Irreverent leaving presents prove extremely happifying

Colin Randall

• Last Updated: April 04. 2009 9:30AM UAE / April 4. 2009 5:30AM GMT

An individual’s departure from the staff of a newspaper is traditionally marked by a gesture that has proved, in my case, pertinent to this column’s territory.

After I stepped down as executive editor of The National, the items presented to me at my farewell party included a spoof front page, all the contents relating to my life and work in the UAE during the preceding 18 months. Such pages are highly irreverent, but the best examples nevertheless become treasured possessions. I am pleased to say mine was no exception. The main headline was “Return to normalcy!” which regular readers will recognise as a reference to my aversion to the word Americans use for normality. The reports on the page cleverly proceeded to break various of the style rules I had sought to enforce at The National, as well as offering further Americanisms, an assortment of misspelt words and much wayward use of punctuation.

My colleagues also gave me a copy of the Dictionary of Americanisms, compiled by John Russell Bartlett and published, in “greatly improved and enlarged” form, in 1877. Although it is only in jest that I say this was a book for which I had been scouring the world, it has already joined the spoof page as a cherished souvenir.

A glance at any of the 813 pages is a little like catching sight of an old friend from a distance, only to realise on closer scrutiny that you do not know the person at all.

Allow me to present some mouth-watering examples.

A state of “collapsity”, I learn, can mean a predicament such as poverty, though even the synonyms given by the dictionary – “collapt” and “collapsion” – would cause no less bewilderment to speakers of British English.

Later in the book, I encounter two related gems: “hurrygraph”, for a hastily written letter, and “hurryment” as a term from the southern states to mean hurry or confusion. The same section has “happifying” for making someone happy.

This is all rather unfair since I am sure none of the Americans of my acquaintance would dream of using these words. We are, after all, talking about a reference book that is 132 years old and reflects the age in which it appeared. A study of British English usage from the same period would also yield countless words and phrases no one would write or utter today.

Even in the 1870s, there was evidence of touchiness between British and American speakers of what is meant to be the same language. Mr Bartlett states crossly that the word “Britishers” is often ascribed to Americans by British writers. “The charge,” he declares, “is unjust. We never heard an American call an Englishman a Britisher; yet, by English authors, it is constantly put in the mouth of Americans.”

In a short column, I can barely scratch the surface of this fascinating work. But I cannot resist the temptation to report that I looked in vain for “normalcy”.

I have a theory on the reason for this omission. Back in December, I quoted Fowler’s Modern English Usage as absolving the much-mocked President Warren G Harding of guilt for the origins of the word, which appeared in a slogan in his 1920 election campaign. In fact, as I discovered, its first use had been in 1857.

This was eight years before President Harding was born; it was also 20 years before the publication of my copy of the Dictionary of Americanisms.

In its early life, the word clearly failed to catch on. Whatever else they were prepared to do to the English language, those 19th-century Americans were content to go without normalcy.

It may well be that President Harding deserves more blame than Fowler or his successors supposed. I will need a lot of persuading that the word did not remain in happifying obscurity until the need for an election gimmick ensured its rapid dissemination.

Colin Randall is a contributing editor to The National and can be contacted at crandall@thenational.ae