I was in a French restaurant,
unobtrusively I thought, testing a small roll of plumpness between finger and
thumb. It was my stomach, I hasten to add, and I was feeling pleased with myself, having lost
two stone and now weighing in at an almost lissom 11 stone 12 lb.
I squeezed a bit
harder estimating the weight I had still to lose. I held it against gravity, in
the manner of a master butcher assessing how many sausages it amounted to –
three or four pounds perhaps
A sharp voice
punctured my dreaming:
“Stop podging. It’s
disgusting!”
It was my
daughter.
But.
Podging!
What a wonderful
word. And it was new. More grist to the mill for those who dislike our cultural
slide into ‘verbing.’
We have the noun Podge:
A short fat man or woman, according to the Oxford dictionary. In our neck of the woods
it’s a fairly affectionate term for a residual plumpness around the stomach.
But she had it. I
was podging. That was it exactly.
Podging.
I accepted it with pride, even though it meant losing
the high ground in linguistic purity. Never again would I be able to decry with
authority, bureaucratese like: ‘Let’s conference’ – ‘I’ll signature that’ – ‘statemented’
– ‘actioning’ - ‘tasking’ - ‘impacting’ - ‘We’ll transition.’ But it was worth
it. A new word had been born. A Keyton word. Not exactly Shakespeare, but still…
Mind you, as I
remarked to Vero a day or to ago not all change is good. My present bête noire
is an increasing tendency to preface every sentence with ‘So.’
It's a plague heard across the airwaves when an expert or politician
is being interviewed and responds with: 'So...podging…’ It’s an irritating grammatical tic allowing a) the interviewee time
to gather his or her thoughts
and
b) suggesting a spurious academic air at the same time ie 'so...'
sounding so much more considered and thoughtful than a simple 'ummm.'
It’s a new terrifying meme almost as bad as the dreaded upward
inflection at the end of a sentence that transforms an otherwise clear statement such at ‘It’s
raining,’ into a question.
But now I am rambling. Time for a little surreptitious podging, perhaps, and then
bed.
4 comments:
I try to resist the urge to turn a noun into a verb, but I couldn't help it with 'Googling'. Though I'd heard Google was quite offended by it at first. I hadn't heard if they'd since come to terms with it.
I say they should embrace it. Any company famous enough to become a verb has truly made it to the big time.
You're right, Maria. Ultimately it's a matter of linguistic feng shui - serendipity and taste. Shakespeare had it in spades. Politicians and business men, for the most part, don't.
Podging is my new favourite word. I love it. Podging. Hmm, I do that quite a lot too...
Must be a Northern thing, Shirley. I usually ruminate at the same time.
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