Dialogue: Everybody has a way with words

By ROANNE PARKER

A book called Hi, my name is Dick has just been released by a New Zealand-resident American woman.

Apparently this woman was inspired to write a book about the variety of names men call their pants pal.

She did a lot of research while travelling all over the world, and I imagine that she would introduce herself to men in bars and restaurants by saying, "Hi, I'm writing a book about what men call their penis. No, really I am, and I was wondering what you call yours."

This is not the place to go into much detail, but the ones I heard came from the "L" section and ranged from "lonely boy" to "lust muscle," with many, many others in between.

This all got me thinking about the way we personalise our language. Most families have their own words, many started by toddler mispronunciations.

It is quite amusing to hear these being used by grown-up men who played prop for Carlton not too long ago.

And as they join the vernacular of that family, they are used completely unselfconsciously.

Guys who would have had no problem in the past with performing any bodily function in front of their team-mates and who always called a spade a spade now call a fart a "fluffy."

In my family they are beeps. "Who beeped?" we all howl as we drive through Rotorua. I hope my children are grateful that I haven't inflicted my own childhood words for toileting - "whizzys" and "poops" - on them, but I'm sure they will still cringe at "beeps" in a few years.

It seems my son was the best at inventing words, but it is probably more the case that, because he was first born, I just remember more of them.

We all call the railway crossing barriers "arms ding dings," a phrase he coined at about two. Because they "ding ding" when they go up and down. Makes perfect sense.

Another one that made perfect sense was his name for police officers. He called them "wheeoow-hat-men" because they had a siren and a hat.

The only one I remember for daughter one was that those laser things that Darth Vader fought Luke Skywalker with were called "lifesavers," which was funny because they looked pretty dangerous to me.

Daughter two is still only six so we get them every day. One of her favourite songs is Millennium by "Wobbly Williams."

Until she was five-and-a-half she went to bed with a shred of her old cot quilt called "Nanny," which was fine unless she was tired and grotty in the supermarket and cried, "I want my Nanny" to the consternation of passers-by, who must have wondered what kind of mother I was.

One of my girlfriends uses a couple of great ones. "Jandal" usually means a rough deal, but it has multiple meanings - he got "really jandalled" by that (done in) or "that's the dog's jandals" (a bugger of a deal) or "I'm feeling jandalled" (overwhelmed), and so on.

Then there are "Meaty Boom Booms," a child's expression for food particles that contain some nondescript sort of meat served in a meal.

Some of the real words we use in English are bizarre enough to make you wonder about their origins. How about alliteration, oleaginous, oxymoron and onomatopoeia?

I went to school with a girl who would squirm every time she had to say "petticoat," and I still have problems with "particularly" (particularly after a few glasses of red).

Then there are words that make me feel really strange just looking at them - like mucilage, lozenge, lugubrious, sphincter, blancmange, twitter, inchoate and hermaphrodite.

When you get down to it, you have to wonder whether it isn't time to get the broom out and get rid of some words which really seem to be surplus to requirements.

When do we need to say someone is panchromatic (sensitive to all colours equally)? Whoever said they were off for a micturition (having a pee)? When someone goes the extra mile for you, are you ever going to admire his or her supererogation?

Which brings me to my last point. I had a lovely four-hour lunch one Sunday and the discussion around the table that roused us most was the one about the lack of ritual in our lives, a disappearance that has been exacerbated by the loss of the sacrosanct Sunday and the fact that the extended family is flung far and wide.

With shopping and cafes and crazy work-lives, every day is the same. Where have all of life's little rituals gone?

Do you think we are going to find our grandchildren reading the dictionary wondering why we ever needed to say things such as Pancake Tuesday and Sunday roast, and Boxing Day picnic?

Will it matter if they do?