Unlike that feeling you only can say what it is in French, there are things there aren’t any words for yet. John Lloyd and Douglas Adams’ The Deeper Meaning of Liff (the 1990 revised and expanded version of 1983’s The Meaning of Liff) matches some of those common experiences, feelings, situations and objects to some of the thousands of spare words that spend their time doing nothing but loafing about on signposts pointing at places.
Ever had to take a decision that’s very hard to take because so little depends on it (like which way to walk around a park)? There’s a word for that: deventer. That irritating man next to you at a concert, who thinks he’s the conductor? He’s a thrumster. A badly suppressed yawn? That’s a wawne. To indignantly deny something which is palpably true? To hoff. You get the point.
- Book read
- Douglas Adams & John Lloyd — The Deeper Meaning of Liff (A Dictionary of Things That There Aren’t Any Words for Yet)
- First line
- Aalst (v.): One who changes his name to be nearer to the front.