11 November 2010
Sporting English
There’s much excitement here about the BL’s new exhibition ‘Evolving English’ which opens on the 12th November and which has already garnered a huge amount of publicity. A variety of events around the theme of language have also been organised, and the one that really interests me is ‘Over the moon: the language of sport’ which is scheduled for the evening of January 11 2011 (details below)
The problem is: how will the panel participants (a starry cast) cram in everything there is to say about the language of sport, which to my mind encompasses all sorts of things from the way sport is described to the words, clichés, metaphors and similes which we all know and love? If we’re talking evolution, it’s fascinating to look at fashions in sports terminology and how this has ebbed and flowed over time. Footballers were notoriously over the moon in the eighties and nineties. They don’t say it now; so what has taken its place? Centre forwards aren’t doing jinking runs any more (a description much beloved of sports journalists in the seventies) and at last sports broadcasters have dropped the distinction they usually made between men and girl athletes (terminology dating, I imagine, from time immemorial) which has to be good because it always used to send my blood pressure sky high.
Sport has always had a predilection for ‘in words’ used by the cognoscenti. Here’s Pierce Egan writing in 1812 about the boxing match between ‘Jemmy the postman’ and Jack Lamb: ‘It was a complete mill on both sides, and after a hammering of near fifty minutes, they both agreed to sheer off!” You don’t hear milling coves saying that sort of thing these days.
Some words I love and haven’t encountered very frequently in the sports context. Geoff Boycott often describes a cricketer as bamboozled when he’s misread the pitch of the ball which is both funny and evocative, but cricket abounds with words that paint a picture (maybe because of the celebrated commentaries on Test Match Special) he’s skyed it; a daisy cutter, a tail-ender. Some of these words have found their way into common parlance. Where would we be these days without ‘well that’s got him on the back foot!’
Event: The language of sport
http://www.bl.uk/whatson/events/event116162.html
Pierce Egan
Boxiana: or sketches of ancient and modern pugilism…
London: G Smeeton, 1812
X629/3882