Wee

Hurrying for the Underground, I thought I saw a poster for a film by Madonna called Wee. It seemed a strange title even for her, and indeed the film turns out to be called W./E., the initials of Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII. Nevertheless, wee has suddenly become a frequent word in public utterances. On that quite interesting programme on BBC Four about medieval kings’ illuminated manuscripts, one sequence showed calf hides being prepared for making into vellum. The parchmenter, Mr Paul Wright, mentioned that the urine of abbots would once have been used, as their diet produced rich urine. The presenter, Dr Janina Ramirez, who holds degrees from Oxford and elsewhere, referred to it as ‘abbot’s wee’.

As a professional populariser perhaps she was right. English has fallen between two stools, as it were. Native words for sexual items (the F-word and the C-word) or scatological ones (the S-word and the P-word) have long been taboo. Technical words, in Latin or derived from it, coitus, copulation, vagina, even pudendum muliebre or excrement, faeces and urine, seem almost more obscene than the taboo words. The Latin terms sound like something from a medical textbook, thus pathologising normal human functions.

It was from this dilemma — either too crude or too technical — that neologisms or nursery language delivered us. Sir Peregrine Worsthorne noted 20 years ago that the invention of the word bonking had made the activity far easier to talk about, particularly in print. Emma Soames wrote in Saga recently that Sir Peregrine had claimed the word’s invention for her. It was a gallant compliment, but to clinch the claim she must show evidence of its use before 1975, the earliest year from which the OED has a written example.