It’s Just A Made-Up Word

(Some) people ask, “How can I get a word into the dictionary?”

A six-year-old Canadian boy from British Columbia is being credited with creating one. He was out with his mother in the car, when she stopped at a STOP sign. Not only did he read the word, but he did what I often do.  He read it backwards, and got the word ‘pots.’  Precocious little prick – reminds me very much of a young Archon.

He asked his mother what the word was for a word that formed another word when read backwards. She didn’t know, so she said they’d ask his Dad when he got home.  He didn’t know, so he asked a friend of his who was a teacher.  He didn’t know, so he asked the school’s English teacher. She didn’t know, so she contacted a friend who worked for an on-line dictionary.

At each level, the interest became more intense. After some research, it was realized that there wasn’t such a word.  It couldn’t be ‘anagram’, which describes words formed by scrambling the letters – getting ‘tars’, or ‘tsar’ from ‘star,’ instead of ‘rats.’  I can get six words from his four-letter sign – stop, spot, pots, post, tops, and opts.

It couldn’t be ‘palindrome’ which describes a word, phrase, or entire sentence which reads the same way, backwards or forwards, like – Able was I ere I saw Elba, or A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.

During the golden days of radio, I listened to a station which ran a contest. They wanted a word, and gave out audio clues.  The first was the gentle sound of a babbling brook, and a man’s voice saying, “I’m going to paddle down this.” After a couple of days, they added the sound of a tolling bell, and the man exclaiming, “Time for lunch!” A couple of days later with no winners, they added a male voice saying, “That’s your plane coming in, right there on the screen.”

Finally, someone guessed ‘palindrome’, the first time I’d heard it. The voice was going to paddle a ‘kayak’, have lunch at ‘noon’, and watch his plane on ‘radar.’

This little boy is credited with creating the word ‘levidrome.’ I don’t know how precocious he is, but even Young Sheldon, spun off from Big Bang Theory, would have trouble building a compound word from pieces of Latin, a foreign, and dead, language.  I suspect that he had a little bit of help.

‘Levi’ in Latin means left, and ‘drome’ is a course or path, so it indicates a word which is read towards the left. It doesn’t hurt that Levi is also the boy’s Jewish first name.

Canadian actor, William Shatner, (whose German surname means, “chewer of scenery,” in English) contacted Oxford Dictionary after the family had been in touch with Merriam Webster, which told them that a word has to be commonly used before it can be added to its dictionary.

Now, an editor at Oxford has responded with a video, saying many clever and useful words are created every year, but a word can only make it into its dictionary if lots of people use it over a long time. The editor says that plenty of people are uttering ‘levidrome’ early into Levi’s campaign, which is impressive, and staff will decide in about a year whether its use is widespread enough to get the word into the dictionary.  Their search engine might even sieve this post.  C’mon people, let’s all use it.

I’ve got a word for the precious little pr…ecocious, and it ain’t ‘Triviana!’ Stop by again soon, when I’ll have a bunch more words that are already in the dictionary.  😉

Who Am I?

I’ve been arguing with my computer for about a week, and losing!  It needs a good spring-cleaning.  First it wouldn’t let me access my blog-stats via the front door.  I had to sneak in the Manage My Blogs back door and access them that way.  Now it won’t even do that.  Because of that, I’ve read more Fresh Pressed blogs than I would normally.  One was from a 100% Chinese female, born in the USA.  Who does she root for in the Olympics?  Aha!  A blog theme, and off we go.

Who am I?  I’m a Canadian mongrel mutt, and proud of it.  I am everyman, and every race.  I have the blood of so many races and ethnicities flowing in my veins, I feel like a bowl of Skittles.  I don’t understand “racial purists”, whether redneck white supremacists, or Sikh exclusionists.  There may be a few lost valleys of uncontaminated human DNA in the world, but, more and more, the rest of us are being run through the societal blender.  A recent study said that within a hundred years, the world skin color will be beige.  Even Hitler was one eighth Jewish.  People like the above-mentioned supremacists often are, unknowingly, what they claim to hate.

With three proven Scottish ancestors, for years I’ve told people that I’m one quarter English and three-quarters Scottish.  I am afflicted with the family name Smith, the second-most-common English name.  A surprising free week of study by my daughter on Ancestry.ca revealed that my “English” male ancestor was actually a Hessian who came over to fight for the British in the American War of Independence around 1776.  He survived the war, but didn’t want to return to Europe and managed to stay.  My English side started with a German named Schmidt.  He married a newly arrived English girl, and so did the next several succeeding generations, till Schmidt was changed to Smith, and one of them wandered north into Canada.

The remaining three-quarters Scottish is even more complex and interwoven.  The term Scottish is geo-political, and didn’t exist much more than a thousand years ago.  There is no Scottish race.  The Picts held most of what is now Scotland for centuries.  They fought and interbred with Gaels and Britons.  The Romans tried to sweep up into Scotland, and were swept right back out.  Over the centuries, invaders have found what the Russians, and many others, have learned about Afghanistan.  They could not take and hold the wild mountains and wilder inhabitants.

Many “Roman” soldiers were actually from other countries around the Mediterranean and Europe.  After the Romans left, the Celts and Welsh tried invading the Northland, with about as much success.  Later, the Anglo-Saxons tried invading, in an attempt to form one cohesive kingdom.  The northern tribes amalgamated to preserve their freedom.  Irish Gaels rowed over and slowly brought Christianity to the pagans.  This is why there is an Irish, and a Scottish Gaelic language, incomprehensible to each other.

The Vikings, from three or four Scandinavian countries, roamed the isles and mountains for many years.  Each of these waves of invaders left behind some men, and genetic deposits with local females.  The Spanish Armada, like the Roman Army was actually crewed by sailors of a wide variety of races, including black Moors, from North Africa.  When it was decisively defeated in the English Channel, several of the ships were driven north to the Scottish shore, where the survivors were integrated among the anti-English population.  The Moors were the origination of the term Black Scots.

My maternal grandparents came to Canada from Glasgow, where they were both weavers.  My grandfather was the Keeper of the Patterns, responsible for the production of all Tartans at his mill.  He was a Lowlander, living near the sea.  Several times he had ill words to say about highlanders, descendents of Gaels and Britons.  He claimed they were all stupid, useless oafs, good only for fighting among themselves, and with others.  Grandpa was a short, powerful, dark-haired man, unlike the tall, rangy, fair-skinned, red-haired uplanders.

It is possible (likely?) that he was descended from the disappeared Picts.  One day, when I was about four, our family visited Mom’s family.  The women were inside, doing women things.  My Dad and one of the uncles had started a game of horse-shoes.  The conversation had included another example of Granddad’s disdain for Highlanders.  Another uncle went into the house to get another beer, leaving me sitting on the ground next to the old man.  He was an intelligent, educated and well-read man.  Years later I remembered him speaking, if not to me, then near me.  If memory serves, he said, “They came among us with fire and sword, and drove us from our homes.  But we, the small folk prevailed, and live among them still, unbowed, unnoticed!”  The quote would probably be from a book, rather than from him, but it supports the Pictish background theory.

Who am I?  I am an inclusive citizen of the world.  The blood of countless races and cultures flows through my veins.  I am the result of great plans, and great failures.  I am like a fine Scottish whiskey, the synergistic total being more than the sum of the merely good parts, and the product being both pleasing and stimulating.  Not as hokey as Bill Shatner but, I am Canadian.  I am Me, and I am proud of both, and all the parts it took to make me what I am.