OUCH - part one

The English language is both flexible and adaptable and it has developed a relatively large vocabulary. Used well it enables us to communicate precisely and accurately whether in speech or in writing. Scholars and others have brought about a sophisticated language while, at the same time there is a natural tendency at work to simplify the language to make communication as quick and as easy as possible, whether this results in specialists’ jargon, words and expressions with which only they are familiar and which enable faster and more precise communication, or a more restricted range of words and sounds that suffices for practical purposes within particular groups.

Here is my first look at aspects of English that I would like to share.

A friend’s uncle, a post office engineer, was helping him to re-fit a rear axle to a Volkswagen Beetle. To do this they found themselves lying underneath the car with the axle supported above them on outstretched arms. With every movement there came a flurry of mud and dust particles into their faces which they could not protect as they struggled with the heavy axle.

This rather demanding exercise nearly came to grief when my friend heard his uncle utter the words – Shall we offer it up and see if it indexes in the orifice?

Struggling with the dirt and the weight of the axle was one thing but struggling with his uncle’s pedantic and unnecessary choice of words and expressions nearly brought the exercise to an unfortunate and sudden ending. How much safer would the two men have been had the uncle simply said, Let’s see if we can fit the pegs up into the holes?

Which of the words used by the uncle lie outside the vocabulary that most of us use in ordinary - I shall return to this word in a later post – speech in ordinary circumstances? And what could be more ordinary than lying underneath a Volkswagen Beetle? [Can you hear the sirens now, and see the flashing blue lights as the language police arrive to arrest me for starting a sentence with a conjunction?]

Offer it up, indexes, orifice.

The words to offer something up have overtones of religious practice, something that is sacrificed or offered as a token or to placate an angry god. Perhaps engineers like to think that they are as careful and as cautious as a group of nervous worshippers fearful of upsetting their god.

Indexes are lists used to provide records or to show numerical values. The use of the word here to mean to fit is something that engineers have incorporated into their jargon, a word that provides a useful shortcut to indicate that two items will fit together properly and accurately. But if you are a non-engineer lying underneath a Volkswagen with your eyes full of dirt you would probably try to say something less printable if only you could keep the muck out of your mouth.

Orifice, a small opening, like a mouth, a term often used by medical practitioners. How much more scientific or technical is this, a really precise term, except that bodily holes can easily be changed in shape and size – think of a child pulling faces or the expressions given President Trump by cartoonists. The word's origins, Latin, os and facere to make a mouth; the holes encountered by engineers do not, of course, have the ability to change their shapes like this. They are simply holes in wood, concrete or steel.

See more at www.peterinson.net