Word perfect

A new year, and a fantastic new six part series on the BBC. For someone with a fascination with language and who enjoyed Melvyn Bragg's 'The Adventure Of English', 'Balderdash & Piffle' was bound to appeal.

Presented by Victoria Coren (daughter of Alan of 'Call My Bluff' fame I think), the show sets out to look at a different letter of the alphabet each week. Last Monday's installment, the first of the series, focussed on the letter P. One aspect of the programme involves researching the origins of popular expressions and pitching both potential explanations and earlier recorded instances of their usage to those behind the Oxford English Dictionary. On Monday, the team were unimpressed by the findings relating to "pear-shaped", but accepted evidence confirming that the expression "Ploughman's lunch" originated as a marketing idea in the very early 1960s, thus entering popular parlance long before the OED's date of 1970.

Particularly interesting was playwright Mark Ravenhill's investigation of polari, a form of coded slang popular amongst sailors and adopted in the 1940s by gay men but which has to a large extent died out due to the legalisation of homosexuality and liberalisation of society. "Bevvy" and "carsey" are both polari expressions that have seeped into "mainstream" language, while it was amusing to discover that "naff" actually means "not available for fucking"...

Word of the show? Ian Hislop's choice, "popinjay". I've resolved to use it more often in conversation.

One other point of interest: one of the OED panel, Tania Styles, once tutored me in Old English. I recall she also had a stint in Dictionary Corner on 'Countdown', quite probably getting to sit alongside the likes of Giles Brandreth and Richard Stillgoe. Perhaps there was some kind of catfight with Suzie Dent and she had to move on?