Tony Deyal
THERE WAS a time when getting your words worth had to do with the poet William and was a mere prelude to going up the Downs or wandering lonely as a cloud in places like Tintern Abbey. Now, that time is past and all its aching joys are now no more and all its dizzy raptures.
According to Bob Dylan, who was born Robert Allen Zimmerman and changed his surname to Dylan in tribute to the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, the times they are a'changin. Which means you can eschew going gentle into that good night, following the prescription of Dylan T to 'rage, rage against the dying of the light' or lay upon your big brass bed wondering if there is a difference between foreplay and foreploy. While in the Caribbean, foreplay amounts to 'Honey, I'm home,' for the Irish, foreplay is either 'Brace yourself, Bridget' or a six-pack. 'Foreploy' is 'universally any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting sex'.
BUNCH OF NEW WORDS
What is interesting about foreploy is that it is one of a bunch of new words that in many cases hit the nail, or whatever object is indicated in the circumstances, on the head. Among the new words that I find particularly apt, especially now in the aftermath of the football World Cup, are 'blamestorming' and 'ohnosecond' based on 'brainstorming' and 'nanosecond'. 'Blamestorming' amounts to 'sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed, a project failed, and who was responsible' as in France's defeat, and an 'ohnosecond' is 'that minuscule fraction of time in which you realise that you've just made a huge mistake'. I am sure that Zinedine Zidane, banished to the dressing room, had many of those moments before becoming the butt of broadcast blame and humour.
Some of the new words are extremely picturesque. A 'salmon day' captures the experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end. A 'seagull manager', especially those of us whose daily lives are spent in toiling assiduously for some ungrateful and distant empire, multinational, conglomerate or regional institution, is 'a corporate bigshot who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and leaves'. While this type of manager invites 'assmosis' or 'the process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard' or what is called 'pandering', it is distinct from the post-coital and hopefully post-foreplay Panda bear which 'eats shoots and leaves'.
'MOUSE POTATO'
The phrase 'mouse potato' is now a recognised variation of 'couch potato' and has to do with computer addiction. The 2006 edition of the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary includes this with other words like 'unibrow' (eyebrows that join together) and 'himbo' (an attractive but otherwise empty-headed male). Other new words include 'Aquascape' or 'a scenic view of a body of water, or an area having a natural or constructed aquatic feature', 'manga', which is a type of Japanese comic book or graphic novel, and 'supersize' - a fast food phrase for increasing the calorific value of a potent combination of grease and sugar.
One new word that seems to have been invented for West Indian men is 'polygamory' or 'the state or practice of having more than one romantic relationship at a time'. We have not yet reached 'drinker's heaven', which is my phrase for a community with at least one rum shop per male inhabitant. However, that will soon come. In the meantime, we have to appreciate that words like 'podcast', 'dreamscape', 'ringtone', 'biodiesel' and even 'Google' are inescapably and indelibly part of our language.
What is also new are some of the labels now being placed on the different socio-economic or social groups. It was not too long ago that words like 'WASP' (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), yuppie (Young Upwardly Mobile Professional), buppie (black yuppie), guppie (Gay Urban Professional) and puppie (Pregnant Urban Professional) were added to the language following hippie and preppie (someone attending or dressed like a student of a private 'prep' school). Now we have the 'sandwich generation' or 'people who are caring for their ageing parents while supporting their own children' and so are in a state of in-betweenity. There are also 'sitcoms' that have nothing to do with television and consist of more than two-and-a-half men. They are the 'Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage' or what yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids. There are also the old dogs who find it impossible to learn new tricks, the 'WOOFS' or 'well-off older folks'.
'SOUL PATCH'
You wouldn't believe it but there is a name for the small bit of beard under a man's lower lip. It is a new word in the 2006 Merriam-Webster-'soul patch'. South Koreans may even call it a 'Seoul patch'. Staying in the Orient, there is 'qigong' - not a brass object on which one can conduct 'percussive maintenance' (defined as 'the fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again') but an 'ancient Chinese healing art involving meditation, controlled breathing, and movement exercises'. The one that intrigues me most is 'coqui'. Confucius is reputed to have said, "Man with hands in pocket feel coqui all day." However, according to Webster, this particular spelling refers to a small, tree-dwelling Puerto Rican frog. Caramba!
Tony Deyal was last seen quickly looking up the phrase 'big box' and feeling quite cocky about knowing what it meant. He was amazed to find that it is 'of, relating to, or being a large chain store having a boxlike structure'. He was obviously shopping in the wrong place.
