Bunburying

Because I is well high-brow, last night I went to see the filmed version of the National Theatre’s ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ (the handbag one) by Oscar Wilde. It was very funny, and also brought this word to my attention. If you’ve ever made up a friend as an excuse to dodge plans or just because you needed to disappear for a bit of peace and quiet, then congratulations – you’ve been Bunburying.

In the play, Algernon Moncrieff (Ncuti Gatwa in the National Theatre show) invents an ill friend called Bunbury. Poor old Bunbury’s terrible health means he needs constant attention – usually whenever Algy fancies a weekend in the country or wants to get out of a dull engagement. Genius, right? Here’s a quote when he introduces the concept to his friend Jack:

‘You have invented a very useful younger brother called Ernest, in order that you may be able to come up to town as often as you like. I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose.’

Wilde, of course, uses the idea of Bunburying to skewer the hypocrisy of Victorian society. But for the rest of us, it could be the perfect way to stay home and watch Netflix in our PJs instead of having to go out and actually talk to people. Also, if you do decide to Bunbury someone, don’t feel guilty – you’re simply carrying on a proud literary tradition.

Why Bunbury? No one really knows, but there are of course some theories, many of which lean into the idea that Wilde used it imply a secretive double life due to his homosexuality. (In case you’re not as high brow as me, many linguistic aspects of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ have been interpreted as allusions to gay culture and stereotypes.) For example, one put forward by none other than occultist and self-proclaimed prophet Aleister Crowley – who knew Wilde – was that Bunbury was a portmanteau word (i.e. two words smushed together), coined after Wilde took a train to Banbury, met a man there, then arranged a second liaison at Sunbury. Or it might just be named after the village in Cheshire.

The opening night of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ marked the peak of Wilde's popularity. But it was followed shortly afterwards by his downfall – he was convicted and imprisoned for ‘homosexual acts’ only a few months later. Due to this, the play closed after only 86 performances, and would be the last comic or dramatic work Wilde would produce. Despite that, it’s now regarded as one of the greatest comedies in the English language, and has been performed continuously since its debut.

lampoon

If you lampoon someone or something, you take the piss out of them in a satirical way, often exposing their flaws or hypocrisy. As well as being a verb, lampoon can also be a noun – so you could publish a lampoon of someone, for example (even though that sounds weird).

Rabelais – Il était très drôle

‘Lampoon’ first appeared in print in English in 1645. Both the noun and the verb come from a French word, ‘lampons’, a form of the verb ‘lamper’, which means ‘to drink to the bottom’. So what does downing a pint (or downing un demi-litre as we’re in France) have to do with taking the mick out of someone? Well, apparently the word ‘Lampons!’, meaning ‘Let us guzzle!’ was a frequent refrain in 17th-century French satirical poems. For example, it appears in ‘Le Vin’ (which translates as ‘Wine’ – I knew all that Duolingo French would pay off eventually), a poem by François Rabelais, a 16th-century French writer known for being a bit rude. Rabelais also used it in ‘Gargantua et Pantagruel’, a series of satirical novels, as a drinking song:

‘Buvez toujours, ne cessez,
Lampons! Lampons!
C'est à ce coup que nous paierons!’

(‘Drink on, never stop,
Let us guzzle! Let us guzzle!
This time, we’ll pay!’)

Thanks to his literary legacy, Rabelais got his own adjective –‘Rabelaisian’. It means ‘marked by gross robust humour, extravagance of caricature or bold naturalism’. Not bad for a former monk, right?

anapodoton

This popped up on a recent episode of quiz show ‘Only Connect’. The four things the people had to find a connection between were:

• ‘Fine intellects’

• ‘Mention Satan’

• ‘If headwear is the right size’

• ‘While kitty’s not here’.

The answer was ‘Paraphrased anapodoton’.

If you didn’t see the episode (and maybe even if you did), you’re probably thinking ‘Huh’? Maybe it’ll be clearer if I un-paraphrase these anapodotons:

• ‘Great minds’

• ‘Speak of the devil’

• ‘If the cap fits’

• ‘While the cat’s away’.

If you’re still thinking ‘WTF’, an anapodoton is a term used in language to describe a situation where we leave part of a sentence unsaid, but the listener or reader knows exactly what we mean. So you start a phrase, but you don’t finish it because the ending is implied. Here’s another example which (weirdly) cropped up on fact-based podcast ‘No Such Thing as a Fish’ a couple of days later: ‘Don’t count your chickens’. You know the rest without anyone having to say it i.e. ‘... before they’ve hatched’ (although on that podcast, one of the presenters had never heard the second half. Cue much piss-taking). And that’s anapodoton.

The word ‘anapodoton’ comes from Greek, as lots of language-related terms do. ‘ana-’ means ‘back’ or ‘again’, and ‘apodoton’ means ‘that which is given’. So it’s basically something being left ‘given back’, or unsaid.

Despite its somewhat inaccessible name, anapodoton is a handy little trick in language that lets us skip the obvious bits of a sentence, trusting the other person to fill in the blanks. It’s interesting because it shows how much meaning we can convey without actually saying everything. And it highlights how important context and common knowledge are when it comes to understanding each other – something that’s often missing on social media, for example.

More importantly, next time you find yourself trailing off halfway through a familiar phrase and leaving someone to fill in the blanks, you can smugly say ‘And that was anapodoton’.

Just in case you’re wondering, the ‘Only Connect’ anapodotons end like this:

• ‘Great minds think alike, but fools seldom differ’

• ‘Speak of the devil and he will appear’

• 'If the cap fits, wear it’

• ‘While the cat’s away, the mice will play’.

This first one’s really interesting as the full phrase doesn’t really mean what we think it means (to misquote ‘The Princess Bride’). It actually implies that dimbos can also agree on things. I found a few more like this where the second half has been lost over time which has led to a change or simplification in meaning. Like:

• ‘Blood is thicker than water ... [but] the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.’ I’m not surprised we dropped the second half of this – not exactly catchy, is it? While we usually interpret the first half to mean that family bonds are the strongest, the full phrase suggests that bonds we choose (like friendship) can actually be even better. Aw.

• ‘The customer is always right … in matters of taste.’ This is often attributed to early 20th-century department store owner Harry Gordon Selfridge. Over time we’ve lost the nuance of ‘taste’ in the second half, so now it simply means the customer is always right. But the actual phrase is saying that’s only the case for subjective things like style or choice. Which changes the meaning completely. OOH.

• ‘Actions speak louder than words, but not nearly as often.’ The truncated version tells us that action is better that words. Fine. But the full phrase adds that while actions are more powerful, they don’t happen as often as words, making words just as good. Which is lucky for me.

ur-text

Like lots of previous words of the week, I heard this on Kermode & Mayo’s Take, in reference to new horror film ‘Substance’ (which sounds awesome). An ur-text is the original or earliest version of a text, the foundation that later versions are based on. The term’s often used in literature, history and religious studies to describe a document that’s thought to be the source of all later editions, translations or interpretations. The concept of an ur-text is important in academic circles, because seeing the original can help us understand how ideas or stories have evolved over time.

Now, etymology. The ‘text’ bit of ‘ur-text’ is (hopefully) obvious. But what about the ‘ur’? Well, it’s a German prefix meaning ‘original’ or ‘primitive’. So ‘ur-text’ literally means ‘original text’. Why is it German? Because German literary theory, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, has had a significant impact on the study of texts. For example, it’s influenced concepts like authenticity, interpretation and textual analysis, and scholars like Wolfgang Iser and Hans-Georg Gadamer have increased the term’s popularity in literary criticism. It’s also a concise way to refer to a complex idea which might need a longer explanation in English (although I think ‘OG text’ would work just as well, but maybe that’s why I’m not a literary academic).

A good example of an ur-text is Shakespeare’s First Folio (1623), the first collected edition of his works. The First Folio contains 36 plays, divided into three categories: comedies, histories and tragedies. It includes iconic works like Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Othello. Some plays, like The Tempest and Twelfth Night, were published for the first time in the Folio. Without it, many of Shakespeare’s works might have been lost, and generations of schoolkids would have nothing to moan about.

The First Folio was compiled by two of Shakespeare’s BFFs and fellow actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell. They wanted to preserve his work for future generations as many of the plays hadn’t been formally published, and only existed in scripts or incomplete versions. Well done, John and Hazza.

Around 750 copies of The First Folio were originally printed, and there are about 235 in existence today, most of which are in libraries and museums around the world. One copy of The First Folio sold for $9.98 million at auction in 2020. It was bought by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, and holds the record for the most expensive literary work sold at auction.