There are, according to the OED, more than 170,000 words in use in English. A further 47,000 are obsolete, though some of them, like carefully garaged vintage cars, are occasionally taken out for a spin in order to delight passers-by. Our linguistic reserves are rich – and yet how common it is to wish that there were a single word to describe a particular social situation, or physical irritation, or amusing calamity. Thirty-five years ago, John Lloyd and the late Douglas Adams liked to distract themselves by playing a game in which one asked of the other what the real meaning of a British place name might be. To take but one perfect example, they decided Bolsover was a noun that described “One of those brown plastic trays with bumps on, placed upside down in boxes of chocolates to make you think you’re getting two layers”. Their accumulated jokes became a bestselling book, The Meaning of Liff; and now there is a new instalment, Afterliff, extracts from which are in today’s Weekend section.
Many of our place names are inherently amusing: Pratt’s Bottom in Kent always tickles passing motorists. But while Lloyd’s game starts with a gazetteer, its roots are in observational humour and whimsy (which itself sounds as though it should be a small town in the West Country). It draws on British invention, too. James Dyson gave us the bagless vacuum cleaner; but we also need a verb to describe rummaging through the dust in search of that pound coin we vacuumed up by mistake.