Word Nerd: Comedy, Tragedy, History, Cat-Pictures
4th March 2016
Hey yo!
So with Monstrous Little Voices coming out next Tuesday, I thought I’d cover some popular euphemisms for the toilet that have come and gone over thehahayeah obviously you know what’s coming.
Let’s do some Shakespeare.
The 1700
So if you ask your typical denizen of our nation’s streets for one random fact about Shakespeare, odds are they’ll say he added a buttload of new words to the English language.* If they’re particularly on form, they’ll even be able specify “more than 1700 words.”
Put them on the spot to actually name one of these, though, and they may come up with assassin,‡ or maybe zany. Or they’ll just shrug, like surely no-one expects you to know which words, right? Which is kind of a shame, because like there’s seventeen-goddamn-hundred of them, and surely it’s worth knowing some, if only for pub trivia conversations.
So while I was looking for a Shakespeare-themed column for Word Nerd, I sort of started thinking along these lines. Let’s cover some of his words!
Then I thought: let’s cover some of his internet words. Because you may not know it, but without Shakespeare’s contributions to the language four hundred years ago, some of the concepts defining the most transformative communications system the world has ever seen might have very different names.
The Bard of the Bandwidth
What do you mean, Dave?
Well, how about these bad boys?
Import
thou mayst not coldly set our sovereign process, which imports at full, by letters congruing to that effect, the present death of Hamlet. – Hamlet, Act IV, sc iii.
Perhaps more of a back-end concern, but importing and exporting files and >Tweet us; Facebook us; let’s have an argument/chat.
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*Okay, if you ask an absolutely typical denizen, they’d probably say “he wrote plays or something.” Let’s say an average nerd.†
†Okay, I just canvassed the office and got “He left his wife his second-best bed,” “He lived over a brothel,” “He didn’t write any of his own plays,” “He probably died of cancer,” and “He couldn’t look up.” So let’s just say – look, fuck off, alright? This is my column.
‡He didn’t. Assassin entered English from French shortly before Shakespeare was born; what he did was coin the verb to assassinate. I told you this’d be good! Huh? Huh?
**It should be noted that he gave us marketable (As You Like It, Act I, sc ii.), and in doing so arguably spent almost all of the good will he earned from everything else he did in his life ever.
¶YEAH I DID.
§Although a few organisations along the jackboot-and-flaming-pyre lines have made a spirited attempt.