Speaker Simon Baldwin "Words - Here's the Tea"

Member Simon Baldwin had prepared a fascinating presentation entitled “Words - Here’s the tea”

Inspired by how different words have entered our language over the years and how different age groups use different vocabulary, he had chosen to share how some words had allegedly come into being.

BREXIT had been the result of a typing error when Peter Wilding was typing GREXIT. A term he created to convey the economic crisis looming in Greece.

SUPERMAN was first aired by George Bernard Shaw in his 1903 drama Man and Superman.

ROBOT was the brainchild of Karel Capek in his 1920 hit Rossum’s Universal Robots.

INTENSIFY was coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and was defined as “to render things intensely”.

DOUBLETHINK was, according to George Orwell’s novel 1984, the acceptance of contrary opinions and beliefs at the same time.

CLOUD CUCKOO LAND, a state of over optimistic fantasy, coined by the Greek playwright Aristophanes in the whimsical play The Birds. The name of the city created by the birds was Cuckoo Land. 

GERRYMANDER was created in a reaction to a redrawing of Massachusetts state senate election districts under governor Elbridge Gerry in the 19^thcentury.  Gerrymander is a portmanteau of Gerry and Salamander, hence the name Gerrymandering.

PUNDIT comes from the pandit, derived from Pandita, meaning “a learnedman or scholar”.

EUCATASTROPHE is a sudden turn of events at the end of a story that brings joy. The writer J.R.R. Tolkein simply added the prefix eu to the word catastrophe.

WiFi ,set up in 1999, is a trade-marked term meaning IEEE 802.11x.  It is a false notion that it stands for “wireless fidelity”. Instead Phil Belanger adapted HiFi to WiFi in 1971 when the Hawaiian Islands were connected by wireless technology.

So there we have 10 words, not connected, but their derivations amusing to members, especially some of them at this moment in time and in the current political climate.

Gordon Rhind thanked Simon on behalf of the club for his entertaining talk.