Category: Sport

How sport often leads to the coining of new words in English.

Let’s All Do A Leicester

King Power StadiumFootball fans like me, and those less enamoured of the beautiful game, have been captivated by the Leicester City story over the last few months, as a team of outsiders outfoxed everybody to win the Premier League.

They have left in their wake innumerable memories and have seemingly changed the rules over success in football. One thing they have also changed is the English language.

Thankfully, I don’t mean regular use of the phrase ‘Dilly Ding, Dilly Dong’,  the reference by their urbane manager Claudio Ranieri to the imaginary bell he rings in training sessions to get his players’ attention. That phrase has popped up in coverage and is I think adorning flags and clothing, but I don’t think it’s a stayer. Unlike a phrase used by everybody else, especially pundits. After all, they like nothing more than being able to ask: ‘Who will be the next team to do a Leicester?’

So what does ‘to do a Leicester’ actually mean? Does it mean to assemble a group of rejected and also-ran players, forge them together into an unstoppable force and then watch as they conquer all before them? Not really, but it could.

Does it mean resurrecting the career of a manager whose best days were thought behind him, giving him the platform to rebuild his reputation and into the bargain delivering him the big trophy had eluded him his entire career? Again, no.

Does it mean forcing pundits to eat humble pie because of their absolute certainty that this couldn’t be done and they would go on television in their underpants if it did? Sadly not.

Does it mean defying the bookmakers to such an extent  that they will no longer offer such ludicrously long odds on something not impossible taking place? Again no.

Does it mean creating a team spirit so energising and a bond so great, a joy so profound that the whole country is carried along with the journey and is cheering with the diehard supporters when the trophy is finally lifted? Again no. But like all the examples above, it could.

And this goes to show that the Leicester story is unique, and to truly ‘do a Leicester’, all of the above would have to be in place. It is not what anybody means whey they use the phrase. They simply mean which unexpected team can break through the ranks next and win something, which average performer in any sport will suddenly have a breakthrough year and achieve what was previously thought impossible. Whoever now has an unexpected triumph will be said to be ‘doing a Leicester’.

But as the details of this story have shown us, there were so many elements which made up the Leicester fairytale that the only people capable of truly doing a Leicester are, well, Leicester.

You Know When You’ve Been Pardewed

Sport has always been fertile ground for new words. and we sports fans are known to appropriate the names of our heroes or villains as words to describe particular achievements or ways of playing. Dictionaries have even been known to follow suit, with Lionel Messi recently finding himself lionised by lexicographers as his name came to encapsulate a level of sporting perfection.

During his recent troubles in north-east England, it is unlikely that beleaguered Newcastle manager Alan Pardew has been thinking much about his contribution to the English language. However, his surname has taken on a raft of new connotations in recent months, and he is unlikely to be best pleased.

Over the last few months, Geordies have been discussing the concept of being Pardewed. To Be Pardewed means to have previously been a great player and then to have lost all your talent and ability while playing under Mr Pardew’s tutelage, or to be a player of great potential who has simply not fulfilled it. To ‘celebrate’ their manager’s achievements, local journalists are even now writing articles about the best players to have been Pardewed over the years.

Pardewed is currently a local word, used almost exclusively in the part of the world where Newcastle dominate. But when you think about it, it is quite a useful neologism. We all have experience of bad managers in all walks of life, people who have shown incredible ability to get the worst out of people, destroy their confidence and end up creating a shell of the person that employee could have been.

Alan Pardew’s legacy at Newcastle looks increasingly likely to be a negative one. From a linguistic point of view, wouldn’t it be great at least if he could leave a mark on the English language as one of his parting gifts.

Say Goodbye to Fergie Time

As the football world bids farewell to Sir Alex Ferguson this weekend, it is worth nothing that it is not only his contribution to football that should be celebrated.

When he first shipped up at Old Trafford in 1986, nobody could have predicted that he would last until 2013. Equally, nobody would have believed you if you had said we would laud his contribution to the English Language on his departure.

But Sir Alex’s contribution to neologisms is legend. Perhaps his most famous phrase is ‘Squeaky Bum Time’, a phrase that refers to the sharp end of the football season and the nerves that emerge as the tension increases. It dates back 10 years and was given official recognition in 2005, while it is now a standard part of the lexicon for all fans when discussing any matter to do with the season’s conclusion.

The other time connection to the outgoing boss is Fergie Time, a rather pointed term not coined by the great man. This refers to the perception that Manchester United get more time added on at the end of games when they are losing than other teams, and that they often make use of this temporal largesse. Analysis has suggested that there is no basis in fact for this asssertion, but all football fans enjoy a good moan about bias being shown to rival teams, so the phrase will remain, even though Fergie himself has gone.

But you would never berate Sir Alex over these issues. After all, he is legendary in the football world for dishing out the hairdryer treatment, a particularly loud mode of berating players for not performing at their best.

So as Sir Alex disappears into the sunset, remember that it is not only the football world he has changed. He has also had a demonstrable effect on the language that we speak.

Messi Scores A Dictionary Entry

Let me get one thing straight. I love football. And, quite obviously, I also love words. So you’d think then when the two come together, it would create perfect harmony for me. But instead, I think I am witnessing a bit of a language own goal.

It is becoming trendy to celebrate the world’s greatest footballers by creating a word around their unique ability, and then sticking it in a relevant dictionary. Take the world’s greatest player, Barcelona’s Lionel Messi. The Spanish Santillana dictionary has now added to its pages the adjective ’Inmessionante’, defined as ‘ The perfect way to play football, an unlimited ability to self-improve.’

Last year, Swedish lexicographers celebrated their own footballing hero, Zlatan Ibrahomivic, with the verb Zlatanera, ‘to dominate on and off the field’.

So are we now stuck with this? Will every sporting nation start to celebrate their finest footballer with a word saying, basically, that they’re great? Will the stars’ names simply become lexically interchangeable according to which dictionary you are looking at?

You have to hope not. Or if this is simply to disappear as the publicity gimmick it seems to be, then maybe we should suggest some slightly more entertaining definitions that should be included:

“To play brilliantly before assaulting a member of the opposition team in a vital match” – To Zidane;

“To leer at the camera after scoring a vital goal in a way that suggests you have taken in more than a half-time orange” – To Maradona;

“To play quite well in a tournament before losing on penalties” – To England.

The fact is, this could run and run. Let’s hope it doesn’t.

Kozmania – A New Type of Linsanity

You know the story by now. Unheralded American sportsman is given his chance in the big time. He dominates every game he plays, becoming a national icon. His deeds spawn a new word in newpaper headlines. The word mushrooms, with official linguistic recognition not far behind. And then, the ultimate accoloade. He appears in Wordability.

OK, that’s not exactly how the story pans out. But it does seem to be a bit of a trend. Following Jeremy Lin’s basketball success earlier this year, and the associated mushrooming of Linsanity across the globe, comes another unlikely sporting and language star – Pete Kozma.

After six years on the fringes of the big time, Kozma was finally called into the St Louis Cardinals team at the end of August. Almost predictably, he has turned out to be sensational, taking a leading role in the National League series against the Washington Nationals, leading his team to victory and spawning the word Kozmania.

Will Kozmania be another Linsanity? Probably not. Jeremy Lin’s story was as much about him being the first American player of Taiwanese descent to make it in the big time as it was about an unlikely player dominating a sporting arena. And there’s something about the word – Kozmania sounds like something which grabs you for a short time and then you get over it, while Linsanity is more of a state of mind and likely to last longer.

But I could be wrong, and if I am, then who knows how many times that American sporting dream from my opening paragraph will be played out in the years to come. Especially the bit where they end up on Wordability.

A New Project for a New Season

As sports fans in the UK deal with symptoms of Olympics withdrawal, at least the return of the football season can act as some kind of quick fix to help ease the pain.

But supporters – beware. Watch very carefully how your manager talks about the upcoming season. Is it a season of consolidation? Is it a tilt at the play-offs? Or is it a example of the word that has crept into football management in the last few seasons, a word which should strike fear into you all? Is it a project?

Project has become shorthand in the world of manager-speak for a big job, a rebuilding job, a long-term vision. “I am excited by the project”, the manager will say at his opening press conference, and everybody nods wisely, excited by this man’s wisdom and long-term planning.

Of course, project is a euphemism. It’s a way of saying ‘don’t expect us to win anything for three years’, or ‘don’t expect to see me in this job this time next season’, or even ‘I don’t really know how this is going to work out, but if I call it a project, it sounds grand’.

Andre Villas-Boas is tarnished by his failed project at Chelsea, Sven-Goran Eriksson probably still has sleepless nights about his bizarre project at Notts County, and Arsenal fans may now be quaking in their boots as their future is given the project treatment.

So if your team’s manager is publicly rubbing his hands together in glee and preparing you all for the start of his project, be afraid, be very afraid. Oh, and start thinking who you want your next manager to be.

Games Lanes Power The Olympic Family

It was always obvious that we would use various new words and phrases as a result of the Olympics. But in the early few days, organisers must have been hoping that the words would be of a sporting nature.

Sadly not. Instead, we were introduced to the phrase Games Lanes, as parts of London became paralysed by the closing down of main arteries across the UK’s capital. And who gets to ride in the Games Lanes? Members of the Olympic Family.

The phrase Olympic Family, a kind of catch-all which seems to encompass anybody with any tangential connection to the Games, has become negative because of its association with empty seats in stadiums, with large areas dedicated to this mystical family sitting unused. It is not currently a family that people are keen to put on their Christmas list.

Now it’s all down to the competitors. Hopefully their feats will prove so stirring that when we look back over the words which defined the Games, external controversies will not be on the podium.

To Gold or Not To Gold

I heard the same interview on two different BBC radio stations yesterday, and it elicited the same response from two different presenters.

Talking about medal prospects for the upcoming Olympics, British Olympic Association chairman Colin Moynihan said that Australia would expect “to gold” in certain events.

Given that I have already been hearing people experiencing paroxysms of rage at “to medal”, which is making its quadrennial reappearance into the lexicon to coincide with the Games, you can only imagine the incredulity with which “to gold” was treated.

It could have just been a one-off – I can find no evidence of this usage anywhere else at the moment. But it could equally be that athletes will be “golding”, “silvering” and “bronzing” come the end of July. And if that does prove to be the case, remember where you read about it first.

Mother Flame Powers The Torch Relay

I must admit that I have been sceptical about the level of interest in the Olympic Torch relay, now winding its way across the UK ahead of July’s Games. This cynicism has not been directed at the relay itself, which has always struck me as an excellent prelude to the main event, with understandable local enthusiasm when the torch is finally in your vicinity.

No, I have been convinced that the BBC’s dedicated live coverage page, featuring a permanent stream of people running with the torch, together with text commentary, would struggle to find an audience because of the sheer monotony of the event to all but those in any given area on any given day. But with hundreds of thousands of people seemingly becoming addicted to the coverage, it seems I was wrong. Ah well.

So why Wordability’s interest. Well the Torch Relay has already started to contribute some fresh terms to the English language. The best of them came when the torch went out on Day Three. This was the point at which we found out that the fire being carried as a back-up in case the flame goes out is known as the ‘Mother Flame’.

I love this term, complete with its connotations of space ships and aliens. Actually, the rules governing relighting the flame are interesting, as the original flame from Greece has to be kept burning at all times, with relighting coming straight from this source, the aforementioned Mother. Bear in mind, Mother Flame flew all the way from Greece in a specially chartered plane. One hopes she was treated to first class.

It’s also important to remember that the relay is about the fire, and not the actual torches. Each torch bearer has their own torch, lit by its predecessor in a delicate operation known as a ‘Torch Kiss’. To cover longer distances during its daily journeys, the torch travels in a van and is not visible to the public. This is known as ‘Convoy Mode’. It’s where the BBC’s coverage becomes less interesting and is basically just live footage of a drive down the A30. Of course, the BBC itself is responsible for the term ‘Torchcam’, the camera which broadcasts all the live footage, together with its associated Twitter hashtag #bbctorchcam.

There have already been moments in the coverage where a new word has not yet emerged. Controversy has erupted over the decision by some torch bearers to sell their torches on eBay. What do we call such people – ‘Torch-Bayers’? ‘Flame Throwers’? And there is criticism over the celebrity status of some of the torch bearers and accusations of publicity seeking over some of the choices. I think the idea of asking Didier Drogba to take the torch through Swindon was particularly bizarre. ‘The Rich and Flamous’ perhaps?

As the Torch Relay powers on, it seems that interest in it will only increase, leading up to July and the start of the Olympics. It will be fascinating to see what the Olympics’ linguistic legacy turns out to be.

He Shoots. He Scores. Goalgasm!

When Fernando Torres rounded Barcelona’s goalkeeper to confirm Chelsea’s place in the Champions League final, you could have been forgiven for thinking that the moment would only remembered for the drama of his goal.

But no. Accompanying the goal came a shriek of delight from Sky co-commentator Gary Neville. It was so high-pitched and excessive it has shot round the internet. It has been dubbed a Goalgasm.

While it is quite clear how this delightful word came to be derived, there is actually no -gasm suffix in English which denotes an outpouring of climactic joy. Orgasm itself is derived from the French orgasme, or modern Latin orgasmus, or Greek orgasmos, from organ ‘swell or be excited’. No Or- with a neatly tucked on -gasm there then.

But this doesn’t matter. The only word which ends -gasm is the aforementioned saucy one, so using it as a suffix automatically confers the correct meaning. I could randomly make up shoegasm, chocloategasm or spoongasm, and you could immediately imagine the kind of reaction somebody would be having to buying a great new pair of shoes, eating superb chocolate, or, er, finding a lovely spoon.

Neville’s reaction is just one of a long line of over-excitable commentaries throughout the ages, while football fans like myself can look back with slight embarrassment to those moments when the emotion of a vital goal made us react in ways we’d rather forget.

So the next time you feel one of those moments coming on, just picture Gary Neville. That should soon calm you down.