes on. Then there is stage 3: acceptance. The gripe is considered old hat, one raised only occasionally by stuffy pedants, and the 'misuse' (necessary quotation marks?) becomes so commonplace that most people cease to notice or care. You never know, the day could come when no one bemoans the incorrect insertion of an apostrophe in a plural.

Mary O'Neill

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Lexicography 2.0

The Global Language Monitor recently announced that, according to its calculations, the millionth word in the English language is Web 2.0 (web two point oh), a term popularized several years ago by Tim O'Reilly and friends as a way of describing the maturation of the World Wide Web from its humble text-on-screen beginnings to the interactive, community-driven, multimedia, all-encompassing behemoth that it has now become. This announcement is likely to provoke a lukewarm response from the general public, for whom the term is probably unfamiliar, and amongst web pioneers, who are getting excited about the semantic web (which enables computers to understand the meaning behind web content) and hoping to usher in the era of Web 3.0. And it provides yet another example (along with the language of search engines and mobile phones) of the challenge presented to lexicographers by the rapidly advancing world of technology. The transient nature of such words makes dictionary inclusion a difficult decision. In fact, Web 2.0 didn't make the cut for the recent edition of The Chambers Dictionary.

The term Web 2.0 pays homage to a popular method for naming different versions of software. Traditionally, developers use this numbering scheme to differentiate between minor and significant updates - a version ending in .0 is a completely new version, whereas other numbers represent more subtle improvements. Hence the choice of Web 2.0 rather than Web 1.1 to emphasize that this was a radically new way of thinking about the web. And so the 2.0 suffix joined the family of "e-"s, "i-"s and "-.com"s in creating artefacts of the information age, as it became a somewhat popular way to describe any organization or entity that hopes to re-invent itself with a new, tech savvy identity. Reference has been made to Business 2.0, Government 2.0, Terror 2.0, Church 2.0 and Novel 2.0. But it’s often hard to pin down exactly what these terms mean. How does a book become eligible for the Novel 2.0 label? Could a film adaptation be considered a multimedia novel? Or if interactivity is key, what about "choose your own adventure" style books? At Chambers our concern is with Dictionary 2.0, as online dictionaries, open dictionaries and visual dictionaries provide new opportunities for people to engage with and contribute to the lexicon.

Adopting technical conventions for more conversational purposes is not a new practice. James Harkin's book Cyburbia, published by our friends at Little, Brown, drew my attention to how words like "feedback", "in the loop" and "switched on" were drafted into everyday language from the world of engineering in the middle of the 20th century. More recently, "offline" has been co-opted by businessmen where "taking something offline" means discussing it outside or after a meeting. I'm sure the reader will be able to think of many more examples from other sciences and disciplines, and the list will no doubt expand in years to come as dictionaries try to keep pace.

Even the designation by Global Language Monitor of "Web 2.0" as a word is another cause of lexicographical debate, given that it contains numbers, a space and a full stop. Loosening restrictions on what makes a word is something that we have to deal with 24-7. From the panic of Y2K to the potential of the G20, viewing things in 3-D and listening to MP3s, lexicographers better hope this all doesn't lead to some kind of catch-22 situation.


David Wark

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A different kettle of ghoti

"The only stupid thing about words is the spelling of them."
- Laura Ingalls Wilder

Incorrect spelling annoys people. So does bad grammar and strange punctuation. There are websites, blogs and forums devoted entirely to finding cases of peculiar or humorous cases of these mistakes. But while grammar and punctuation seem (on the whole) to follow logical rules, there are so many shortcomings in our current spelling system that it’s a wonder we still use it to communicate.

The well cited argument for spelling reform, commonly attributed to George Bernard Shaw, is that with current spelling ‘fish’ could be spelt ‘ghoti’. It wasn’t Shaw who actually made this particular statement, but it’s still a valid point. ‘Ghoti’ takes the sound made by ‘gh’ in rough, the ‘o’ in women, and the ‘ti’ in nation, which phonetically combined could be pronounced as ‘fish’. It’s no wonder that this is possible when you consider that there are nine pronunciations of ‹ough›:

• Borough/thorough ə
• Cough ɒf
• Enough/rough ʌf
• Bough/plough aʊ
• Nought/thought ɔː
• Through uː
• Dough/though əʊ
• Hiccough (hiccup) ʌp
• Lough (Irish loch) ɒχ

Mark Twain satirically devised an ingenious plan to improve spelling by gradually dropping the ‘unnecessary’ letters of the alphabet c, x and y, removing double consonants, ‘fixing’ the use of g/j and w/o and completely adjusting the way we use vowels. Yet what was satirical then was not so ridiculous once. Before the printing press standardized written English, spelling was much more flexible. William Caxton introduced not only the printing press but also Dutch spelling habits, and began to homogenize English spelling. Language was further normalized by Samuel Johnson with his Dictionary of the English Language (1755), and since then dictionaries have usually been considered the most authoritative guide to correct spelling.

But here’s the catch: dictionaries are on the whole descriptive, describing the language that people do use, rather than prescriptive, prescribing how people should use language. So rather than set the standard form of a word, most dictionaries merely reflect the one that is most commonly considered acceptable. If the nation decided to start spelling ‘fish’ as ‘ghoti’, you would soon find this updated in The Chambers Dictionary.

Because of this, readers occasionally question why we list the two alternatives of words such as recognize/recognise or organize/organise with the –ize suffix as the headword. The reason is that while both spelling forms are acceptable in British English, only the spelling –ize is regarded as correct in American English, making it more internationally appropriate. In fact, while some British speakers prefer the –ise forms, –ize is actually more etymologically accurate. The suffix was found in many Ancient Greek verbs as –izein, for example baptizein, to immerse, from which our modern baptize is derived. The –ise spelling was a later adoption from the French, and can be seen fixed in forms such as revise and advise.

Of course, as language isn’t a fixed phenomenon, we might just have to revise this all one day anyway. In which case, we’ll keep you posted.

Deborah Smith

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A hairy situation

Hair can say a lot about a person, and in return we say a lot about hair. The word ‘hair’ itself comes from the Old English hær and the Old English form is related to the Old Frisian, Middle Dutch, Old High German and Old Norse forms – we’ve obviously been talking about hair to each other for a very long time.

Hair can be a great source of hilarity and at least two light-hearted definitions in The Chambers Dictionary poke a little fun. While mullet-supporters may describe their style as ‘business at the front, party at the back’, Chambers defines a mullet as ‘a hairstyle that is short at the front, long at the back, and ridiculous all round’. Some men may attempt to hide their bald patches with a combover, but they can’t hide from our editors, who define combover as ‘a vain attempt to make the most of one’s dwindling resources of hair’.

A handful of hairy stereotypes can be found in a new Chambers book, Women Can’t Park, Men Can’t Pack by Geoff Rolls. Geoff is a psychology lecturer, and he uses his knowhow to examine the psychological truths behind common stereotypes: is it true that blondes are dumb yet gentlemen prefer them? Are redheads passionate? Do stressed-out people go grey early?

The origin of the passionate redhead stereotype is hard to pin down, but is not surprising given how we think of the colour red in our society and, by extension, language. Red is a colour associated with hot things, like fire, lava and blood – in fact, one definition of red in The Chambers Dictionary is ‘the colour of blood’. Moreover, there are a lot of idioms in the English language that use heat, redness and blood to get across the feeling of extreme anger: spitting blood, seeing red, red mist, hot-tempered, fuming (no smoke without fire), your blood boiling and the phrase like a red rag to a bull (when bullfighters use a red cape, it is for the stimulating effect of the colour on the watching humans – not the colour-blind bull). So it is not surprising that these associations carry over to people with red hair – indeed, so pervasive is this stereotype of the hot-tempered redhead that another meaning of ‘redheaded’ is ‘angrily excited’.

Of course, once a stereotype sticks, it can be hard to shake it off, and in many ways it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Geoff speaks of a red-headed friend who is normally the most placid, laid back woman on the planet … until someone brings up her hair, when she unwittingly snaps into the stereotype with her furious reaction.

The funny thing about stereotypes is that some are actually based in fact and some seem to have come out of nowhere. I’m not going to tell you which are which of the others though and leave you with the old tease: you’ll have to read the book to find out.

Naomi Farmer

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Not everything from Mexico is bad

If you are feeling well enough to read this, you are presumably not yet suffering from the H1N1 strain of influenza – although if reports are to be believed, many of us soon will be. Most reports about this virus use the name of ‘swine flu’, although some refer to it as ‘Mexican swine flu’, and the Israeli government even debated removing ‘swine’ altogether (on account of cultural sensibilities over pork) and calling it ‘Mexican flu’.

Needless to say, Mexico cried foul at this suggestion. Who wants their country's name to be enshrined in language as the purveyor of a pandemic? (However, one only to needs to think of Dutch elm disease and German measles to realize that other countries have suffered similar indignities.)

Before the arrival of swine flu, Mexico could claim a reasonable track record for projecting a favourable image through language. The Mexican wave (a rippling effect created by different sections of spectators at a sporting event standing up in turn) is associated with celebration, while Mexican orange blossom conjures up sensations of warmth and fragrance. Even the American phrase Mexican standoff (referring to an impasse or stalemate) is by definition a neutral term.

Words that Mexico has contributed to English through the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs generally refer to exotic animals (axolotl, ocelot, quetzal) or nice things to eat (avocado, chilli, chocolate), and words that have come into English more recently from the Mexican variety of Spanish also reflect the enthusiasm of the English-speaking world for spicy Mexican cuisine (enchilada, fajitas, jalapeño, taco).

No less than three districts of Mexico have given their names to well-known objects: the state of Tabasco to a hot pepper sauce, Tequila to an alcoholic drink associated with riotous partying, and Chihuahua to a small breed of dog with big eyes and pointing-up ears.

Finally, two notable Mexican people have given their names to English words: the revolutionary leader Zapata to a kind of droopy moustache, and the Aztec emperor Montezuma II to Montezuma’s revenge (also known as the Aztec two-step), which is a stomach disorder that you might get from eating too much of the above-mentioned spicy food.

This last term was probably as bad as it got as far as Mexico’s linguistic associations were concerned – until now.

Ian Brookes

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Textual Intercourse

The advent of the mobile phone has had an unquestionable impact on how we communicate. For starters, many new phone-related words have found their way into The Chambers Dictionary in recent years. Obviously there's the definition of mobile phone itself, along with variations like flip phone, clamshell phone, camera phone and smart phone. Other terms that have become familiar include pay as you go, SIM card and even happy slapping. And after many years happily existing purely as a noun, text now acts as a verb as well; "to send a text message".

New words, however, are only the beginning – mobiles have started a whole new style of communication, rife with acronyms, abbreviations and (mostly) intentional misspelling. Twenty years ago you might have been considered mad if you'd written someone a note consisting of "lol. gr8, c u 2nite", but now this is an acceptable part of our new fast and efficient discourse. There has been much conversation about the effect of this language shift and the merits of text speak or textese. Jonathon Green, author behind the Chambers Slang Dictionary, contributes to the discussion concluding "It's just another form of the Queen's English – not better, not worse". Thousands of school teachers across the country disagree, and the debate continues.

Recently I encountered another interesting linguistic contribution from the world of mobile telephony - the "textonym". Two words are textonyms of each other if they are entered using the same combination of keys in predictive text. I'm sure many of us will have sent or received a nonsensical message caused by this phenomenon. I wrote a program to find textonyms within The Chambers Dictionary, hoping to uncover some interesting associations. Some of the these are happily serendipitous, others potentially disastrous, and some yield connections that would probably never otherwise be made.

Employers, be careful if you choose to text your candidates the outcome of their interviews - selection and rejection may be semantically distant, but they are perilously close together in the world of predictive text (keys 735328466). A night out can quickly turn from merriness to messiness, but thankfully it's easy to adjust your message accordingly (637746377). And although there aren't really any words that rhyme with purple, it need be lonely no longer - its textonym supple (787753) is just a key press away. A few other favourites are kiss and lips (5477), satay and saucy (72829), toffee and unfeed (853333) and libido and lichen (542436).

The most prolific combination for textonyms is 7663, yielding twelve words including some, roof, pond, Rome and several other more obscure words. 4663 gets you these slightly more useful eight textonyms: gone, good, goof, home, hond, hone, hood and hoof. The longest textonym in The Chambers Dictionary is 638765378262543742, offering a choice between neuroleptanalgesia and neuroleptanalgesic, though I wouldn't expect to find that in too many mobile phone dictionaries - occasions that call for conversation about "the administration of a tranquillizer and an analgesic at the same time to induce a sleeplike state" are few and far between.

The latest must-have gadgets seem to be favouring a traditional QWERTY keyboard for text input, so the days of predictive text may be numbered (no pun intended!). But although textonyms could be a short-lived phenomenon, the need to say more with less is still very pertinent, and so it looks as though other mobile influences, like textese, will b here 4 a while yet.


David Wark


Thanks to @jimmysixbellies and @Narrenschiff for bringing this to my attention on Twitter.

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A forgotten oubliette

Discovering useful words for useful things is always an intriguing aspect of lexicography, as Ian Brookes recently mused on in this blog. Yet sometimes it's even nicer to rediscover obscure words that will rarely serve any use at all. This was the case recently when I flicked through Foyle's Philavery and stumbled across the word oubliette, the name for a secret dungeon beneath a trap door.

Oubliette is hardly a word that a person needs to use everyday, unless perhaps you're trapped in a dungeon or live in a castle. But as a child obsessed with Labyrinth - in which David Bowie in tight lycra was almost as scary as the magical creatures and mythical monsters - an oubliette seemed a logical thing to be aware of. Where else would you trap hapless wanderers within the sprawling maze, never to return again?

In this sense oubliette acts in the truest sense of the word, for not only is the dungeon designed to trap its victims, but to remove them from memory entirely, revealed by the word's origins in the French oublier, to forget. With no way out but the trapdoor through which they fell, prisoners relied on their captors' mercy, or some other outside assistance, to get out. And those that didn't were simply forgotten. Which is quite ironic, since the word itself is likely to be one I'll forget again and again, only to be reminded of it by the occasional nostalgic film viewing. And while oubliettes are still occasionally discovered in this country, I'll just keep hoping I never find myself trapped in one.


Deborah Smith

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Words on the chopping block

At the end of February, researchers at The University of Reading claimed to have identified – with a little help from computer technology – the oldest words in English. Among these were the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘who’, and the numerals ‘two’ and ‘three’. More controversially, the researchers proposed words that could disappear relatively quickly, including verbs such as ‘turn’ and ‘wipe’.

As editor of The Chambers Dictionary, I was invited last week to take part in a discussion about the research on The Book Café on BBC Radio Scotland The overriding view among the guests was one of scepticism: surely language evolution is not so predictable that human or machine can say with any certainty which words will have the shortest life?

The extinction of words was a topic I had been pondering just before the research was published, having been prompted by a correspondent’s question about how we assign the label ‘obsolete’ to words in the dictionary. The answer is that we have no hard-and-fast rules, except that the label should be applied to words that we are certain have fallen out of use, usually because they refer to obsolete concepts. But then, it is very difficult to determine when a word is truly obsolete, and our awareness of it means there is always the potential to use it again. If I mention a word that has disappeared from the dictionary since 1901 – let’s say ‘wappet’ (a yelping dog) – can I claim to have resurrected the word by using it in this blog?

It was put to me by a producer on the programme that I must witness the death of words frequently, when we delete them from the dictionary and replace them with others. In truth, Chambers editors are not guilty of deleting very much. The editors of the 1972 edition of The Chambers Dictionary attempted to delete just one word – agene, a flour whitening agent. Not, you might imagine, a word of such inherent character and interest that it was bound to elicit love and loyalty. However, several correspondents remarked on its loss and the word was restored to the dictionary, where it resides contentedly to this day.

A report on the BBC news site on the Reading research described certain words as ‘heading for the lexicographer’s chopping block’. Because they can decide what is included in dictionaries, lexicographers are often perceived as having the final say in whether a word is dead or alive: they are the judge, jury and executioner in a word’s trial. However, lexicographers are well placed to appreciate how difficult it is, when language can be fluid and unpredictable, to say with confidence when a word is no longer in use. They also know how loath word lovers can be to think that any word could ever vanish completely.

Mary O'Neill

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Tackling the linguistics of rugby

In the first match of the Six Nations Rugby Championship this year Nick Mallet, Italy's coach, chose to play the talented flanker Mauro Bergamasco at scrum half. So appalling was his performance that a new phrase was immediately coined by journalists and rugby pundits: 'doing a Bergamasco'. Depending on who you listen to, the phrase refers either to one particularly shocking, ballooning pass by the hapless Mauro which gifted Italy's opponents England a try or to the poor decision by the selection committee to play a normally excellent player completely out of position with disastrous consequences.

Fortunately for Bergamasco and Italy such journalistic coinages are usually transient and tend to pass out of the language just as a badly thrown rugby ball can loop past its intended recipient (sorry, couldn't resist). However it won't be of comfort that there are cases of enduring performance-related coinages. These include the garryowen, defined by The Chambers Dictionary as 'a high kick forward together with a rush towards the landing-place of the ball'. The name comes from the Garryowen Club in County Limerick, Ireland, whose play was characterised by the frequent use of such 'up and under' kicking tactics.

As with many sports, the language of rugby is lively and rich: players forming a 'maul' could engage in some 'up the jumper' play, even a bit of 'truck and trailer' but they should be careful not to be 'pinged' by the referee or they might end up in the 'sin bin'. One of the most confusing things I found when I first started watching rugby was the multitude of names each position seemed to have. For example, the player in the number 10 position in rugby union can be referred to as a 'fly half', a 'fly', an 'outside half', an 'out half', a 'stand-off', a 'stand-off half', a 'five-eighth', a 'first five-eighth' or a 'first five', with apologies to the experts if I've missed out any. The diverse nomenclature is due to differences between rugby league and rugby union, historical rule changes and regional variation.

In addition to rugby-specific terminology, there are also more common words which have a particular rugby or sports sense such as 'mark', 'dummy', 'conversion', 'blind', 'open' and 'hooker'. Their use can lead to misunderstandings when rugby commentary is taken out of context, with often humorous or rude results. I spotted a nice example of potential ambiguity in the Observer's analysis of the Wales Italy game last weekend where Michael Aylwin writes:

'Tom Shanklin, one of a raft of replacements brought on to save a game that Wales were losing 12-7 as the final quarter approached, went over with eight minutes remaining after James Hook had gone blind from a ruck.'

For those of you with no interest in rugby, you'll be glad to know that James Hook is still fully-sighted. He just ran from the ruck on the side closer to the touch line.

Ruth O'Donovan

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Is it a bird...? Is it a plane...?

The film adaptation of the 1980s comic book series Watchmen is released in cinemas this Friday and highlights an increasing trend in the popularity of superhero blockbusters. After the seemingly unstoppable success of recent films starring such comic book characters as X-Men, Spiderman, Hulk and Superman, and the critical acclaim of 2008 Batman Begins sequel The Dark Knight, it is unsurprising that films of this genre continue to be released and to draw huge audiences.

Yet while highly imaginative fictional creations, the classic heroes of these stories are often less than original when it comes to the linguistic inventiveness of their names. The animal characteristics that distinguish Spiderman, Catwoman and Wolverine provide their obvious inspiration, while the physical traits of Iron Man and Hulk, or abilities of Storm, Magneto, Iceman and Pyro are reflected in their superhero aliases. Captain America exhibits patriotism in the extreme, while Wonder Woman's pseudonym simply exudes magnificence and the Fantastic Four inspire marvel. The characters of Watchmen are more creative, for example the mysterious Rorschach is named after the psychological inkblot test, or the ingenious and enterprising Ozymandias takes an alternative name for Rameses II, often considered Egypt's most powerful pharaoh.

For many, the traditional, definitive superhero is the one with arguably the least inventive name of all, Superman. Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shushter in 1933, Superman first appeared as a comic book character in 1938, marking the beginning of the superhero comic book genre. Yet the etymology of the word reveals a surprisingly academic origin. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche first coined the term in his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra in 1883. Nietzsche wrote of an Übermensch, which roughly translates to superman, as representing an ideal man and a goal for humanity to reach. Later adopted by George Bernard Shaw in the play Man and Superman, and of course developed by Siegel and Shushter to become the Superman we know today, Nietzsche's superman was an ambition, a theoretical possibility, and ultimately the meaning of life.

So perhaps the recent obsession with the superhero is indicative of a collective quest for higher meaning. Or maybe we all just wish we could fly. But please, let's not go jumping off any roofs trying to achieve Nietzsche's goal for humanity. That's probably not quite what he had in mind.

Deborah Smith

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Sharp-eyed readers and Uncle Sam

To many users, a dictionary is the linguistic representation of a shared culture, one they not only witness but actively participate in. So it is natural that readers often wish to contribute suggestions or amendments to a dictionary that describes the language they use themselves. At Chambers we regularly receive letters and emails that prove to be interesting reading and often include comments that we take into account in future editions of our dictionaries.

Readers often notice the most specific intricacies of language, unearth fascinating facts or citations, and raise initially baffling queries that ultimately result in new discoveries for both parties. There are all sorts of linguistic curiosities that we explore as part of our regular correspondence with readers from all over the world.

One keen-eyed correspondent recently pointed out an interesting citation in James Fenimore Cooper’s tale The Prairie (1827) explicitly linking the name Uncle Sam with the US government. Chapter 10 of the story introduces Captain Middleton of the US Artillery, and describes aspects of his attire and belongings in great detail:

‘At his back he bore a knapsack, marked by the well known initials that have since gained for the government of the United States the good-humoured and quaint appellation of Uncle Sam.’

The correspondent raised a question about the origin of this expression, which is an interesting case of folk etymology versus documented fact.

Common folklore suggests that Uncle Sam initially referred to a real person, Samuel Wilson. A meatpacker from Troy, New York, Wilson stamped barrels of meat bound for American soldiers with the initials U.S., which were jokingly interpreted by the receivers as gifts from ‘Uncle Sam’.

However, historians and lexicographers dispute this derivation in favour of a more established theory. The first traceable written record of Uncle Sam to refer to the US government or its people is in the Troy Post of September 7, 1813, in which the editors declared: ‘Loss upon loss, and no ill luck stirring but what lights upon Uncle Sam's shoulders’. They explained that the term originated with the markings on US military supplies: ‘The letters U.S. on the government waggons, &c., are supposed to have given rise to it.’ This derivation is supported by the quotation supplied by our correspondent. The Cooper citation suggests that, rather than an appellation for a real person, Uncle Sam was indeed a nickname for the government of the United States, resulting from the markings on military equipment – in this case Captain Middleton’s knapsack.

Uncle Sam has continued to be used as a visual representation of America, changing over the years until being established in his current bearded form, complete with the patriotic stars and stripes of his top hat, tail coat and striped trousers. While he may not have ever existed as a real person, he certainly exists as an iconic American symbol, albeit one with exuberant fashion tastes!

Deborah Smith

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'Tis the season to be joco

January 25^th was the birthday of Robert Burns, Scotland’s most renowned poet, and it was celebrated with the customary ‘Burns suppers’ of haggis, whisky, and lively conversation. This year there was unprecedented revelry, as the 250^th anniversary of the birth of the Bard of Alloway is being commemorated by a special ‘year of Homecoming’ in Scotland.

The legend of Burns’s personality and lifestyle – and the image that most readily springs to mind is that of a rather rakish ‘ladies’ man’ – sometimes detracts from the value of his poetry. It can’t be denied that through his poetry, Burns did much to preserve the idioms and vocabulary of Scots. Very many people in Scotland, whether or not they are particularly familiar with Scots language, will be well acquainted with words like sonsie and sleekit from Burns’s works ‘Address to a Haggis’ and ‘To a Mouse’.

Not all of the words that we can identify as Scottish are known to every Scot, given the different derivations and regional variation in usage of these words. Cailleach (an old woman) and clachan (a small village) are Gaelic in origin, while quine (a girl) comes from the Doric of North-east Scotland. But every Scot will know some distinctively Scottish words that express an idea succinctly and are very satisfying to say, for example fouter (pronounced ‘footer’, meaning to mess around aimlessly), wabbit (tired out), capernoity (irritable or giddy) and, of course, clishmaclaver.

Many of the words that Scots like best of all are those that have a unique meaning in the English spoken here in Scotland. If a Scot says he is ‘getting the messages’, he doesn’t mean that he is receiving communications from the afterlife, he just means he is going for his shopping. If you ‘uplift’ someone or something, you don’t have to elevate them, but you might collect them from somewhere. And one which bemuses many: if you ‘clap’ a dog, you are not abusing the poor animal or even giving it a round of applause, you are simply giving it a friendly pat. It is such differences in usage that make the English language so rich; all its subtleties would take more than one lifetime to learn.

Mary O'Neill

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Welcome to the Chambers Editors’ Blog!

Welcome to our very first Chambers blog, where you will be able to read the Chambers editorial team's musings on lexicographic and linguistic topics (and probably a few other things besides). Clishmaclaver struck us as an apt title, as the home of Chambers has always been in Edinburgh, Scotland, and clishmaclaver is what is known around these parts as 'a good Scottish word'.

When I tell people that I am a dictionary editor, it usually elicits an enthusiastic response, and not a little envy. To work so closely with words is clearly on many people's 'dream jobs' list, and so I am reminded that I am in a very privileged position. Some of the words we find ourselves working with in The Chambers Dictionary are, and I say this without overstatement, superb. No matter how familiar you become with the text, you still find some new delight every time you venture in. My own current favourites? Tosticated, meaning 'perplexed', and galimatias, a lovely synonym for 'nonsense'.

Making the dictionary available online has brought a whole new dimension to our work as lexicographers. The gap of years before we could add a collection of new material – or even a single new word – is no longer, and now we only have to hold off for a few months before we bring in the latest crop of good candidates. Like the profession of lexicography as a whole, this is a challenge as well as a pleasure, but we have the satisfaction of knowing that we are keeping our dictionary at the cutting edge of vocabulary coverage.

Mary O'Neill

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