THE BREXICON – updated and translated

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My project to create a glossary of Brexitspeak and the toxic terminology of Trumpism and populism* has thankfully attracted media attention and contributions from many specialists, writers and members of the wider public. I am very grateful and absolutely delighted to reproduce here the lexicon compiled by students on the MA in Translation and Professional Language Skills Programme 2019-20 at the University of Bath and their teacher Teresa Lander

 

Image result for Brexit cartoons from abroad

 

Their glossary not only brings together some of the latest expressions thrown up by rancorous, divisive debate, but adds a multilingual element, including as it does Brexit-related slang from neighbouring languages…

Glossary of slang terms/insults regarding Brexit 

Brexecution

 

“The resulting conversational punishment received when disagreeing with a supporter of the [B]rexit movement”

 

Source: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=brexecution

 

Brexiteer

 

“A person who is in favour of the United Kingdom withdrawing from the European Union” Source: https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/brexiteer

French translation: Brexiteur/Brexiteuse

Source: https://en.bab.la/dictionary/english-french/brexiteer

 

Spanish translation: Partidario/Partidoria del brexit

Source: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-spanish/brexiteer

 

Brexiting

 

“Saying goodbye to everyone at a party and then proceeding to stick around” (Urban Dictionary)

 

Source: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Brexiting

 

German translation: Britischer Abgang (British farewell); this is a play on the older German term polnischer Abgang (Polish farewell), meaning to leave a party without saying goodbye.

Source: https://www.mundmische.de/bedeutung/43499-britischen_Abgang_machen

 

Russian translation: брексить (breksit) Source:

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/04/some-russians-think-britains-bungled-brexit-is-just- an-illusion/

 

Brexiety

 

“State of anxiety about Brexit experienced by opponents of Brexit”.

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-hard-soft-boris-johnson-theresa-may-article- 50-brexchosis-a8221566.html

 

Brexiter

 

“A person who is in favour of the United Kingdom withdrawing from the European Union”.

 

Source: https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/brexiter

 

Gammon

 

“A person who likely supports Brexit, and his habitual rantings about immigration and the scourge of political correctness have caused him to turn so red as to resemble a

pan-fried slab of ham (hence, a gammon)”

 

Source:

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/05/is-gammon-racist/560507/

 

Neverendum

“Holding multiple referenda to ‘force’ an unpopular decision” Source:

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=90758cab-a7a2-46fb-bc0e-8cf615f230d0

 

Regrexit

 

“Regretting the decision to vote for Brexit. First used the day after the 2016 referendum”

 

Source:https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-hard-soft-boris-johnson-theresa-ma y-article-50-brexchosis-a8221566.html

 

Quitling

 

Someone, similar to a Brexiter, who is in favour of Britain leaving the European Union

 

Sources: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23quitling%20%23brexit&src=typed_query https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Quitling

 

Remoaner

 

“A person who is outraged and frustrated over the result of the European Union membership referendum in the United Kingdom which the vote took place on the 23rd of June of 2016 and relies on protests against the UK government and for the EU to prevent Brexit”.

 

Source: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Remoaner

 

Saboteur

 

“Unelected members of the House of Lords, and the 48% of the country who failed to vote for Brexit”

 

Source:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/apr/19/crush-the-saboteurs-british-newspaper s-react-to-general-election

 

Spanish translation: saboteador

Source: https://www.wordreference.com/es/translation.asp?tranword=saboteur

 

Strong and stable

 

“British prime minister Theresa May called a snap election in April 2017 saying the UK needed a “strong and stable” government because of Brexit. It is an expression she would live to regret after she lost her majority and was forced to rely on the Democratic Unionist Party to prop up her minority government”

Often used ironically Source:

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/brexit-an-idiot-s-guide-to-the-united-kingdom-le

aving-the-european-union-1.3781560

 

German insults regarding Brexit:

 

Kleinbritannien’ (small Britain rather than Great Britain) – referring to our loss of status due to Brexit.

Source:https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/brexit-wie-sich-grossbritannien-verrannt-hat-k olumne-a-1258166.html

 

Nein-Sager’ (No-sayers) – referring to all of the rejected deals and compromises by the EU Source:

https://www.bild.de/politik/ausland/politik-ausland/evp-chef-weber-schimpft-auf-brexit-briten-nur- noch-nein-sager-60636350.bild.html

 

Russian slang regarding Brexit:

 

Dramaturgia’ (no translation) – “a carefully-choreographed spectacle of apparent haplessness and impending chaos intended as eleventh-hour and fifty-ninth-minute gamesmanship with Brussels”

Source:https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/04/some-russians-think-britains-bungled-brexit-is-just- an-illusion/

 

Ministropad’ (no translation) – “a cascade of ministerial resignations,” (Rosenburg, 2018). “The term literally translates as “ministerfall.” Styled after the Russian word for “waterfall” (vodopad), it swaps out “water” (voda) for “minister” (ministr)”.

Source: https://qz.com/1467198/russian-media-captured-brexit-chaos-in-one-perfect-word/

 

Spanish slang regarding Brexit:

 

Un brexit salvaje’/’un brexit a las bravas’/’un brexit por las malas’ (a wild Brexit/a Brexit by force/a crooked Brexit) – referring to a no-deal scenario, a contrast to the less positive spin than English terms such as a ‘clean break’ Brexit

Sources:

https://www.elperiodico.com/es/internacional/20190828/el-gobierno-britanico-pedira-a-isabel-ii-q ue-suspenda-el-parlamento-hasta-mediados-de-octubre-7609291 https://elpais.com/economia/2019/02/16/actualidad/1550332885_907808.html https://www.europapress.es/internacional/noticia-may-intenta-aplacar-partido-impedir-brexit-mal as-20190331142623.html

 

Una vacuna contra el euroescepticismo’ (a vaccine against euroscepticism) – referring to the difficulty and mishandling of the Brexit process, that has caused support for outright leaving the EU to sink according to opinion polls in other member states

Source:

https://laprensa.peru.com/actualidad/noticia-brexit-ha-sido-vacuna-contra-euroescepticismo-dic e-tusk-nnda-nnrt-88628

 

French terms/insults regarding Brexit:

 

‘Le Royaume-Désuni’ (divided kingdom) – a play on words of the French term ‘le Royaume-Uni’ (United Kingdom) – used in the context of Brexit to refer to the way in which it has severely divided the UK population and threatened the overall unity of the country, particularly in relation to Ireland and Scotland.

https://www.touteleurope.eu/actualite/brexit-quel-avenir-pour-le-royaume-desuni.html

 

‘brexit’ (common noun – lower case ‘b’) – a tongue-in-cheek term proposed by French journalist Bernard Pivot, resulting from the Brexit strife, that would be used to signify any row, debate, negotiation or meeting that proves insoluble and shambolic. (e.g. l’assemblée des copropriétaires s’est achevée en brexit.)

https://www.thelocal.fr/20190911/lets-add-brexit-to-french-language-to-mean-terrible-mess-says

-leading-intellectual https://twitter.com/bernardpivot1/status/1171651030444118016?lang=en

 

‘Quel brexit!’ (alternative to ‘quel bordel’ – ‘what a shambles/mess!’) – a very tongue-in-cheek term proposed by French natives in response to Bernard Pivot’s ‘brexit’. In this instance, ‘brexit’ would convey the same meaning as French term ‘bordel’, meaning ‘shambles’ or ‘mess’, and would be used in any shambolic situation.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-france-lexicon/french-literati-ponder-brexit-dictionary- entry-idUKKCN1VW1IZ

 

‘Le bateau ivre’ (term originating from a poem by Arthur Rimbaud relating to the drifting and sinking of a boat lost at sea) – used metaphorically in the context of Brexit to refer to its lack of direction and absence of satisfactory leadership.

“Les partisans du Brexit ont réduit le Royaume-Uni à l’état de bateau ivre, sans cap ni capitaine.”

https://www.nicolasbaverez.com/2018/07/05/a-bord-royaume-uni-bateau-ivre/

 

Image result for Brexit cartoons from abroad

 

Finally, on election day, December 12 2019, this broadcast by London correspondent Marie Billon was aired on French Radio RF1 (my comments on Brexitspeak in the third sequence):

http://www.rfi.fr/emission/20191212-entre-orient-occident-le-piano-donne-le

 

* https://language-and-innovation.com/2018/08/23/a-glossary-of-skunked-terms-brexitspeak-and-the-toxic-terminology-of-populism/

 

 

DE-CODING SUPER SATURDAY’S BREXIT MOMENT

Today, we are told, is ‘Super Saturday’: not the last Saturday before Christmas, a bumper time for retailers, but an extraordinary weekend sitting of the UK parliament, only the third since the outbreak of World War 2 and this time to debate what one commentator has risked dubbing the ‘Brexit Moment’. Connoisseurs of new and exotic language can add to Super Saturday and Brexit Moment a pair of novel expressions trending in the same context: ‘greased piglet’ was the epithet bestowed by former PM David Cameron on his successor, explaining  that ‘the thing about the greased piglet is that he manages to slip through other people’s hands where mere mortals fail.’ The piglet himself appealed this morning for our ‘better angels’ to heal divisions (and do his bidding), a slightly puzzling evocation of Abraham Lincoln’s ringing words: ‘We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.’

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To accompany this morning’s unfolding developments RTE Radio asked me to record a commentary on these and other language innovations for their Irish listeners, and this is what I said…

https://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/html5/#/radio1/21639391

A slightly longer version of the script…

In struggling to keep abreast of the momentous events, the dramatic political developments generated recently by populism on both sides of the Atlantic, we have all of us  had to contend, too, with a rising tide of new language – exotic and unfamiliar new terms, old terms repurposed and weaponised, slang, jargon, catchphrases and slogans coming at us on a scale and at a speed not seen before in my lifetime.

I have been collecting the language of Trumpism, of Brexit and of the new alignments in politics, society and the media. I’m doing this because, as a linguist and a dictionary-maker it’s my responsibility not only to record but to make sense of new language, not only looking at its simple definitions but at its deeper, sometimes hidden implications and the hidden agendas and real intentions of the people who are using it.

I’m compiling what I call a glossary of the toxic terminology of populism*, a list of over 400 words and expressions which is growing by the day. Just a few moments ago I added the phrase ‘mediaeval methods’, a euphemism for torture used yesterday by the UK government to describe what they intend to apply to get MPs to back their latest Brexit deal.

George Orwell long ago exposed the twisting of truth and the hypocrisies of political language, but he was living in a much much simpler world. The language I am working with – novel notions like the Backstop, new idioms like dog-whistle and dogpile, jargon like identitarian, pathocracy or factuality – is not straightforward and not neutral or innocent. These are expressions designed to describe a changing social landscape, but also often designed to baffle, to bamboozle and confuse, to manipulate us. This of course is not new – the language of advertising and of politics has been doing this for a long time, but the multichannels, platforms and outlets and the multimedia techniques employed are far more pervasive and sophisticated than ever before.

Americans refer to words as ‘skunked’ if their meanings have become distorted and they become toxified, so that elite, metropolitan and cosmopolitan, snowflake and melt become slurs; libertarian, which once meant progressive, now refers to the far right, politically correct and social justice warrior and virtue-signalling are insults. When Boris Johnson calls his predecessor a girly swot, accuses a critic of humbug, the cosy, dated words are uttered with barely concealed venom.

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In the UK we still prize a sense of humour and some terms do sound lighthearted: cakeism is wanting to have your cake and eat it  – this time used by the EU against the UK for once – when Jeremy Corbyn is described as a magic grandpa or the absolute boy, the comments are double-edged to say the least. The so-called centrist dad (I’m probably one myself) is not just an ageing moderate but a feeble, cowardly enabler of the far right; magic money tree and unicorn are definitely not meant to be funny, and gammon** describes a ruddy-faced apopleptic male, invariably a Brexit supporter, but the word is an expression of genuine hate by the left.

There are some ironic phrases I find funny despite their serious intent: one is ‘Airfix Patriotism’ – Airfix sold plastic kits in the 50s and 60s for making model warplanes, and dads and kids would buy them and stick them together  with glue, evoking the heroic actions of pilots in the second world war – the patriotic rantings of the right today have been seen as based not on any understanding of our history but on a caricatured, kitsch vision of a heroic past. In the same way Ladybird libertarians base their false memories of an idyllic England on the beautiful watercolour illustrations in the Ladybird childrens books and on comics and tea-towels rather than social realities.

The terms that irritate me, though, are the clichés, catchphrases and slogans endlessly repeated; take back control, get it done, the will of the people, Brexit means Brexit…

There are scientific, technical-sounding words being bandied about which actually describe frightening changes in power relations: ethnonationalism, nativism, pathocracy (the rule of sociopaths and psychopaths), sadopopulism (strongman rulers who end up victimising even their own supporters) and even homonationalism – the co-opting of LGBT issues to advance a racist ideology.

Donald Trump is famous for the crudity of his language, but the metaphors used in political discourse in the UK have also moved further and further into the realm of conflict, warfare, occupation and collaboration: first directed at our supposed enemies in the EU, traitor, betrayal, saboteur are now aimed at anyone at home – quitlings or quislings – rabble – who fails to toe the party line with enough enthusiasm. Academics in the US and UK are analysing the rhetoric and the metaphors but tend to discuss these things with each other I want to talk to the public, to make people more aware.

Of course new circumstances do demand new language and some expressions just fill what linguists call a ‘lexical gap’ in the language: both-sidesism, whataboutery, de-platforming, cancel culture all were coined to describe concepts that didn’t exist or weren’t so important in the past, the whole vocabulary of Brexit, including the word itself is unprecedented. It sometimes feels as if our whole reality is unprecedented, and we, whether we lean to the right or to the left, just wish it would stop, but it’s not over yet: inevitably there will be much more verbiage, rhetoric, toxic terminology, to come…

*https://language-and-innovation.com/2018/08/23/a-glossary-of-skunked-terms-brexitspeak-and-the-toxic-terminology-of-populism/

**https://language-and-innovation.com/2018/05/15/gammon-up-against-the-wall/

 

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A GLOSSARY OF WEAPONISED* WORDS, BREXITSPEAK and THE TOXIC TERMINOLOGY OF POPULISM

I have been collecting new and controversial language generated by the rise of conservative populism in the US and the UK, by pro- and anti-Trump sentiment in the US and by the divisions resulting from the UK’s Brexit vote. This is a work in progress: the preliminary list of terms as it stands is below. Soon I plan to offer detailed definitions and comments (for example, the second word in the list is my own invention, intended to describe a statement, act or policy showing effrontery, and itself a deliberate affront to a section of the population) and a ‘lexical’ categorisation (into ‘jargon’, ‘slang, ‘catchphrase’, cliché, for instance).

***Please do contact me with new examples, with comments and with criticism, which will be gratefully acknowledged and credited.***

Accelerationist

Affrontery

Agitators

Airfix patriotism

Alpha

Alt-centre

Alt-right

Anglosphere

Annexationist

Antifa

Anti-growth coalition

Anywheres

Asset

Astroturfing

Asylum shopping

Attitudinarian

Australia-style deal

Autohagiography

Backstop

Bad actors

Based

Bed-wetting

Beta

Beyond satire

Bike-shedding

Birtherism

Bitterites

Black hole

Black ops

The Blob

Blowback

Bot

Both-sidesism

Breadcrumbs

Brectum

Bregressive

Bregret(s)

Bremain

Brengland

Brexiles

Brexit dividend

Brexiteer

Brexit means Brexit

Brexit ultras

Brexmageddon

Brexmas

Brexodus

Brexomertà

Brexpats

Brexshit

Brextension

BRINO

Britain deserves better

Bubble

Butthurt

Cakeism

Calling out

Canada plus plus plus

Cancel culture

Canzuk union

Casino capitalism

Centrist dad

Cherry-picking

Chilling

Chumocracy

Churnalism

Civics

Civility

Classist

Cliff-edge

Clown car

Clown country/state

Clusterbùrach

Cognitive warfare

Collective narcissism

Compassion deficit

Concierge class

Consequence culture

Copaganda

Cosmopolitan

Corbynista

Corporatocracy

Coup

Courtier journalists

Crash out

Cronyvirus

Crowdstrike

Crybaby

Cuck

Culturalism

Cultural marxist

Culture warrior

Dark forces

Datagrab

Dead cat strategy

Death cult

Deepfake

Deep state

Defund

Delegitimizer

Democide

Deplorables

DEXEU

Disaster capitalism

Discourse engineering

Disinformation

Divorce bill

Do-gooder

Dogpile

Dog-whistle

Doom loop

Double down

Doxxing

Drain the swamp

DREAMer

Dumpster fire

Echo-chamber

Economic nationalism

Economically inactive

Elite

Empty chair

Enablers

Enemies of the people

English exceptionalism

Ergo decedo

Establishment

Ethnics

Ethnonationalist

Ethno-state

Expert

Factuality

Fake news

Fall off a cliff

False flag operation

Fash-adjacent

Fashy

Fauxlanthropist

FBPE

Feminazi

Fifth column

Finger-sniffer

Firehosing

Flextension

Flooding the zone

FluTruxKlan

Fractionate

Fratriarchy

Frictionless

Frit

Frontlash

FUD

Gammon

Gammonista

Gangster state

Get it done

Getting the barnacles off the boat

Girly swot

Global Britain

Globalist

GNU

Guardianista

Hard Brexit

Hate goblin

Hatriot

Headwinds

Henry VIII powers

Heterophobic

High-vis nazis

Hobbit

Homonationalism

Hopepunk

Hose it down

Hybrid threats

Identitarian

Idiocracy

Illuminati

Incel

Indicative vote

Individual-1

Jambon jaunes

Jexodus

Kayfabe

Keirmacht

Kicking the can down the road

King baby

Kipper

Kipper moment

Kleptofascist

Kompromat

Lamestream media

Lawfare

Leave means leave

Leftwaffe

Lentil-weaving

Lethal aid

Level up

Lexit

Libertarian

Libtard

Limp-wristed

Little Englander

Lolcow

Londongrad

Londonistan

Long Corbyn

Long coup

Low-energy

Luftwaffle

MAGA

Magic Grandpa

Magic money tree

Majoritarian

Man-baby

Mangina

Manosphere

Masculinist

Matrixed

Maybot

Meaningful vote

Mediaeval methods

Melt

Meninist

Metropolitan

Microaggression

Militarised nostalgia

Milkshake(d)

Momtifa

Moral emptiness

Moral grandstanding

MSM

Nanny state

Nativist

Necrocapitalism

Neglexit

Neon nazis

Neurotic elite

Neutrollization

No-deal

No-platforming

Normie

Nudgism

Offence archaeology

Operation Red Meat

Operation Save Big Dog

Optics

Ordeals

Ostentatious meekness

Oven-ready

Overly purist

Overton window

Palaeoconservative

Partygate

Pearl-clutching

Penumbral jobs

People’s vote

Performative allyship

Pile on

Political correctness

Post-liberal

Postmodern

Posttext

Post-truth

Poverty porn

Prebunking

Price cap

Project Fear

Prozac leadership

Pushback

Put/stick that on the side of a bus

QAnon

Quitlings

Rabble

Race to the bottom

Rage farming

Rampdown

Red lines

Red pill

Red wall

Regrexit

Rejoiner

Re-leaver

Remainiacs

Remain plus

Remoanathon

Remoaner

Replacement theory

Reply deboosting

Resistance

Restorative nostalgia

Retconning

Revoker

Roll back

Rootless

Row back

Russian asset

Saboteur

Sadopopulism

Safe space

#ScumMedia

Sealioning

Sensitivity reader

Shadow blocking

Shallowfake

Shill

Shire

Shitposting

Shitshow

Singapore-on-Thames

SJW social justice warrior

Skilling up

Skunked term**

Slave populace

Sleaze

Snowflake

Sobersides

Sockpuppet

Soft border

Soft Brexit

Somewheres

Sovereignty

Soy-boy

Spartan phalanx

Spiv

Star Chamber

Stenographer

Sunlit uplands

Svengali

SWERF

Taking back control

Tankie

Targeted individual

Techno-feudalism

Tender-age shelter

Terf

Terminability

Throw under the bus

#tfg, ‘the former guy’

Tick tock

Tigger

Tofu-eating

Tone deaf

Tone policing

Tory scum

Toxic positivity

Transition period

Trexit

Triangulation

Tribal(ism)

Trickle-down pathology

Troll farm/factory

Truth-squadding

Tufton Street

Tu quoque

Unicorns

Unpopulism

Unspin

Urban

Values voter

Vassal state

Verbal incontinence

Vigilante journalism

Village idiot

Virtue-signalling

Walk back

War cabinet

Watch-list

Weaponised*

Wedge issues

West(s)plaining

Whataboutery

White supremacist

Will of the people

Wokerati

Wokescold

Woketard

Woke warriors

Woke-washing

Workington man

Yoghurt-knitting

Zealot

Image result for snowflake slur

I’m grateful especially to the many contacts on Twitter who have already contributed to this modest project, particularly Duncan Reynolds @duncanr2, and will credit them all by name/handle when a final version is published.

I’m also very grateful to Rob Booth and the Guardian who, in October 2019, wrote about the glossary and its topicality in increasingly conflicted times:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/05/brexitspeak-brexit-vocabulary-growing-too-fast-public-keep-up

And to Carlos Fresneda for this piece in El Mundo:

https://www.elmundo.es/internacional/2019/10/17/5da765cf21efa0eb618b4680.html

Artist Simon Roberts has kindly shared with me his artworks based on his own lexicon of Brexit language:

For readers, students, and researchers interested in or working with this topic here are some of the other articles and sources to consider…

In February 2017 The New European published its own very useful lexicon, from which I have drawn, gratefully but without permission :

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/culture/the-new-lexicon-of-hate-a-disturbing-a-z-of-alt-right-language-1-4894833

And the BBC listed many of the technical – and some less technical – terms associated with Brexit earlier this year:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43470987

Last year Karl McDonald discussed the language used by Labour party leftists in the i newspaper:

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/slugs-melts-inside-language-culture-corbynite-left/

And here’s Helen Lewis in the New Statesman on incivility in the UK:

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2018/08/how-britain-political-conversation-turned-toxic

And Philip Seargeant on ‘fake news’:

In November 2018 The Guardian published a useful ‘jargon-buster’ guide to the terms being used at this late stage of (or impasse in, if you prefer) UK-EU negotiations:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/19/brexit-phrasebook-a-guide-to-the-talks-key-terms

Here Renee DiResta describes the ongoing ‘Information War(s)’ of which the manipulation of language is one component:

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/11/28/the-digital-maginot-line/

I have only just come across this perceptive essay from 2017, by Otto English on his Pinprick blog, in which he coins the terms Ladybird libertarian and Ronseal academic:

Ladybird Libertarians: Dan Hannan, Paddington and the pernicious impact of 1970s children’s literature on Brexit thinking

In January 2019 James Tapper contributed this very perceptive assessment of Brexit metaphors:

And in March, more from the BBC:

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20190314-how-brexit-changed-the-english-language

In July 2019 the FT ran an interesting review of Boris Johnson’s press articles as precursors of ‘fake news’:

https://www.ft.com/content/ad141e8a-976d-11e9-9573-ee5cbb98ed36

And in October of the same year David Shariatmadari and Veronika Koller considered Brexit metaphors:

Brexit and the weaponisation of metaphor

*The progressive weaponisation of language is discussed here by Justin Strawhand:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/weaponized-language_b_1380788

**’Skunked terms’ are words or expressions undergoing a controversial change in meaning. Examples are ‘liberal’ and ‘libertarian’ which have transitioned from referring to leftist, progressive or centrist positions to denote neo-conservative or alt-right affiliations. Nearly two years on from my original post the useful designation ‘anglosphere’, describing English-speaking nations with shared cultural features, has been co-opted by far-right nativists in the UK to promote a supremacist ideology.

Image result for Brexit graffiti

As a further footnote, this from Twitter in November 2020 (thanks to Alan Pulverness), a reminder that weaponised words may also be frivolous – even puerile:

Image

Looking back to 2016, a prescient tweet by Gary Kasparov:

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At the end of 2022 my friend and collaborator Dan Clayton wrote, for Byline Times, about the latest iteration of toxic terminology and rhetoric: the demonising of refugees and migrants:

GAMMON – UP AGAINST THE WALL

Image result for gammon and pineapple 1970s

This week, very late in the day, the mainstream UK media and the wider national conversation finally caught up with a social and political slur that had been trending for more than a year already. The insult in question was ‘gammon’, one of only a couple of pejorative labels (the other, slightly more affectionate, being ‘centrist dad’) directed from the left at the right as opposed to the many (‘libtard’, ‘snowflake’, ‘cuck’, etc.) routinely hurled in the other direction.

The word itself is British and denotes an orange-coloured side or slice of cooked ham or bacon often proposed as emblematic of the garish-looking, odd-tasting and nutritionally suspect dishes served (warm, with a pineapple garnish) across British tables in the 1970s (when, ironically, ‘gammon rasher’ was rhyming slang for ‘smasher’ in the sense of something superlative). Gammon was adopted from French gambon, from gambe meaning leg, in the 15th century, while backgammon is unrelated and probably comes from an old form of the verb to game.

Following the Times’ , the Express and the New Statesman’s belated discovery of the word Twitter was a-buzz on May 14, first with protests, many seemingly by gammons themselves, at what were alleged to be its racist and classist implications and then with more coherent attempts to unpack its real denotations and connotations.

Someone with the handle ‘Build a wall, line all the nazis up along it’ explained…

‘Gammon isn’t about class, it describes white ppl who spend a lot of their time being pink because they’re so angry being white doesn’t make them special’

Exasperated by ongoing witless misunderstandings, I added my own two-penn’orth…

‘Nothing to do with class, it denotes florid, loud, usually lardy middle-aged ranting bigots. #simples

By midday someone else had discovered a reference in Victorian literature that seemed to anticipate the modern usage…

My god, he’s right: @Protooptimism has discovered that Dickens used “gammon tendency” as a political insult in Nicholas Nickleby (1838-9):

It’s not quite clear whether Dickens’ use of the word relates to the slang sense then prevalent in the underworld, of ‘gammon’, verb and noun, to mean (‘to use) the secret, deceitful language of thieves and tricksters’, hence applicable perhaps to jingoism and bluster on the part of a ‘fervid’ middle-aged blowhard. An intriguing correlation with Irish was noted by another commentator…

(And in 2023 Michaela Perske informed me that ‘funnily enough “gammon” or “gamon” is a term used by Aboriginal people pretty much everywhere in Australia that means means ‘to pretend’, ‘be inauthentic’ or used to describe something as pathetic.’)

No linguists paid much attention at the time to the mutation of gammon from a collective term of abuse for a constituency or persuasion to a label applied to the individual members thereof. The BBC, though, carried a good, level-headed history of the expression’s first post- Brexit referendum appearances and its rise to prominence…

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-44108080

Urban Dictionary‘s original entry, if you can find it,  could be commended, but it seems subsequently to have been cosmeticised by a gammonista…

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Gammon

By the end of a long day the furore (by now dubbed ‘gammongate’) had somewhat subsided, leaving a few wry observational tweets…

Presume after today, use of a certain type of roasted ham as an insult will be prohibited. Hope there’s a gamnesty on previous usage.’

‘Since the words ‘Tory’ and ‘Whig’ both started as insults, I fully expect British politics to soon be contested between the Gammon Party and the Melt Party.’

‘It’s offensive to call people whose reactionary apoplexy makes them go pink-faced “gammons”. The correct term is “people of choler”.’

And, late news, this, perhaps (but unlikely to be) the last word, again from Twitter, this morning…

JamieJones77‏ @JamieJones77

‘I’m a 55 year old white thinning cropped haired old punker. #Gammon isn’t racist, it perfectly describes the bigoted tossers of my own age group who turn pink when they get angry about their privilege being challenged. G’wan bust yer blood vessels you rancid foaming dinosaurs.’

…Five days on I discovered this, from the originator of the expression himself…

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/gammon-brexiteers-angry-white-men-middle-age-immigration-a8352141.html

…and, very belatedly indeed, I was reminded of this excellent summary by A-level teacher and language buff Dan Clayton

http://englishlangsfx.blogspot.com/2018/06/telling-porkies-about-gammon.html

Image result for gammon insult

In November this year Collins Dictionaries listed the g-word among their words of the year. In the Guardian Poppy Noor argued that the left should steer clear of such name-calling…

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/07/gammon-playground-insult-words-of-2018

A SINGLE CURRENCY? – the status of English post-Juncker and post-Europe

 

 

President of the European Commission, Eurocrat par excellence and Brexiteers’ bugbear, Jean-Claude Juncker raised a laugh in Florence a couple of weeks ago with his public provocation, opining that post-Brexit the English language would lose its status as the EU’s de facto lingua franca. IMVHO he’s probably wrong: even in his native Luxembourg (first language Luxembourgish, a Mosel-Franconian dialect of German) one fifth of the population currently claim to use English for everyday communication and three quarters say they speak it fluently.

In the wider EU 46m Germans and 23m French citizens are estimated to have a good command of English, 38% of the remaining nationalities, too. Only 12% over-all claim fluency in French and 11% in German. In Brussels and Strasbourg,  the cities where EU business is primarily carried out, English is, in the Eurocrats’ jargon a relay language, an intermediate code used in meetings, in corridors and in cafes by those for whom it is a second or third language. This is especially the case for those coming from the more recent member states who are generally reluctant to embark on learning French or German when English is already familiar from school, university and from exposure to popular culture.

In fact, the language actually used beyond the formal speeches and official documents is an odd sort of English-based hybrid sometimes known as Euro-speak, laced with ‘continental’ usages (alien to native speaker English but common to other European tongues) whereby terms like subsidiarity, conditionality and conventionality are exchanged and standard English words shift in meaning so that control comes to mean check, assist means attend, execute means carry out, actual replaces current and resume can mean both re-start and sum up. Perhaps in time it is this dialect which will come to dominate in practice while the official languages remain as they are today. Well-meaning attempts to introduce an alternative common language have so far come to nothing. A petition calling for the artificial language Esperanto to be added to the official list has received only 12, 383 signatures to date – in an EU population of around 450m.

In the Guardian this week Tess Reidy has been considering the fate of English post-Brexit and pace Juncker, with the help of experts and some contributions by me. Her article is here…

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/may/24/which-language-would-ease-our-way-in-the-post-brexit-world

Last year Mike MacKechnie listed some of the Euro-English terms that puzzled ‘native-speakers’ have to contend with:

10 Funny Euro-English Words We Might Hear More Often If The UK Leaves the EU

The EU is well aware of the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of its own communication practices, as evidenced by its recognition of the jargon issue…

http://termcoord.eu/2014/06/eurojargon/

Though it took the BBC to decode the global English jargon of the Davos summit:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42791874

Here from the European Court of Auditors is a very useful guide to EU misuses of the English language…

https://wordstodeeds.com/2017/06/02/guide-to-misuse-of-english/

Here are some further thoughts from Marko Modiano of Gävle University, published in September 2017…

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/weng.12264/full

 

 

And, in November 2017, a challenging, if possibly slightly tongue-in-cheek suggestion from Italy…

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/25/eu-should-force-uk-give-us-english-language-brexit-former-italian/

Michael Swan took issue last year with the way the notion of ‘English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)’ is often presented…

http://www.eltresearchbites.com/201802-rethinking-english-as-a-lingua-franca/#comments

Here, should there be any doubt, is the confirmation, from Esther Bond writing in slator,  that English is not about to lose its official status…

https://slator.com/demand-drivers/eu-provides-clarity-on-post-brexit-future-for-english-language/

For any readers who are actively engaging with EU and other terminology (as translators, interpreters or proofreaders for example), here’s a useful list of online resources…

http://albionlanguages.com/best-online-terminology-resources/

And finally, for now, from November 2019, an article by EU translator Hannah Critoph addressing the difference between ‘Eurish’, ‘Globish’ and ‘natural English’…

Click to access Subject-brief-Hannah-Critoph.pdf