The English language is full of surprises. Here are my three favourites

A red-light district in Yokohama, or a Dutch game of tag? Take your pick, as hunky-dory is a linguistic puzzle. Either the idiom emerges from the brothels of Honcho-Dori, or the slang hinges on honk, the Dutch word for home, where safety lies for Friesian kids playing chasings.

Billyo is another enigma, that imagined place we dispatch all pests, or the rate we go when we run like billyo. According to the Macquarie, Bill is a euphemism for the Devil, the -o added for effect. Yet Susie Dent, the Oxford sleuth, suggests a few more suspects.

If onomatopoeia’s not responsible for “clink”, then what is?Credit: Jo Gay

Consider Joseph Billio, an Essex rector ousted for nonconformity in 1696. Or Garibaldi’s lieutenant, Nino Biglio, who urged his men into battle. Or an English locomotive, Puffing Billy, inspiring Victoria’s own engine. While the devil remains the prime candidate, the alternative theories are fascinating.

Even commonplace words can catch you unawares. Gas, for one, relates to chaos, alluding to its restless nature. Caucus owes its existence to the Algonquin tongue, where “caucauasu” means adviser. Of course, this root implies the term’s history, its debut tied to a Boston confab of powerbrokers in 1750.

Just as mews, the historic stables of London, link to hawks, not cats, via French for moult, or “mue”. Again, the backstory beckons, where Jacobean royals kept hawks in their stables, paving the way for the toney culs-de-sac in our own era. As for cats – the tabby, in fact – that varicoloured moggy invokes Baghdad, the source of watered silk, hailing from that city’s Attab precinct.

Full of linguistic surprises: Interesting Stories about Curious Words, by Susie Dent

This week, as you can guess, from abracadabra to zugzwang, I’ve been lost in Susie Dent’s anecdotal dictionary, Interesting Stories About Curious Words (John Murray, 2023). It’s the sort of book that reminds me why I love word-snooping, as much as how evasive English can remain. Maritime slang alone is a fount of phrases, be that chock-a-block or slush fund, loose cannon or son of a gun. Indeed, a jokey acronym among lexicographers is CANOE – or Committee to Ascribe Nautical Origins to Everything.

When it comes to semantic spadework, Dent knows her onions. So why onions? Rhyming slang, after onion rings for things. Joining the ranks of bottle (and serve) for nerve, rabbit (and pork) for talk, or blowing a raspberry (tart). Then there’s the Bag of Nails (a gastropub in Bristol), which isn’t an inbuilt rhyme, but a pun on bacchanal.

As for the big surprises, let me share my top three. For 50 years, I’ve always credited onomatopoeia for clink, the prison alias. Sound FX, however, are falsely accused. The true culprit once stood in Southwark, the Clink gaol, a name which probably relied on the metallic echo, but I’d never realised the building existed – for 900 years.

Ruling the roost, meanwhile, evokes an alpha hen, or cock-of-the-walk. But time to scrap all talk of chooks, unless they’re in the oven, as the original idiom was ruling the roast. Somehow, this plausible corruption revives my late Dad, using his Wiltshire Staysharp to saw the beef.

Boning up is the last jaw-dropper. Here my hunch pictured a trainee doctor swotting the skeleton, but Henry Bohn (1796-1884) also warrants our attention. This British translator issued dozens of concise explainers on history and science, essentially the precursor to Coles Notes.

Just one more prompt to stay alert, or literally “a l’erte” – an Italian command to head “to the watchtower!” . Since English, like few languages, can ambush you at any turn.

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