Getting out of the doldrums

Before I start this month’s topic, how many of you love words like ‘doldrums’? Words you don’t come across every day, words a little more esoteric and with a lot of history behind them. All words have a history, of course, but some are more interesting than others. This one refers to the (and I quote) equatorial region of the Atlantic Ocean with calms, sudden storms, and light unpredictable winds. In other words, a place where sailors could suddenly find their sails hanging flat or giving a desultory flap in a light breeze, where they could be becalmed for weeks and weeks, where their supplies of food and water would run short, and they’d end up eyeing the well-built bo’sun and thinking of a good hearty stew. ‘Doldrums’, like so many nautical words from the days of sailing ships, has been grabbed by landlubbers and used as shorthand for a period of stagnation, and even depression. A fitting description for life in the time of Covid, I fancy.

Words… I could get more drunk on words than on a G&T. Love words, love keeping lists of words I might use one day and slip into a story somewhere. It’s my jam when I can write about, f’r instance, The Gilded Scarab’s Rafe Lancaster and, straight-faced, say things like “Rafe was an accomplished deipnosophist.” Now, now. Minds out of the gutter. It means that my dear Rafe, who is the epitome of the accomplished Victorian gentleman—albeit one who flies steam-powered aeroships and has been known to shoot at his enemies using a pistol powered by luminiferous aether and phlogiston (and those too are wonderful words!)—was pretty good at talking to people. A deipnosophist is someone skilled at social chit chat, a good conversationalist. The sort of man you’d love to sit next to at dinner because he’d keep the conversational ball rolling and you’ll never have a dull moment.

Except, perhaps, for those days when he was also a pretty good perpilocutionist. And that one I’ll leave for you to discover.

Words. You can pack so much into them, they’re a fascinating study, a lovely way to take your mind off what has you stagnating in the first place, and lifting the spirits… And while that thought may have a resounding lack of subtlety, it at least gets me back on topic. Sorry for the digression.

You know… no. I’m not sorry at all. I was going to write about how to get out of the writing doldrums, that with things loosening up here in the UK with our emergence from the covid-induced paralysis of the last few months, maybe creativity can start to move back into life alongside everything else.

But I’d rather carry on nattering about words, instead. They’re wonderful, heady things. They start out meaning one thing and work their way up to meaning something quite different. They don’t stand still. They evolve right along beside us. Here are some fun favourites. Did you know:

• ‘Girl’ was originally gender-neutral and meant both girls and boys.
• ‘Refrigerator’ in the early 1700s meant a medicine to reduce a fever.
• People who used typing machines in late Victorian offices were themselves called ‘typewriters’. Similarly, the people using computing machines–those amazing calculators that had a lever-like arm on the side that you pulled down to complete a calculation—were called ‘computers’ (e.g. the amazing women at NASA who did all the insanely complex maths for spaceflight, often by hand). It was quite a few years before the word meant only the machine and not the person who operated it. And by the by, men walked on the moon before we had the technology to create pocket calculators. Before that, calculating machines were bulky, metal boxes about the size of, well, a typewriter.
• ‘Tiddleywinks’—a game I used to play with my great aunt when I was old enough not to cry when I lost one of the little round counters—originally were unlicensed pubs. Given my great-aunt was teetotal to her toenails, I don’t think she ever made the connection otherwise we’d have been playing gin rummy so fast my head would spin. Oh, wait…
• And on that note, ‘hijinks’ was originally a drinking game. That’s something I can get right behind, having a quick spot of something potent every time I spot a new word to fall in love with, and work, somewhere, into whatever I’m writing at the time.

Not that I’d get much sensible work done, drinking in charge of a writing programme, but some days all that matters is getting out of the doldrums. How you do it doesn’t matter at all. Whether it’s words, or paints, or paper, or threads and wool, or gardening, or running, or dancing the tango… all that matters is that we humans continue to create, to take pleasure in oddities and perhaps most of all in always striving to do more, to learn and improve. That’s the only cure for stagnation.

Am I alone in loving unusual words? Have you come across any you want to share? Now’s your chance!

And if you want some fun books on interesting words and phrases, try:

• Any book at all by Michael Quinion
• Accidental Dictionary by Paul Jones
• The Etymologicon and The Horologicon by Mark Forsythe
• Red Herrings and White Elephants by Albert Jack

  Anna

About Anna

Anna was a communications specialist for many years, working in various UK government departments. These days, though, she is writing full time. She lives with her husband in a quiet village tucked deep in the Nottinghamshire countryside. She’s supported there by the Deputy Editor, aka Molly the cockerpoo, who is assisted by the lovely Mavis, a Yorkie-Bichon cross with a bark several sizes larger than she is but no opinion whatsoever on the placement of semi-colons.

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