Paphos People

New Words

Ever since Neanderthal man felt the need to communicate with his friends or enemies there have been words. Mmmm would have been a greeting for someone with whom he had pleasant memories, whereas Grrrrr would have been used to someone who stirred up unpleasant feelings. So there you have probably the earliest demonstrations of feelings good or bad. All that primitive man needed for probably thousands of years.

Words developed into common language, many having the same meaning. Why was that necessary? Would not language be so much easier if one word meant only one thing.

Crossword puzzles would never have happened books would be very slim volumes without multiples of different words all meaning the same thing just confusing things.
Great rambling public speeches by Roman Emperors for example would have been cut down to a simple statement.
‘Friends Romans countrymen etc’ could be cut down to ‘Oi listen’

Then people began to make money out of making up complicated new fangled descriptions William Shakespeare for instance invented many new words designed to fit in with the theme of his stories. If people hadn’t encouraged him he wouldn’t have bothered and probably lived out his life as a shopkeeper or something in Stratford on Avon.

So where does this thirst for new words come from? Its just people with a need for self importance and an appearance to know more than everyone else. Why complicate things unnecessarily. Grunts like Mmmm and Grrrr seemed to work well for cavemen in the prehistoric times. Then the bigheads came on the scene and Mmmm turned into Mmmm nice and Grrrr turned into Grrrrrout of it!
Probably the start of the difference between gay men and skinheads.

One of the best examples of simple language sounds was ‘The Flower Pot Men’ a children’s puppet show on TV where characters spoke gobbledy gook but put meaning into it by raising and lowering the pitch of their voice, very clever. In fact most drunk people develop their own version of this language just before they pass out! Flobalob a scobalob can be heard in most pubs at closing time as they try to order a taxi.

Maybe the OED could delete words that haven’t been in use for say ten years, like Fab, Mods and Rockers, Teddy Boys do you follow what I’m saying. Eventually as long as they delete more words than they add we should get back to a manageable vocabulary.
So you can keep your thurlough and WFH and other words that sprang up during Covid, I’m going for a retro language Mmmm and Grrrrr spring to mind.