OUR CHANGING SPEECH

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 45, 17 November 1925, Page 9

OUR CHANGING SPEECH

, WORDS LOSE THEIR MEANINGS. It is surprising how many a word loses its meaning in the course of “V 1 ?, than a lifetime. When young folk clare, behind my back, that lam a bit potty” they mean that I am weak in the head, or “touched,” writes An Old Buffer” in the “Daily Mail. Fifty years ago it was people in the early stage of consumption whom we spoke of as “touched,” and “potty was the slang term for what you now term “fishr ” If you say that Smith is a “gorger” you mean that he “does himself too well” at table. A gorger in my young days was a gorgeously dressed young fellow—a “knot,” as he was called a few years ago. When you say that a thing was a “scream.” or screaming, vou mean that it was very funny We meant merely that it was splendid or fiist rate. A “muff” to you signifies an effeminate sort of person with a marked distaste for any likelv to entail danger. Muffs in our days' were weak-minded people. Who minds being spoken of as a “chap” nowadays? “Chap” in myjantlj was a term of contempt, as fellow used to be a century previously. Huggermugger” meant underhand or deceitful to mid-Victorians. Nowadays all “huggermuggcr” means is a muddle. “He has a screw loose” is a term you use when implying that a man is eccentric or a little weak in the head. Me used it to suggest that a man’s financial position or reputation was unsound, or of two former friends between whom a coolness had arisen. A "snob” to ns by no means applied onlv to any person who attached exaggerated importance to social distinctions. The term signified a non-collegiate townsman nt Oxford or Cambridge. A “blackguard” did not mean a man of anv moral turpitude; it signified n very poor, dirtv. and ragged person, often a regular churchgoer of exemplary life and principles. Nor was n “cad” a man who broke what n celebrated snorting nobleman called “the laws that do matter. He was mcrelv a fellow who was always borrowing money and worming tips out of his acquaintances.