There is a bunch of occasionally amusing pedants sequestered in this sceptred isle who name themselves the Plain English Campaign.
Their raison d'être is admirable as they were founded in the dark, Thatcherite years when management gobbledygook conquered the world and sucked all meaning out of sentences.
Their own Gobbledygook Generator is an absolute joy, especially during dull meetings, but their success has led to the execrable horror that is the Microsoft Word "Conciseness" Tool (shudder).
This po-faced piece of crap constantly rebukes me for using English for the sheer joy of the language, nagging me that conciseness would make my document easier to read and suggesting the dullest possible alternatives to pleasurably purple prose.
'Twas reading Nashe that jogged me into this train of thought, when - rather than the plain English of, "King John, in the ninth year of his reign …", our Tom writes, "King John, in the ninth year of the engirting his anointed brows with the refulgent Ophir circle …" Much more fun, I am sure you'd agree.
A couple more examples from the same page; the first a description of the sea battle off Sluys, where our forces, having encountered the French fleet, "there so sliced and slashed them, and tore their planks to mammocks, and their lean guts to kites' meat, that their best mercy was fire and water, which hath no mercy, and not a victualler or a drumbler of them hanging in the wind aloof but was ribroasted …"
Lastly a description of the defensive walls of Yarmouth, "They have towers upon them sixteen; mounts underfonging and enflanking them two of old, now three, which have their thundering tools to compel Diego Spaniard to duck, and strike the wind-colic in his paunch, if he prance too near them."
Forsooth, marry and hey-nonny-no, I feel a distinct temptation eftsoones to commence a Campaign for the return of Elizabethan English. Who's with me?
5 comments:
To underfong, by-the bye, is Middle-English for to trap, receive or in this case engirdle / surround. The parallelogram defensive walls were originally augmented by two enormous artificial hills (and later the third to which Nashe refers) upon which were mounted large-bore cannon, capable of repelling ships out at sea and driving them from the harbour mouth.
Today's word of the day: "Underfong" (vb). Use it liberally.
I shall underfong and enflank your Campaign.
I mean, like, support. Dude.
Hee hee, Petrea. Elizabeth the First AND the Second.
Oh, gawd, and forsooth, Dive. I shall add "strike the wind-colic in his paunch" to my Hoosier word bag just to befuddle the MAGAs who poison my tiny world.
Post a Comment