By David Astle
Mail has two meanings in English. There’s the stuff we send and receive every day, via the web or the postie’s bicycle. Then there’s the apparel that stopped Lancelot from being lanced, the chain-mesh vest he wore beneath his breastplate. Two distinct terms, yet in my job they go hand-in-hand. To be a wordsmith, you need a thick skin to joust with your inbox.
Last year I was gored by solvers for suggesting colt mimics the sound of cult. Curiously, most plaintiffs had a Victorian heritage, with barely a peep from north of the border. The Macquarie, I soon discovered, failed to support my stance. Indeed most dictionaries hung me out to dry. So it was I took my lumps (lessened by the alloy plating) and apologised in reply.
Illustration: Simon Letch.
Not that acid laces every email. Some correspondents seek to grout a gap in English, like Candace van Vuuren, who wrote: ‘‘Is there a word meaning to put into numerical order? I know alphabetise applies to letters, but is there a number version?’’ Not really, in short. Numericise seems the prime candidate but that’s yet to grab a berth in the Shorter Oxford, despite the loopiness of numerosity (the state of numerous) getting the editor’s big 10-4.
Still on numbers, a bloke named Geoff wished to know if four was unique for having the same amount of letters as its value. Short of crawling towards infinity, or bugging Adam Spencer, I suspect that’s the case. Mind you, the Spanish own cinco for five, while six singers comprise a sextet, and 10 sides, a decahedron.Then there’s the standard quorum of a cricket team, or Abba.
Other emails share language secrets. Like the story of the cop who tried to be sophisticated with Deryn Griffiths’ grandmother. The letter was sparked by a column on spelling, inspiring Deryn to report, ‘‘Year ago in Botswana, my grandmother was pulled over by a policeman who said ‘That sign says S-T-O-P stop, madam, not P-A-W-S pause’.’’
Jenny Hicks, on the other hand, has a message about messuage. Yes, you read that last word right: messuage. As Jenny put it, ‘‘My husband is researching the family tree. In a copy of a will from the 1860s, we came across messuage. Does the word belong in the 19th century?’’
Digging up your ancestry can unearth plenty of arcane language. In the same hunt, Jenny and her husband have bumped into a scad of heretofores, a slew of aforesaids and a healthy whack of hereinofs. Elsewhere a document mentioned a certain intestateux, being a female relative who fell off the perch without the valid paperwork.
Messuage, on the other hand, took deeper delving to fathom. The word dates back to Norman French. A cousin of ménage, messuage denotes a house in combination with its outbuildings, adjacent land and curtilage. Curtilage, I then learnt, was not a kennel but Franglais legalese for what Australians know as your own little patch of dirt – or yard.
A mum from Bacchus Marsh asked one of the quirkier questions. Her teenage son was studying VCE Drama. For his final solo gig, the student was set to perform a tirade, aimed at a young Alfred Hitchcock. Or that was the plan. His mum read the solo guidelines, worried that haranguing implied a second party. ‘‘Can you berate someone if they are not physically present when you do so?’’
The answer is a resounding yes. Berate may be a transitive verb, requiring a direct object, the action’s recipient, the sprayee if you like, but that doesn’t demand Alfred Hitchcock to be standing onstage. I know that for a fact, thanks to a career of receiving mail. Send is another transitive verb. So is abuse. Rest assured I was not sitting at Bruce Murray’s elbow when he wrote, ‘‘Re the solvability of Quick Crossword 12041 – you bastard! Regards, Bruce’’.
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