Buzzwords are nothing new

Press, 14 September 1988, Page 16

Buzzwords are nothing new

Teenage television shows, the Beatles, Flower Power fanatics and General Anthony C. McAuliffe have a lot to answer for... man!

Not only have they influenced the ideals of nations, they have done irreparable damage to the English language.

While the youth and would-be youth of the 1950 s and 1960 s can be blamed for the feast of

buzzwords that took the world by tongue, they were by no means the grandparents of slang.

Many of the terms and phrases which have become commonplace in the teentalk of generations of New Zealanders have nautical origins. A.l as the equivalent of “excellent” stems from the famous classification “A.l at Lloyds” which described the con-

struction of a merchant ship as being of the highest quality. Likewise, “first rate” was the highest qualification of warship.

There was a time when young people apparently stopped talking. Instead, they would “chew the fat.” The nautical origins of this phrase are as disgusting as you may be led to assume.

In the days when brine was added to barrels of meat for preservative, it caused the fat to become hard so considerable chewing was necessary before it could be digested... thus to chew the fat came to mean to talk endlessly.

“Don’t cramp my style, man,” could have been “do not crab my style” had it not been for a subtle change of word. This colloquialism was borrowed from boatwork, where if any oarsman were to miss his stroke and tumble backwards, or in rowing terms, “catch a crab,” it would definitely have ruined his style.

Two words which have survived right through to 1988 are “mate” and “wasters” (a loser, nogood layabout). Who would have guessed that

mate was once only a friendly term for two people who ate meat together?

Wasters . were the people who could not be trusted to work aloft on a ship and were therefore relegated to work on the waist, or midship. Perhaps the most mind-boggling of all the nautical terminology which has stayed with us is “show a leg.”

This dates back to Napoleonic times when men were pressed into service. Because they would have deserted if allowed shore leave, they were instead entitled to have women visit the ship. The morning after the women visited there was some confusion, so to sort it out the petty officers would shout “show a leg.”