R

EADER Rowan Gontier wrote a while ago to ask what was meant by “clever” writing. Rowan quoted a publisher who used the phrase in a derogatory sense, the way a parent might when an annoying fruit of their loins publicly points out an unzipped fly or a white lie. “Don’t be so clever,” the parent might growl, possibly with a “bloody” inserted somewhere in that sentence.

The part of this that puzzled and amused Rowan was that the publisher complaining about “clever” writing listed his objections in arcane words containing many syllables. Was this not in itself “clever”?

In response to Rowan (and this has taken some time because I was anxious about being called a clever clogs), let me take you back to a Pedant Class that focused on a book called How to Sound Really Clever, by British language enthusiast Hubert van den Bergh.

Media all over the world made much of the 600 words Van den Bergh selected as “Words the Really Clever Person Should Know”. Publishers who hate clever writing wrote these words on Post-Its and stuck them on their bathroom mirrors so that they could absorb cleverness while shaving.

Whether Van den Bergh was using “clever” in a complimentary or insulting sense was never really made clear, but the thought of this poor man having to select just 600 out of all the “clever” words out there gave me heartburn. How do you choose between exophthalmic and steatopygous? On what basis do you decide whether a penumbra is worthier than a palpitation?

Some of his choices are flummoxing. Between abnegation and abrogate is the uneasy inclusion of abrasion. How did that make the cut? I don’t think abrasion is a particularly clever word. If I were a pharmacist and someone asked for ointment to put on their abrasion, I’d be tempted to give them another abrasion.

The puzzle of this book is not so much whether the words in it are clever, but why it is so important to sound clever. And does using long words really help?

Actually, the problem is the word “clever”, which has been so abused, it has lost any recondite value it might once have had.

The original meaning of clever is “claw hand”, which I presume must have been something akin to a cloven hoof, but at the end of an arm instead of a leg. The owner of this claw was better at grabbing and holding things than his clawless contemporaries, which is how clever evolved from dextrous to, well, clever.

And there it stuck. Everything’s clever these days. Children who tie their own shoelaces are clever. Screw-tops for wine bottles are clever. Chefs cleverly use cumin and kumquats to create a clever combination of flavours. Designers put clever polka dots on clever pants for a smart new look. Smart is what Americans say instead of clever. Smart has spread like an infected abrasion. Smart cars, smartphones, smart hedgehogs. It doesn’t just smart, it stings.

The Elements of Style, published in 1920 by Strunk and White (known to some as the elephants of style) is a far cleverer book than How to Sound Really Clever. Of “clever”, William Strunk jnr writes: “This word has been greatly overused; it is best restricted to ingenuity displayed in small matters.”

The curse of clever is not a new one. In 1755, Samuel Johnson wrote: “This is a low word, scarcely ever used but in burlesque or conversation; and applied to any thing a man likes, without a settled meaning.”

Let’s not damn Van den Bergh entirely. There are some Really Clever words in his book. I particularly liked his inclusion of “anagnorisis”, which he defines as “the moment in the plot when the hero makes a discovery that explains what he did not understand before”.

I have yet to discover that which explains my nonunderstanding of why it is clever to show off one’s adipose and abrasions, but perhaps one day I’ll have my anagnorisis. Or my comeuppance. LS

E-mail your queries, comments and observations on words, language and pedantry to degroots@sundaytimes.co.za On Twitter @deGrootS1