Tuesday, January 03, 2006
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Balderdash and Piffle

Yesterday was the first episode of BBC's series "Balderdash and Piffle", a television program about words and the stories behind them (made in collaboration with the Oxford English Dictionary). I'm extremely interested in this topic (see references to BBC's Word Hunt from my "nerd post" in July) but was rather skeptical about how the topic would translate to television. Sadly, I have to report that the answer is "not very well". The episode was brought to you by the letter "P" (all the words under investigation [except one] started with "P"). I suppose this is as good a theme as any, given the lack of similarity of any other kind among the words and phrases in question.

The main aim of the investigation was to find conclusive evidence of a particular usage (for example, "gay" [the one non-P word] used to mean "homosexual". Earliest such documented use 1935) predating the earliest instance in the OED's current records. And this, on its own, makes for very dull television: either a particular piece of evidence is definitive or not. In order to liven things up, an annoying presenter wandered around, visiting various members of the public who had found potential pieces of evidence (or even, visiting the National Archives looking for early evidence herself), then presenting this evidence to an OED panel. When the panel found the evidence insufficient (quite reasonably, I thought) she tried to wheedle (wheedle: Origin obscure. Possibly a survival in a specialized application of OE. "waedlian" to beg, orig. to be poor, from "waedl" poverty. - OED) and beg for the evidence to be accepted anyway (in a most unseemly fashion). She did have one instance of success: the term "ploughman's lunch" to refer to (essentially) a cheese & pickle sandwich, but this took a convoluted path laden with television-friendly fodder. First she visited a number of pubs (where ploughmen's lunches are served), then without success, went to visit some ploughmen (and did some plowing herself, you know, because she was talking to ploughmen). Still no success so then she visited someone associated with the British cheese industry, who directed her to someone who was responsible for cheese-related publicity in the 1950s and 60s, and indeed this person had some early advertising materials (unfortunately, undated) which predated the earliest documented usage. But then, finally, we followed her to the National Archives where she (eventually) breathlessly waved a few dated records of ploughmen's lunch publicity. And hooray, this evidence was good enough for the suits at the OED. But only a tiny smidgen of this segment had anything to do with words or phrases.

Other p-words were included, I guess, to fill out the program. "Pig", for example, is one of the few English words that actually seems to be of Anglo-Saxon origin. This was enough to launch a piece on pigs (and piglets, for of course the term "pig" originally referred only to the young of the species; once the term expanded to include swine in general, the term "piglet" was adopted to fill the gap). Similarly, there was a long (and quite entertaining) diversion into "polari" (an argot/cant used by various underworldly sorts, taken up by gay communities on sea and in London [EDIT: As Chig commented below, use of Polari was certainly not restricted to London]), mainly consisting of older Polarists reminiscing about some of their favorite terms. In passing there was another visit to the OED panel with supposed evidence for the homosexual sense of "gay", all rejected as ambiguous, thanks to coreference with the Gay 90s and very frequent use of "gay" in other senses. This is one of those cases where, most likely, the only acceptable evidence would be an overt definition or explanation in context (for example, one of OED's examples, from 1955, goes like this "Most of the officers at the station had been ‘gay’..an American euphemism for homosexual."). By setting a goal of providing definitive, conclusive proof, the OED has made this a difficult (but reasonable) task, but one ill-suited to television.

There is one real benefit to this series, however (in addition to gaining additional linguistic evidence which will be incorporated into the OED). In conjunction with it, the OED is making (some of) its online content available to members of the public (ordinarily there is a substantial subscription charge. Fortunately my institution subscribes). Words beginning with "P" are now available for browsing by the public (go here to play), and the full content of the OED can be browsed for 48 hours after transmission of the program (so you have 28 hours from the time I post this message). Judging from the list, I guess we should also expect B and M to follow. Possibly N too ("naff" was mentioned in the discussion of "polari", but no indication was made that its origin was also being investigated. In fact, its etymology was presented as an acronym N.A.F.F., but the current OED entry suggests that this is a "later rationalization" rather than an origin). I'm sure I will eagerly watch the additional episodes, but will be similarly disappointed. The world is just not ready for a proper etymological television series without the fluff.
language | teevee
Tuesday, January 03, 2006 3:49:08 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [1]  |  Related posts:
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Saturday, January 07, 2006 1:27:47 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I felt exactly the same way as you after watching this; slightly disappointed, so it's good to read your comments. I was expecting something a little more academic, which was going to discuss more words than it did, without wasting so much time on so-called 'investigations'. I'll still watch though, as etymology is a subject which has always fascinated me.

Can I just have a little moan though? Unfortunately, you've repeated something from the programme which irritated me at the time. They did say that polari was a London thing, but it was used and understood (by those 'in the know') all over the country, so I don't really understand why they said that (other than the London-centricity which sometimes affects journalists).
Chig | chigAT NOSPAMcmdh dot freeserve dot co dot uk
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