Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 19 April 2003

A Lexicographer writes

‘What do you mean, “gapering”?’ asked my husband during a pause from shouting at the television. ‘Is it like capering?’

He wasn’t following, because he had been busy excoriating a television reporter for invoking global warming on the local news. (Local news means uninteresting things that have happened near you. It is even worse in London, since a lot of real news happens there, so the criterion is to save the chaff for the local bulletin. I only have it on while waiting for the weather forecast.)

Before picking up my husband’s dropped stitch, I’d like to apologise to Dr Christopher Heneghan, the anaesthetist barrister, for spelling his name wrong. Secondly I’d like to show off a card from Sir John Keegan, which is now pasted in my autograph album. ‘Fire storms cannot be deliberately created,’ he says (Mind your language, 29 March). ‘Climatic conditions determine whether they break out or not. There were very few fire storms created as a result of strategic bombing, Hamburg being the most notorious.’

Then he makes an interesting linguistic point about storm division. ‘Sturmabteilung I would translate as “attack detachment” or “wing” or “squadron”. Sturm should certainly be translated as “attack”.’ The trouble is that a literal-minded translation also got stuck in the English language very early. Storm troops was in Punch, even before the foundation of the SA; in 1917 it wrote of ‘Special “storm-troops” – men picked for their youth, vigour and daring, to carry out counter-attacks.’ I suppose it helped that in English we have a verb storm, meaning ‘to make a vigorous assault’. The Oxford English Dictionary cites Cromwell, in 1645, as an early user.

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