Why Felicity Kendal is a Fine Tickle Lady!
It’s just one of the wickedly witty celebrity anagrams in GYLES BRANDRETH’S irresistible series on the joys of the English language
ON SATURDAY, Gyles Brandreth, the doyen of TV’s Countdown, introduced you to some of his favourite quirks and curiosities from everyday speech. Today, continuing his sparkling A-Z tour of the engaging world of words, is our second extract from his new book, Word Play . . .
GIS FOR GEOGRAPHY LESSON
You’ll probably already know that the longest place name in Britain is that of the Welsh village of llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
But which country has the longest name? Answer: The united Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
That was a surprise, wasn’t it? And abbreviated to UK, it becomes the country with the shortest name, too.
on the subject of countries, a game long popular in our family is hiding their names inside sentences and asking someone else to find them. For example, the names of two countries can be found inside this question: ‘Have you heard an animal talk in dialect?’
Did you spot India and Malta? To get you started on devising sentences of your own, here are some more examples, each containing two countries: 1 Such a display could be either grand or rather vulgar. 2 In December mud and slush surround the fine palace. 3 Children put on galoshes to go out in the rain. 4 Give a dog a bone and give him a little water. 5 If your exhaust pipe rusts you just have to shrug and accept it. 6 Interpol and the FBI discover hidden marksmen. 7 Evening classes may help an amateur to improve his painting.
ANSWERS
1 Chad/Andorra. 2 Bermuda/Nepal. 3 Tonga/Togo. 4 Gabon/Mali. 5 Peru/Uganda. 6 Poland/Denmark. 7 Panama/Spain.
HIS FOR HOMONYMS
A Homonym is a pair of words that are pronounced the same but spelt differently, for example right and write, feet and feat, meet and meat.
With just a hint from me, can you find ten homonyms that are linked in some way to the animal kingdom? For example if the clue was ‘expensive’, the answer would be dear/deer.
CLUES
1 Husky. 2 long thin candle. 3 Exist. 4 Make a hole. 5 Second person. 6 Slang for money. 7 Fly away. 8 Rotate slowly. 9 Child’s cry. 10 Parts of a chain.
ANSWERS
1 Hoarse, horse. 2 Taper, tapir. 3 Be, bee. 4 Bore, boar. 5 You, ewe. 6 Dough, doe. 7 Flee, flea. 8 Turn, tern. 9 Mewl, mule. 10 Links, lynx.
Now find ten more which have a plant connection:
CLUES
1 Give up. 2 Punish by blows. 3 Escape of water. 4 Put underground. 5 Existed. 6 Flowing onward motion. 7 Shore of the sea. 8 objects placed in straight lines. 9 Duration. 10 Military officer.
ANSWERS
1 Cede, seed. 2 Beat, beet. 3 Leak, leek. 4 Bury, berry. 5 Been, bean. 6 Current, currant. 7 Beach, beech. 8 Rows, rose. 9 Time, thyme. 10 Colonel, kernel.
I IS FOR INGENIOUS ANAGRAMS
WITH anagrams — the rearrangement of the letters in a word or phrase to form another word or phrase — the skill-lies in finding a result that is spectacularly apt, as in these examples: Dictionary = indicatory. Mummy = my mum. Desperation = a rope ends it. Punishment = nine thumps. Endearments = tender names. Prosecutors = court posers. Soft heartedness = often sheds tear. Therapeutics = apt is the cure. Panties = a step-in. Waitress = a stew, sir? Semolina = is no meal. Software = swear oft.
The ingenuity becomes even greater when a whole phrase is turned into a different phrase with much the same meaning. For example: A decimal point = I’m a dot in place. The countryside = no city dust here. The nudist colony = no untidy clothes. The detectives = detect thieves. A shoplifter = has to pilfer. Gold and silver = grand old evils. A sentence of death = faces one at the end.
The names of the great and famous sometimes make telling anagrams. ‘I ask me, has Will a peer?’ and ‘I’ll make a wise phrase’ are two apt rearrangements of William Shakespeare. ‘Willie makes a phrase’ is a third.
Take Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — rearrange his name and look what you get: ‘A famous German waltz god.’ I know Mozart was Austrian, but it’s still quite neat, isn’t it?
‘Flit on, cheering angel’ was lewis Carroll’s anagram for Crimean War nurse Florence Nightingale.
Somehow there is a particular pleasure in rearranging political f i gures anagrammatically. With Margaret Thatcher you could get ‘Meg the arch Tartar’ or ‘that great charmer’, depending on your point of view. Tony Blair gives you ‘libyan rot’, and not much besides. Tony Blair MP, however, provides ‘I’m Tory plan B’.
other amusing celebrity anagrams include: Madonna Louise Ciccone = occasional nude income. Clint Eastwood = old west action. Justin Timberlake = I’m a jerk, but listen. Ian Botham = Oh man I bat. Frankie Dettori = taken it for ride. Alec Guinness = genuine class. Dame Agatha Christie = I am a right death case. Oliver Reed = erode liver. Germaine Greer = emerge angrier. Rowan Sebastian Atkinson = I, an artist, so known as Bean. Nigel Havers = girls’ heaven. Felicity Kendal = fine tickle lady. Luciano Pavarotti = put on a ravioli act.
And how does ‘Gyles Brandreth’ fare in the anagram machine? I can offer you either ‘rashly bred gent’ or ‘Bland get sherry’. let’s move on.
JIS FOR JUMBO
IN 1865, London Zoo welcomed its first African elephant, a gigantic animal who was 11½ft in height, six-and-ahalf tons in weight, and made such an impact on the world that his name is still synonymous with everything super-sized even today.
This makes Jumbo more than just an elephant. He was also an eponymist, one of a select band who have given their very names to the language, and below is my jumbo list of words we all use without, on the whole, realising who deserves the credit.
BARMY Not everyone agrees with me on this one, but there is evidence to suggest that barmy is a corruption of Bartholomew — and St Bartholomew was once known as ‘the patron saint of the feeble-minded’.
BATTY This term, meaning harmlessly eccentric, has nothing to do with nocturnal flying creatures (those bats in the belfry), but comes from the name of a 19th- century barrister, Fitzherbert Batty, who was from our own shores but lived in Spanish Town, Jamaica.
unhappily, he had mental-health issues and when he was certified in 1839, the news was reported in the
Press back home and so the word ‘batty’ slipped into the language. CAESAREAN The name ‘ Caesar’ comes from the Latin word caedere, meaning to cut. Legend has it that Julius Caesar (100 BC–44 BC) was given this name after he was cut from his mother’s womb in the ninth month of pregnancy.
But this is doubtful, since such a procedure would have been fatal and history shows that Caesar’s mother, Aurelia, was alive and well for much of her son’s life. More likely the term ‘Caesarean’ derives directly from caedere, but it is a good story and Julius Caesar deserves his place in this list of eponymists, come what may.
After all, he is responsible for our 365- day Julian calendar and the month of July is named after him. The month of August is named after his great-nephew, Augustus Caesar (63 BC–AD 14), the first of the Roman emperors. DIESEL Rudolf Diesel (1858–1913) was a German engineer who, in 1897, invented the first practical compression-ignition engine, which ran on cheap crude oil. The diesel engine is named after him. DRACONIAN The adjective ‘draconian’ refers to Draco, a law-maker who was the first person to write down the laws of Athens in the 7th century BC and was renowned for his harsh punishments. Stealing an apple? Death sentence. Urinating in public? Death sentence. Lazy at work? Death sentence. Draconian is now used to describe any regime that seems unduly severe. MAVERICK Samuel Maverick (1803–70) was an early Texan settler of an independent disposition. Refusing to brand his cattle, he let them wander the range freely. Neighbours called these roaming creatures ‘mavericks’ and today we still use that word to describe anyone who does not conform. SHRAPNEL Henry Shrapnel (1761– 1842) was an English artillery officer and inventor of the exploding shell. BLOOMERS The name ‘bloomers’ originated in America in 1851 when fashion editor Mrs Amelia Jenks Bloomer was much taken with an outfit worn to her house by her f riend, Elizabeth Smith Miller. Popularising this new and less restrict i ve style of l adies’ dress through her magazine, the Lily, Mrs Bloomer also organised a ball at which all the ladies who attended were instructed to wear the garment.
The freedom of movement it gave them made it a physical and metaphorical representation of feminist reform.
CARDIGAN During the bitterly cold conditions of the Crimean War, soldiers commanded by James Thomas Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, wore knitted garments which came to be known by his name.
The cardigan is still with us today, as are another l egacy of that campaign, the face-covering hoods worn by Cardigan’s soldiers during the charge of Balaclava in 1854. PLIMSOLLS The sports shoes of some of our schooldays were so named because the distinctive rubber line that runs along the edge resembles the Plimsoll line which indicates how much cargo a ship can safely carry, a measure introduced in 1824 by one Samuel Plimsoll of Bristol. SIDEBURNS Sideburns are named after the American general and politician Ambrose Burnside (1824–81), who was known around Washington DC for his unusually prominent mutton-chop whiskers. These came to be known as Burnsides. Later generations switched his name around and the sideburn was born. WELLINGTON Named after Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852), who instructed his boot-maker to produce leather boots to his own design, cut tight to the calf, hard-wearing yet comfortable. They became all the rage in English society among men keen to emulate their hero. The rubber version we associate with the term today was developed by Charles Goodyear (1800–60), in whose honour the tyre company was named.
K IS FOR KEEPING AT IT
NEXT time you are enjoying a book by your favourite author, and wondering whether you might have a stab at writing something yourself, remember that the path to publishing success is a notoriously difficult one.
Famously, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone was rejected by 12 publishers before one took a chance on it. And then i t was only because the publisher’s nine-year-old daughter said she wanted to find out what happened at the end.
Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone With The Wind was rejected a staggering 38 times before someone took a punt on it. And when T.S. Eliot was a director at the London publishing house Faber and Faber, he turned down George Orwell’s Animal Far m, decl ar in g it ‘unconvincing’ and criticising the characterisation of the pigs. It went on to sell more than 50 million copies.
And finally, my favourite: one publisher’s verdict on the man who created The Jungle Book and wrote If, the verse most often voted Britain’s best-loved piece of poetry: ‘I’m sorry, Mr Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.’
EXTRACTED from WORD PLAY by Gyles Brandreth, published by Coronet on August 6 at £14.99. © Gyles Brandreth 2015. To pre-order a copy for £11.99 until August 8, go to mailbookshop.co. uk or call 0808 272 0808. Gyles Brandreth’s Word Power is at the Edinburgh Fringe, Pleasance One, from August 5 to 30 at 4pm. See Pleasance.co.uk