Wednesday, 23 May 2012
More publicity
Here (again, for my benefit rather than anyone else's), is another item in the Huffington Post.
Tuesday, 8 May 2012
The invention of ream
You won't go many weeks without hearing or reading that such and such a person or group invented a particular slang word. You probably accept this information with mild interest, perhaps meaning to mention it to someone else later. Maybe you'll remember to mention it, and the next person will also tuck it away for future reference and in no time at all it will have become 'fact'.
Really, though, no one individual can invent slang because slang only works in a social setting. I can make up a word (schlargle) and use it repeatedly every day of my life, but that just makes me a weirdo unless other people take it up. And if it's taken up by a group of my close friends and no-one else, then we're probably just a bunch of weirdos. It's not slang until it spreads more widely.
You may have come across the word ream (or reem), as used by Joey Essex of TOWIE (The Only Way is Essex). Because ream wasn't in common use when it was uesd on TOWIE, lots of people have assumed that Mr Essex made it up. He didn't. Jonathon Green's Green's Dictionary of Slang has a first example of use from 1859, from John Camden Hotten's Dictionary of Modern Slang, and although it doesn't seem to have been widely used until now, that certainly suggests that it isn't a modern invention. In fact, ream may be a variant of rum, originally underworld slang for "excellent" (though it has also been used to mean "odd, suspicious" by more law-abiding types). Rum is first found in Thomas Harman's Caveat for Common Curistors ("Warning for Common Vagabonds"), where it is spelt <rome>. Green says that it is probably from the name of the city, but the OED sticks with 'origin unknown'.
The point is, anyway, Joey Essex didn't make ream up, but he can take credit for bringing it to wider attention and popularizing it. This kind of misattribution often happens with slang: if we haven't heard a word before we assume that the person we hear using it is the person who invented it (my children and my students make this assumption all the time, usually wrongly). Unfortunately, we're not all as near to the centre of the world as we might like to think.
For other spurious slang creators, see Adam Tod Brown on hip hop slang and Grant Barrett on Daniel Cassidy's book (which is a whole other story).
Really, though, no one individual can invent slang because slang only works in a social setting. I can make up a word (schlargle) and use it repeatedly every day of my life, but that just makes me a weirdo unless other people take it up. And if it's taken up by a group of my close friends and no-one else, then we're probably just a bunch of weirdos. It's not slang until it spreads more widely.
You may have come across the word ream (or reem), as used by Joey Essex of TOWIE (The Only Way is Essex). Because ream wasn't in common use when it was uesd on TOWIE, lots of people have assumed that Mr Essex made it up. He didn't. Jonathon Green's Green's Dictionary of Slang has a first example of use from 1859, from John Camden Hotten's Dictionary of Modern Slang, and although it doesn't seem to have been widely used until now, that certainly suggests that it isn't a modern invention. In fact, ream may be a variant of rum, originally underworld slang for "excellent" (though it has also been used to mean "odd, suspicious" by more law-abiding types). Rum is first found in Thomas Harman's Caveat for Common Curistors ("Warning for Common Vagabonds"), where it is spelt <rome>. Green says that it is probably from the name of the city, but the OED sticks with 'origin unknown'.
The point is, anyway, Joey Essex didn't make ream up, but he can take credit for bringing it to wider attention and popularizing it. This kind of misattribution often happens with slang: if we haven't heard a word before we assume that the person we hear using it is the person who invented it (my children and my students make this assumption all the time, usually wrongly). Unfortunately, we're not all as near to the centre of the world as we might like to think.
For other spurious slang creators, see Adam Tod Brown on hip hop slang and Grant Barrett on Daniel Cassidy's book (which is a whole other story).
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