OUR LANGUAGE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 72, Issue 6244, 19 June 1946, Page 11

OUR LANGUAGE

WEIRD VERBAL COINAGE INFLUENCE OF WAR ON WORDS A living language is like a living organism which evolves with the passage of time, developing new characteristics and shedding outworn and useless parts in order to fit in more completely with its changing environment, writes A. 8.8. in the Melbourne Age. The language lives on, rejuvenated and enriched by the contributions of each succeeding generation. Outmoded words drop into disuse and eventually become archaic; new words are added to our vocabulary as a result of technical advances and scientific discoveries. Some words gradually change in meaning; others develop as slang, and either die out of the language on eventually achieve respectability by official adoption into it through the dictionary. War invariably produces a host of unfamiliar words, some reappearing as resurrections from, the past; others coined to suit an occasion or a new set of circumstances. Of these latter many are doomed to an early but wellmerited relegation to that chamber of literary horrors wlhich yawns .for such moribund cadavers as “inferiority complex” and “mortician.” The prefix “de” has been adopted by the services to provide a long list of dreadful words which will, if we are not careful, creep into colloquial, if not literary, language. A. P. Herbert, in his book “What a Word,” quotes as an example of such counterfeit coinage “deratization,” which is “officialese” for clearing a building or an area of rats. From that term to “derodentification” is but one short, grim step. Gas warfare has left us an unholy legacy in “decontamination.” Possibly the people responsible would balk at a simple title like “cleansing.” “Deinsectication” has crept in its wake to indicate that premises have been fumigated, and thus might reasonably be expected to be free of minute pests. Its more humble but more appropriate illegitimate brother “delousing” has been used to describe the process of location and removal of explosive mines.

Recently a school building was handed back by the miltary authorities to the trustees. A newspaper recording that fact indicated that it had been “derequisitioned,” but perhaps the greatest verbal atrocity was used to inform readers that all W.A.A.F. personnel had been withdrawn from an R.A.F. station in northern England. “Dewaafisation of the station has been completed.”

Many bombing missions had as their object that of damaging the enemy’s aerodromes, and thus denying him their use. The term now current in official circles for this type of mission is “Interdiction Raid.” An interdict in its true sense is an authoritative prohibition, especially a sentence debarring persons or place from ecclesiastical functions. In other words the raids prevent the clergy from using the strip for church services.

Some delay in moving equipment, planes, armaments, etc., to the Pacific area was occasioned by the necessity to modify them in various ways to suit tropic conditions. In service circles the process is termed “tropicalisation,” a ghastly development from “hospitalisation,” which indicentally now has a new poor relation in “comfortisation,” used in a recent commercial advertisement to describe the advantages of a civil'air liner. Responsibility for many of these misfits may be laid at the door of the tabloid press of the U.S.A. It also bears a heavy load of guilt for the words “beautician” and “mortician.” It is no doubt due to trade snobbery of similar origin that the greengrocer in our street describes himself on his sign as a “fruitologist.” Many unfortunate words are resuscitated, battered by use and misuse and then dropped again. Some years ago a Sydney sporting writer lauded a footballer’s “positional” play. The word became fashionable, and was worked to death during the season. Nowadays a policy is not carried out; it is “implemented,” either “unilaterally” if carried out without reference to other interests or “bilaterally” if by agreement with another Power. One no longer speaks of difficulties encountered in moving and quartering bodies of troops. They have now become problems in “logistics.” To add to the difficulty of the reader a host of words is now used in such a way as to influence him towards or against the subject. Such “coloured” terms include “regimentation,” “visionary,” “reactionary” “Fascist,” “Communist,” “Tory,” and are potent weapons in the hand of the propagandist. Doubtless there will be a reaction as we return to civil life and once more “contact” our associates to “finalise” arrangements with the “rodent operative” to “derat” our premises or to “implement” a “bilateral” agreement in order to “neutralise” opposition in the “ideological” field.

It seems that the time is ripe for a campaign in defence of the language to retain what is useful or graceful and to jettison the monstrosities which war has brought into use.