Every time I hear the Americanism “addicting”, I am at first momentarily baffled, and then physically sickened. Just say “addictive”!
But let’s set aside our nationalist preferences. We don’t say “sportive” but “sporting/sporty”, so why wouldn’t we say the plainer, albeit not totally Saxon, “addicting”?
Here are more words from my notes, another hodgepodge of randomness. These are all words which are attested with these meanings in standard English. Enjoy!
Wax and wane. This phrase means to increase and decrease, of the Moon mainly. So let’s stop saying increase when we can say wax, and let’s stop saying “decrease” when we can say wane. We can also say eke for increase, as in eke out, but I like to keep eke as a like-for-like (=equivalent) of augment, eke out being to over-augment or over-extend.
Wanze is another great albeit no-longer-used word. It is the verbal form of “wane” in the same way that “cleanse” comes from “clean”, using the Old English verb-from-noun/adjective-forming suffix -sian. But how could we use this with a distinct meaning to “wane”? In Middle English, as a transitive, awanze meant to impair, diminish, to cause to lessen, to emaciate. Intransitively, it could mean to waste or wither away. Perhaps this could be some niche for (a)wanze, as well.
Andrew Neil is a wonderful journalist and interviewer, but what is not wonderful was the use of the word “adumbrate” which he used on the 25th of September 2020. What does “adumbrate” mean? It’s from the Latin adumbrat- meaning “shaded, shadowed”. It has three meanings in English: to overshadow, to foreshadow, and to outline. What is wrong with these fine Saxon words? Nothing. Let’s bin off this Latin monster and use our plain English instead.
The early Modern English of the King James Bible, the traditional Bible in English-speaking countries, is rather different to today’s English. See Matthew 6:1-2 below in the King James version.
Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
Now take a look at the same verses in the modern New International text.
‘Be careful not to practise your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. ‘So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honoured by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.
Sometimes, the older version has homeborn words (do alms) whereas the modern version has borrowed words (practise your righteousness). And other times, it’s the newer version which uses homeborn words and the older that borrows (Verily but Truly).
None-the-less, the King James version of the Bible, still so familiar to us despite de-Christianisation and “modernisation”, gives us many homeborn words to stand in stead of the borrowings; the main upside is that even though many of these older words are no longer (commonly) used, they stay well-known owing to their use in the Bible. These words are, as I put it, “buttressed” by their familiarity as part of scripture. Here are some other homeborn words from the same passage that you may wish to swap into your English, thanks to the Bible.
Swap in: take heed for pay attention; do alms forpractise charity; blow/sound your trumpet for announce it loudly; have or get for receive.
What other passages from the Bible can you find where the older text gives us words of English birth?
One of the most well-known splits between US and UK spelling is the ending –o(u)r found in colour/color, honour/honor, valour/valor and so on. Whatever your opinion of either spelling, it should be noted that the forms are French and Latin and therefore should probably be taken out of Anglish. However, short of getting rid of every single word in the tongue which has this ending, which may not be possible, we need to face the need to make these forms more English. But how should we do this?
Broadly speaking, –our is French whereas –or is Latin. See the history from http://www.etymonline.com below. The English form for this sound in the position is almost always –er, as in teacher. Now, folk might not want to spell words like “colo(u)r” the logical English way, “culler”, as this Anglish movement is not primarily about spellings. But spellings are a part of the language. And many words simply cannot be taken out of the speech; even Icelandic and German have many outland borrowings. But there is no reason why the outland spelling should stay. Bear in mind that spellings like “onner” (for “hono(u)r”) are attested.
Folk may also complain that –er makes agent nouns (a “teacher” is one who teaches), and so spelling it “culler” might confuse issues with one who culls. But in any case, –er isn’t exclusive for agents, unless “butter” is someone who butts. And indeed, “butter” being one who butts is a perfectly legitimate word — none-the-less, context tells us what we mean.
So how’s this for an Anglish proposal? Where we cannot get rid of –o(u)r words, change the spelling to –er, particularly where the rest of the word doesn’t need changing at all: so maybe maybe not “culler”, but definitely “governer”.
-orword-forming element making nouns of quality, state, or condition, from Middle English -our, from Old French -our (Modern French -eur), from Latin -orem (nominative -or), a suffix added to past participle verbal stems. Also in some cases from Latin -atorem (nominative -ator).
In U.S., via Noah Webster, -or is nearly universal (but not in glamour, curious, generous), while in Britain -our is used in most cases (but with many exceptions: author, error, senator, ancestor, horror etc.). The -our form predominated after c. 1300, but Mencken reports that the first three folios of Shakespeare’s plays used both spellings indiscriminately and with equal frequency; only in the Fourth Folio of 1685 does -our become consistent.
A partial revival of -or on the Latin model took place from 16c. (governour began to lose its -u- 16c. and it was gone by 19c.), and also among phonetic spellers in both England and America (John Wesley wrote that -or was “a fashionable impropriety” in England in 1791).
Webster criticized the habit of deleting -u- in -our words in his first speller (“A Grammatical Institute of the English Language,” commonly called the Blue-Black Speller) in 1783. His own deletion of the -u- began with the revision of 1804, and was enshrined in the influential “Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language” (1806), which also established in the U.S. -ic for British -ick and -er for -re, along with many other attempts at reformed spelling which never caught on (such as masheen for machine). His attempt to justify them on the grounds of etymology and the custom of great writers does not hold up.
Fowler notes the British drop the -u- when forming adjectives ending in -orous (humorous) and derivatives in -ation and -ize, in which cases the Latin origin is respected (such as vaporize). When the Americans began to consistently spell it one way, however, the British reflexively hardened their insistence on the other. “The American abolition of -our in such words as honour and favour has probably retarded rather than quickened English progress in the same direction.” [Fowler]
As you may have picked up on, I am a lover of Swedish (see here and here). Going through the Duolingo Swedish course is providing me with a lot of delight and inspiration right now. For example, the Time module has reminded me of a few lovely Swedish words.
There’s årtionde “decade”, lit. ‘year-ten’, and århundrade “century”, lit. ‘year-hundred’. There’s the particularly lovely årstid “season”, lit. ‘year’s-time’.
But my favourite is ögonblick “moment”: literally, ‘eyes-blink’.
Notice that all of these Swedish words are what I call “phrase-words“: phrases which have been condensed into a word. I propose using such phrase-words more often in English. I consider such formations to be “implied English”; that is, they don’t happen to exist in any dictionary, but they are implied by the mechanisms of the language.
The literal English oversetting of the above Swedish words doesn’t quite work in English. “Year-ten”, “year-hundred”, “year’s-time”, and “eyes-blink” have a distinctly Germanesque smack to them. However, we can make phrase-words of “ten years”, “hundred(s of) years”, “time of the year”, and “blink of an eye” in a style most English. I put forward:
ten-year, hundred-year, year-time, eye-blink (with or without the dashes as one sees fit).
Of course, there is nothing wrong with the phrases “ten years”, “time of the year”, and so on. And I would definitely advise people to use “In the last ten years”, and its ilk, instead of “In the last decade”. But when one needs to use a single word to encompass this phrase, as one does from time to time, let’s use the impled English phrase-words instead of complex Latinate jargon.
But the way the world is, and the way that there’s more and more people, more and more doctors are needed — I mean, it’s already happening now that people are doing jobs now that they’re not really qualified for because they get, they get sort of, err.. what’s the word.. sort of uppered too early. Karl Pilkington, The Ricky Gervais Podcast Bonus Disc Track 3 http://youtu.be/ALGFVxKv2f4?t=11m31s
I love the comedy of Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant (creators of The Office) and their collaborations with their friend Karl Pilkington. But they aren’t everyone’s cup of tea; critically acclaimed and hated in equal measure. But anyway, I love listening to the three of them and their podcasts.
Karl Pilkington sometimes comes out with very Northern or very made-up words which are amusing (to me, at least), such as “wroted”, “pikelet”, and “badder”. And he gets mocked by Gervais and Merchant for this. However, when I recently heard him say “uppered” to mean “promoted” (as in a job), I had to pause the podcast.
It was beautiful, it was perfect. Gervais mocked him, said that it was primitive language. But I think it’s great. I mean, we do say “to down [the drink/ship]” and “to up [the stakes]”, which are prepositions turned into verbs. And we have similar adjectives to “upper” also turn into verbs such as “to lower”. So why not “to upper”? Of course, “to upper” could mean any number of things and might not needfully mean “to promote”. But I don’t see anything against the rules of English in making a verb “to upper”, from the adjective “upper”, with the meaning “to promote [in a job]”.
I momentarily thought that we might say “to higher” instead, but that would get mixed up with the same-sounding “to hire”. Speaking of which, why do we bother with “to employ” at all when we can equally say “to hire” and “to give work to”? Also, why say “job”, but we can usually say “work” instead or “workplace” instead?
I think it’s about time that we demystify and dejargonise the workplace (particularly important considering the topic of my piece “Rationalisation Measures“).
Posted by bryanajparry 
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Quick Comment: Addicting
August 28, 2022Every time I hear the Americanism “addicting”, I am at first momentarily baffled, and then physically sickened. Just say “addictive”!
But let’s set aside our nationalist preferences. We don’t say “sportive” but “sporting/sporty”, so why wouldn’t we say the plainer, albeit not totally Saxon, “addicting”?
© 2022 Bryan A. J. Parry
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