Tony Deyal
Tony Deyal
SOUTH OF the border, down Lexico way, Lexico was the original name, followed by Criss Cross Words, which finally gave way, in 1948, to Scrabble. While the name has remained constant for the past 56 years, the list of acceptable words has changed. In fact, the most recent Collins Scrabble Words publication has included 45,000 new words. This has prompted one writer, John Innes to ask, "What have the words 'arsed', 'bumfluff', 'yoker' and 'sparrowfart' got in common?" The answer is that they have all been given a clean bill of health and have been deemed socially acceptable for consenting adults and children indulging in the world's most popular board game and lexicographic pastime, Scrabble.
THE OLD DAYS
In the old days a word needed to be in general circulation for five years. This made it easier for the Scrabble pros. Now, like the fortunes of the West Indies cricket team, words come and go. According to Innes, "New Australian words feature in the list, including 'alko' and 'adjigo', plus useful three-letter words such as 'exo' and even 'iwi' from New Zealand. A Collins investigation into regional language last year found a renaissance in the use of regional words - such as 'charver', 'chog', 'angledug', 'chawk', 'daych' and 'wommit' - and these have been added to the list. Those playing Scrabble online will be familiar with the latest computer words to join the list, such as 'blog', 'app', 'chatroom' and 'cyberwar', while 'bratpacker', 'skanky' and 'kewl' may be better-known by younger players." To these have been added 'greenlight', 'ghettoblaster', 'cyberterrorism', 'drunkathon', 'headbang' and 'bioweapon'.
Interestingly, all the new words listed above have been redlined by my Microsoft Word spellcheck including the word 'spellcheck'. Unfortunately, Collins did not research the Caribbean where another 45,000 or more could be found in our dialect. My Guyanese colleague, Dr. Ulric (Neville) Trotz and I were talking about football. Dr. Trotz related an anecdote about a friend who hogged the football so much during a game that one of his frustrated team-mates angrily called him a 'ball bahoochee'. In Trinidad he would have been called a 'ball ho', anticipating a word commonly used on BET stand-up comedy routines to describe a certain type of individual, including but not necessarily persons who, for the sake of political correctness, are described as 'female sex workers'.
JAMAICAN
However, it is not true to say that when the pioneers were exhorted to head into the frontier by the cry 'Westward Ho!' that they corresponded to the description or definition. Then there is the Barbadian 'cafuffled' for 'confused' and 'pompasettin' for showing off. I like the Jamaican 'Chaka-chaka', meaning 'messy and untidy'; 'casco (kas-ko)' for fake or imitation, especially designer clothes; 'downpress' which Rastas have substituted as more appropriate for 'oppress'; 'zutopong' and 'zutopeck' that describes low class people; and one of my favourites in more ways than one, 'glamity' which, according to the dialect dictionary I used, means 'a woman's sexual private area.' From Trinidad, I like the words, most likely East Indian in origin, 'haseekarra' (sometimes 'hazzikarra') and its close companion in meaning 'jhanjhat' which roughly equate to 'lacooray' and all mean trouble brought on by, with and from complications. There is also 'humgrumshious' from Dominica meaning 'crude or rough.'
It is not only the Collins Scrabble book that has changed. The 11th Edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (mine is the seventh and is now 21 years old) has included the word/phrase 'va-va-voom' which it defines as "the quality of being exciting, vigorous, or sexually attractive." Some of the new words include Blue-on-blue: an attack by one's own side that accidentally harms one's own forces (collateral damage, friendly fire); Congestion charge: a charge made to drive into an area, typically a city centre, that suffers heavy traffic; Designer baby: a baby whose genetic make-up has been selected in order to eradicate a particular defect, or to ensure that a particular gene is present; Flash mob: a public gathering of complete strangers, organised via the Internet or mobile phone, who perform a pointless act and then disperse again; and Speed dating: an organised social activity in which people have a series of short conversations with potential partners in order to determine whether there is mutual interest.
ANOTHER LIST
Joining this plethora of new words, is a list of ten words which the American Heritage Dictionary believes every Secondary School graduate must know: abstemious, bellicose, chromosome, filibuster, gauche, gerrymander, interpolate, irony, plagiarise, suffragist. While I can have a lot of fun with the ten words above like 'bellicose' (is it abdominal or abominable?) and even 'irony' (a politician who has sat on the fence so long that the irony has entered his soul), I won't behave like a suffragist (and allow you to suffer?). The definitions are: abstemious: eating and drinking in moderation; bellicose: warlike or hostile; chromosome: a strand of DNA; filibuster: the use of obstructionist tactics, especially prolonged speechmaking; gauche: lacking grace or social polish; gerrymander: to divide voting districts so as to give unfair advantage to one party; interpolate: to insert or introduce between other elements or parts; irony: the use of words to express something different from and often opposite to literal meaning; plagiarise: to use and pass off the ideas or writing of another as one's own; suffragist: an advocate of voting rights, especially for women.
Tony Deyal was last seen getting into lacooray because he thought a filibuster is someone who has a way with young women and that the way you tell the sex of a chromosome is to take its genes off.
