Who Flung Dung?

As I’m sure the more erudite of you are aware, the title obviously alludes to Gulliver’s Travels. Those of a donnish bent may know about the shit-throwing caterpillar, and most of you must know the comedy book title “Shit all over the Chinese takeaway” by Mr Hu. But why the picture then eh? I’m not that sloppy – so Gulliver’s it is.

The term yahoo was coined by Jonathon Swift in Gulliver’s Travels. Swift, the cunning linguist, coined the term to describe a vile creature with bad habits resembling humans far too closely (for the liking of Lemuel Gulliver). The Yahoo also sat up a tree and threw excrement at people. Not the fluffy!, kooky! term! used for an internet search engine. I can only imagine that it was appropriated to reflect Yahoo!’s talent at throwing up shit when you’re looking for something completely different. Of course a yahoo is still a cretin, or sometimes the cry of a cowboy who’s learned he’s spending the summer on Brokeback. But its meaning is now different from the original hoodlums it described in Gulliver’s.

At least yahoo’s change in meaning was to the more ameliorate. Other poor words have become so fey and smutty that their use is now restricted to prevent only seeing the pejorative version. Of course in classic literature, which predates the newly acquired meaning, these soiled words appear. When the defendant in Trial by Jury calms himself with “Be firm, be firm, my pecker.” I’m not thinking of courage. In Bleak House Grandfather Smallweed, referring to Mr George, warns that “I have him periodically in a vice. I’ll twist him, sir. I’ll screw him sir.” Similarly Vanity Fair has Joe Sedley’s inebriated avow to wed Becky Sharp the next day, even if he had to “knock up the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lembeth.” And the schoolboy classic is beautifully put in the book of Proverbs (26:3) “A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the backs of fools.” – with whip and ass in the same sentence. No wonder repressed Priests turn to their subservient Sunday school pupils.

A translation of Proust’s La Recherche du Temps Perdu, which I picked up in a cheap fusty bookstore, has this classic “Apart from your Balls, can’t I be of any use to you?” No dutchess nothing at all, unless you can cook. Edgar Allen Poe in his gothic story Lionizing describes one of his characters reactions: “ ‘Admirable’ he ejaculated, thrown quite off guard by the beauty of his manoeuvre.” I have that feeling all the time. And last but not least I researched this all-time-classic-distortion and found it as far back as Othello where Iago is talking to Desdemona and Emilia on the subject of women, and the type that “Never lack’d gold, and yet went never gay.” Quite.

We’re all aware of meaning changes, just try and speak to an American. But I’ll end on my favourite attempt by Samuel Johnson to make a racial distinction in his influential A Dictionary of the English Language. Oats is defined as “a grain, which in England is generally given to horses but in Scotland supports the people.” Probably still true today.