Football vs The Dictionary: Susie Dent on bus-parking & bouncebackability

25:03once a word goes into the oed that big one nothing it never goes out so it's a permanent record so they're really careful about what goes in and actually i would just say bounce back ability would not have gone in because of petition you cannot petition to get a word in the dictionary it is only on usage so it must have been used thanks to soccer am to warrant inclusion and the reason it's still in the oed is that it just it will never go out it will always be a sort of record of what was going on at the time so yeah so i suspect maybe maybe they just thought actually they should go in because they might be being years with things like croif turn and stuff yeah that must have been quite a long way after i suppose the original croif turn because they have to make sure they've either got it wrong with bounce back ability but they have to make

25:45Charlie Eccleshare:sure it's got some kind of longevity 41 years it took charlie for croif turn from its initial coinage to getting into the OED. I mean, by that point, I don't think it would be that prevalent in its sort of sincere usage. You wouldn't hear a commentator use it. I don't know why. I mean, they tend to not really mention skills by their name at all, really. But where would you say Cruyff Turn is now as a kind of, where is its health level in the English language? I thought that actually the other day because it was the 10-year anniversary of Cruyff dying. so I was I saw you know they were showing the clip and all that sort of thing I still think it's well enough established like I think if someone said it it wouldn't raise an eyebrow put it that way even if you don't hear it all the time other 2022 editions Dave were part the bus of course um Rabona that got in there Rosehead which feels again you know something of an archaic football sentiment but then there was also Panenka which I really don't mind being in the dictionary too.

26:45Charlie Eccleshare:No, people still use that, don't they? Oh, absolutely. I feel like they do, yeah. But what I was really pleased about, Dave, was that the dictionary stopped short of allowing penenka as a verb, because that's good. We can't allow it. Yeah. He penenka'd it. One, because it's really hard to write out. You can't put apostrophe D. You can't say penenka'd. It would have to be A apostrophe E D, I reckon, wouldn't it? I would just look penenka'd. It would just look awful. Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't look nice. It sounds good, though. I quite like it. Yeah, I do like it to say it. It's penenka'd it. He penenka'd it.

27:13Yeah.

27:15Charlie Eccleshare:think that maybe eric lamella inspired the inclusion of rabona yeah it was around about that time so speaking of names you will have talked about this a lot i know but um i spoke to colin murray before i came on i said what is what is the one that really really gets on your nerves and um he had two but one of them was your roonies your canes it drives him absolutely nuts on his show on talk sport he used to ban people from pluralizing wow really yes it really gets on his nerves and the other one that really annoys him is he's not that kind of player when uh there's there's another person that's just been fouled you know just absolutely lying writhing in agony on the ground and the person that's fouled him he's just like he's not he's not that kind of player must have just been a you know a slip well he hates that susie your friend arson wenger would agree with him because that was the famous defense of ryan shorecross after he snapped taron ramsay's leg in half and that's that's the first time i remember that i remember that's the first time I really heard that he's not that kind of player enter the mainstream do we get any shows in Stoke Susie?

28:18Charlie Eccleshare:Oh Stoke's lovely as a place but I want to stick up for pluralization Charlie I will use it semi-ironically I will be honest but it performs a really important function for football pundits specifically they basically just need to pad out what they're trying to say if they've only got two examples of something if they pluralize them they've got at least four as a result, right? Yeah, I mean, these things, they do serve a purpose. And yeah, you definitely hear this in other walks of life as well, and it can often be quite funny when people do. One of the flimsiest football sentiments of all, Susie, has been documented as one of your real hatreds of language, which is, it is what it is.

28:58Charlie Eccleshare:But football couldn't exist without it is what it is. No, and also, you know what, it is actually, I remember on an episode of 8 out of 10 Cats for Countdown, telling Jimmy how much I hated people starting a sentence with so. And then as I went on, I started to do exactly that. So it's very infectious. It is what it is. But it is redundant. It's tautologist. It's just, yeah, it's just inflated language. But then hyperbole is everywhere, not least in football, isn't it? But it's just it says absolutely nothing. It's just a waste of breath. I quite like this, Dave. I was kind of prepared for Susie to be really liberal about the use of language and just allow things in because people use them.

29:39Charlie Eccleshare:It's good to have a little bit of gatekeeping, right? It's just what this podcast is mainly about. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I could never say it in conversation. This is bad news for Jonathan Wilson's podcast, isn't it? Yeah. Susie, you did a kind of social media poll about some of these words that people would like banished from the dictionary. Oh, yes. And the best reply of all, three words from Les Dennis, for my sins. just an incredible snapshot of of uh british showbiz in uh 2023 that is true yeah that was such a uh an easy easy target was very lazy of me to put that out but it was it always gets people going you know what what to uh what do people hate with respect is the other one yes when you know that you know it's going to be anything but respectful but yeah for myself it's funny susie as well you've you've put in or bless which was one of my first ever kind of pet hates i remember as a kid finding that so incredibly patronizing yes it is but again it's quite infectious in your 2016 book uh dense modern tribes there's a section on football and um you cherry pick some some really kind of um colorful phrases some of them use more than more than others um but there is a there is a dan walkerism called thronka which which i i really i need to politely ask you to stop encouraging the use of okay i haven't encouraged it's used for quite a long time i don't think it's gone in the the dictionary but dan is he was very hot on that one uh is it used um no i think it's dave i would say it's marginally less acceptable than the what i think is also bad which is thunder bastard yeah i mean i feel like football doesn't need these kind of cartoonist phrases it's got a really strong language for shots on goal from sort of close range or long range.

31:25Charlie Eccleshare:So we don't need Thronka. I'm really going to, I'm going to, I'm going to fight to my dying breath to make sure that Thronka doesn't become mainstream. I don't think I've ever heard it before, but it is, and this is the beauty of football language, is it's sort of, you can picture it, even if you've never heard it before. You can, you can, you can get your head around it pretty easily, couldn't you? What a Thronka would be. Yeah, it's got, it's quite onomatopoeic, isn't it? It's got that sort of to it. A little bit too phallic for me, if anything. Is that? Thronker. Because of Plonker. I don't know, yeah.

31:55Plonker is phallic, to be fair.

31:56Charlie Eccleshare:Yes. Well, there we go. Anyway, this episode is brought to you in association with NordVPN. For those who don't know, VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. It secures your connection, protecting your personal information and online activity, especially on public Wi-Fi. A VPN can also make your phone or laptop appearance if it's in another country, which is great for accessing content while travelling. This, indeed, came from suddenbasil7039, all the way from Reddit. And it's a huge test of David Seaman's ability to chuckle about virtually anything as he makes a guest appearance on, and I swear I'm not making this up, Graeme Lasseau's new podcast, Football, So What?

32:33George Weyer played for Chelsea for the period. He was with us when we went on one of our paintballing, OK? And so he's thinking, what the heck is all this about? And so we start this paintball game and we play a few games and by the end of it, we're all getting ready to go and we're like, where's George? And no one could find him. And we're going, George, we're going now, we're going now. And he didn't come out from wherever he'd hidden himself. And then it was only afterwards where we eventually coaxed him out from he'd built basically his own fortress.

33:02Charlie Eccleshare:Yeah, exactly. And he basically, it's awful really, because he'd been in Liberia when there was a civil war. Oh no. So you'd just taken him into some like triggering experience, But in real life, let's take you back to the most traumatic point of your life and reenact it now for you. What a lovely team bonding exercise. That works. Oh, my God. Share your trauma and we'll reenact it. That's it. It'll chuckle at anything. PTSD for the Liberian Civil War. That meets his threshold, apparently. It's probably a good form of therapy, actually. Just go into a room and sit down and seem and just laugh for an hour.

33:40Charlie Eccleshare:All your troubles. Yeah, yeah. Come out feeling better. I suppose you probably would. Anyway, if you want to try NordVPN for yourself, go to nordvpn.com slash cliches, and our link will also give you four extra months on the two-year plan. It's the best discount available. There's no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee, and the link is also in our podcast description if you need it. We'll be back very shortly.

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35:25Charlie Eccleshare:Welcome back to Football Clichés. We're here with the nation's number one word nerd, Susie Dent, the queen of Dictionary Corner, whose Word Perfect UK tour continues this Friday. Just head to nothird.co.uk for tickets. The real highlights of the football lexicon, Susie, though, are, I find, particularly words that feel really out of place. And that I would also suggest that the average football fan would never dream of using in their wider life. So we've got a lovely selection of words here. I mean, let's start with pulsating, which is used really commonly in football. Again, it's quite an evocative word.

35:59Charlie Eccleshare:I feel like it's quite a dynamic word. And it describes a game that's gone end to end, but it's been high in quality. But it's been really exciting and full of energy and pulsating. but we wouldn't you wouldn't use pulsate anywhere would you i mean are we getting phallic again i feel it doesn't matter well i mean hyperbole is everywhere to be fair so we we are really prone to linguistic inflation on everything so everyone is a star even if they get you a coffee or a hero if they up the door for you and that kind of thing and everything's tragic and so we actually lose the impact of the original thing so if they didn't say pulsating i guess they would say this is very this is exciting it doesn't quite carry the same punch and um harry redknapp doesn't he says top top player doesn't he yeah so it's just we need that extra oomph and there is actually quite a lot of research that shows that we get more if you're extrovert you get more cortical simula stimulation from uh from high impact language so that inevitably leads itself towards kind of exaggeration but i think we all do that anyway because the existing standard language just doesn't pack enough punch which is quite sad i would love us to return to you know to sort of usual language and retain the power it's been a good game it's been a good game let's return to pape news let's just reset our sort of excitedness i don't know um but i'm glad you mentioned the sort of red nappy and top top multiplier because i was going to kind of raise this as a one of the emerging sort of neologisms in in football or at least in terms of its use rather than its origin the word top charlie i've heard football managers recently just say he's top he is top so it's not it's not using its previous sort of incarnation he's a top top player he is top and it feels a little bit Euro speak to me yeah I can imagine Liam Rossini about Rhys James or something like listen he's top he's top you know it's a bit like elite served that purpose for a while do you remember that was used loads about you know like listen he's an elite player I think it's in yeah in that kind of space but it's got to the point where it's really really weird to hear top on its own with no other tops around it.

38:03Charlie Eccleshare:I mean, I think we got to four tops maximum and then the football sort of maxed out, didn't it? I'm just looking in the OED to see whether this is one where I can say, well, we've been doing that since 1345. But I, sorry, keep talking. I'll keep looking. It's a very long entry, as you can imagine, for tops. It's just like when we look at Wikipedia halfway through the show. Sorry. And we gain the blade for a club. This means maximum engagement, which I'm really happy with. The top top thing did become a real sort of cliche that very much tied to Harry Redknapp. Yeah. To the point where no one else, you catch yourself doing it and you wouldn't do it, would you?

38:39Charlie Eccleshare:It became so hard to benchmark it, Charlie, because it was just inflation. It's like, well, who's top, top now? And who's top, top, top? At some point, somebody needed to classify it. So I'm kind of glad it's been dismantled a little bit and we're just back to a single top. The only one that I can find where top is on its own is 2001, which is, so bear in mind, And the Oxford English Dictionary draws content from all sorts of different sources. So this is one from a fashion magazine. The black scoop neck sweater looks totally top over a balcony bra. And in 2020, the Daily Star in the sports section, the atmosphere was amazing.

39:14The mood was top. And I think the engagement for my team was very good. I don't know who that would have been. But I suspect it might have been used like that in regional English rather than standard English. So I suspect it's not as new as it seems.

39:29Charlie Eccleshare:OK, here next is a great example of a word that's really taken on a life of its own in football. Spence does well winning the initial header, but then he doesn't follow it out. Yeah, it's quite, it's too calm. It's just lackadaisical. He doesn't quite get out to. They have this second half. They didn't have it in the first half, though, Adam. They were a little bit lackadaisical, I felt, defensively. It's a simple run in behind. Camavinga's then covering. He's in behind. And Trent just looks lackadaisical. It's a great start for Benfica. Susie I've got absolutely no idea how lackadaisical took off but it seems to be a purely football creation but what I would also say is that obviously the correct term is lackadaisical which to me it's too clunky when you stick a kind of x sound in the middle of it it sounds more scientific it sounds more like a sort of impressive word so I'm all for it I'm sticking with the the kind of corruption yes it's actually do you know what it's been around for a long time there's a variation on it and I've heard Chris that news it quite a few times actually I think i almost grew up with lackadaisical but then lackadaisical reared on lackadaisical it's got a great etymology which is um someone sort of you know putting the palm to their forehead and wiping their brow and being sort of oh swoony because it was a lack the day a lackadaisical it's like woe is me this day is going horribly wrong and somehow it morphed into not having the energy to do something maybe because you were just so beset by melancholy but um a lack the day became um yeah lackadaisical also became upsadaisy believe it or not but um yeah but i i uh i think i grew up with lackadaisical so i think it's been around for a while it's got the seal of approval dave this is great there's there's a logic to it i think isn't there in that it's you know it's like relaxadaisical it's the lax field it's lax isn't it because lax is a word so it's it's just kind of like melding them together and also i think it just is we are used to seeing sir sort of curve becoming a like success or whatever you know two c's we see it and i think there's like a we just do a similar sort of jump in our brains yeah it's a really footbally word i think and i wonder i think when i was saying it i was spelling it l-a-c-k-s rather than l-a-x but i'm looking at forms here like it no it's actually in the oed it's only giving you lackadaisical so maybe it is maybe you're right maybe it is more modern and i was i was always wrong but i i agree with you I think it's got a nice, yeah, it's lax.

41:51It's a bit floppy.

41:55Charlie Eccleshare:In my prep for this episode, I was trying to find examples of the use of laxadaisical in football and then find the subsequent clips from it. And you must have this all the time. Google was doing that annoying thing where it says, oh, do you really want to search for this? I said, no, I'm in charge here. How dare you? You must get this all the time. Yeah, it is annoying. One of the best watches in the world, though, is, bear with me because it sounds really boring, but it's called a dictionary corpus which is this vast database and it will show you and i looked at bounce back ability actually to see and there was there were absolutely no records that i could find in recent times um but it draws from whatsapp messages to scholarly journals and broadsheets and tabloids and things yeah it's vast and it's records transcripts with conversations and uh it's just such a such an amazing thing because it's how dictionary makers lexicographers actually decide you know whether if a word is used frequently enough to go in so it's all very democratic and if lackadaisical is used more often eventually then lackadaisical then that will get reflected in the dictionary oh it's going to be a great journey as a witness dave i didn't think football cliches whatsapp group might end up sort of affecting the corpus you've got to watch what you say mate other footbally words that just feel very wrong i mean this one has a very sort of literal situation here charlie decimated by injury in football.

43:13Charlie Eccleshare:What's the threshold, would you say, in football, for a squad to be decimated by injury? I need a percentage figure. Well, this is the thing, yeah, because I remember when Spurs had an injury crisis about 2023 under Ange, there was a lot of decimated and then there's the counter, well, it actually has to be 10 % of your... And it's like, but then that little knowledge is an annoying thing, because it's like, well, I know that, but then so can I now not use decimated? Again, maybe sick as your friend here. but I think like if you're nowadays with squad sizes and maybe I'm again being blinded by the decimate element here but if you've got like 10 injuries in your squad double figures that's decimated okay so you're going for a total number of injuries so talk about roughly a third of the playing squad then but I mean again it's quite a dramatic word it's used in dramatic circumstances Susie but if it's original sort of meaning is that one tenth has been wiped out that's not a big deal why coin it in the first place?

44:10I suppose it isn't that big a deal. And I don't think it was used with hyperbole in the first place. It was simply a tenth of a Roman garrison or a Roman troop. But yeah, so I think it started off as being something sort of quite specific. And then as is the way with these things, we just picked it up and it became much more than the sum of its parts.

44:31Charlie Eccleshare:It's a great word. And I think it's another of those words that, at least in the football context, has taken on the new meaning and the old one has been completely discarded. and rightly so because it's a great word i like using it how about the ascendancy now in football susie this is a specific situation in a game where a team have not just control of the game but that but it's the transition from not being in control to being in control so they've gone from a passive state to to dominating the game nothing spectacular needs to have happened they don't need to have scored they don't need to really need to have shot at goal but it's that kind of concerted spell of dominance yeah and in football it's described as the ascendancy now we never use ascendancy anywhere else we could say something is in or it's in ascendant don't we in sort of astronomy don't we yes it's so strictly speaking yes celestial objects etc um but um i quite like it actually i think it's quite poetic almost it's great um so so manchester city in the second half of the league cup would that have been they were they were in ascendancy or they were already they Do you know what?

45:33I think that would have happened towards the end of the first half. And actually, you've got to say, Manchester City are in the ascendancy here, haven't you? I think by the time of the second half, they were beyond that point.

45:47Charlie Eccleshare:Crucial technical point, Dave. I would say that it has to be a kind of seamless transition mid-half. You couldn't go in at half-time and then come out in the ascendancy because there's nothing to come from you before it. How closely related do you think, Adam, it is to when Manchester City scored their first goal, you might turn and go, well, it's been coming. Is that a team that's been in the ascendancy? Yeah, 100%. I think they're very twins, those concepts. So the goal kind of caps off the ascendancy and you are ascendant. The king of words that simply don't belong in football but sound great and we continue to use them, Susie, is aplomb.

46:20Charlie Eccleshare:What a word. What a word. It's great. it is so give me an example so is this used by tv commentators i was going to ask you because i only ever i've rarely watched football i listen to it on the radio all the time i think the commentary is incredible is is there a difference between apart from how much they speak is there a difference between radio and tv commentary do you think because i've not heard well funny you should ask that question that is the subject in part of our next subscriber episode so i'm sure you'll be subscribing and listening yeah okay that's good to know you have to subscribe now so that's yeah we can't give you the answer for free now i'm afraid okay there is just a different charm to radio commentary isn't there yeah and a different sort of fizz to it i think as well if you listen to my conor conor mcnamara he just sort of sweeps you up but a plum it's quite interesting because it's got lead at its heart so if you've got a plum a plum you've got kind of gravity so it's linked to plumber so a plumber was somebody originally who used plumbum which in latin was lead, lead piping.

47:21So we never pronounce the B, by the way, we just stuck it there to show off our Latin heritage. And if you plumb the depth, you are using a lead line to sort of ascertain the depths of something. So a plumb originally meant kind of straight down, perpendicular, so sort of steady and steadfast. It's got, as I say, that real sense of gravity to it.

47:41Charlie Eccleshare:Oh, wow. So it's not as necessarily as kind of beautiful as the word suggests, Charlie, because if you're finishing with a plumb, what's a textbook, a plummy finish? Well, I was going to say, yeah, finishing with a plum is absolutely the kind of go-to. So it's skill, isn't it? Finesse. Well, it's authority. It's a kind of like, he's finished with a plum. It's a kind of decisive, confident, just sort of like, there was never any doubt kind of thing. And it can't be too dainty. Like, you wouldn't sort of chip it sort of beautifully over a goalkeeper. It can't be too artistic. as Charlie says it's confident it's authoritative but it's also tidy and and nice to look at so so so it's got flair but it I think it's so close to its etymology then because it's it's kind of solid and impressive because of its you know solidity would Thierry Henry's trademark trademark finish would that have ever been described as and he finishes with a really good aplomb yeah almost the dictionary definition of I would say yeah but it's another example of those antiquated words that just stick around and you know we can't move on from yeah it's very it's very true but um they've all got such lovely stories behind them so a football fan was obviously a football fanatic and um that originally goes back to a latin word meaning possessed by a demon uh so it was it was people who behaved in really sort of wild and and ecstatic and slightly erratic ways maybe not much has changed but arsenal fans online then i guess so fanaticus yeah that's that's what it meant and it's linked to profane which is also quite quite handy because profane meant outside the temple so not sacred which is where you get profanity from great well this is fantastic another word that's been on quite the recent journey actually and we've talked about it a couple of times on this podcast because it's been used in a very errant kind of way is talisman and we've heard the pluralised Talas men.

49:39Charlie Eccleshare:We've heard the female version of it, which is Talas woman, which is now in the dictionary. Again, who's allowing this? Is it? Yeah. It made it in. I think it was... Which dictionary are we talking about? Well, this is it. It could be Merriam-Webster. We could be in a Merriam-Webster situation, but as far as I know, I think it might be OED online or whatever, but it's there. So it's not in Oxford Dictionaries online. Right. Now it's in the OED. So that's the one that I was telling you about oh my gosh oh it is i know you were totally right okay so well done that sounded really patronizing it did a bit but i'm all right with it oh i'm so sorry that was uh yes that was sorry that was awful um 1856 is the first mention of a talisman has always been as a sort of jokey riff so a talisman associated with a woman especially one in the shape of a female figure so yes it was i think as far as i can tell it was always a very conscious friff but i had absolutely no idea i told you i was going to learn something here but the reason um it's talismans and not talisman is because it's not really got anything to do with man it's it's from bison time from greek i think and and we often do that particularly if we can't pronounce a word we just go for something which sounds familiar so my favorite example of that is the fact that the jerusalem master joke has absolutely nothing to do with jerusalem and everything to do with the fact that we couldn't pronounce the italian girasola which means turns to the sun because it's a heliotrope but we thought girasola sounds a bit like jerusalem so we just went with that so i think that's what we tend to do is is if we really have no clear how to pronounce a word we just shift it or something it does sound familiar charlie i can't believe we're talking about heliotropes on the football cliches podcast okay listen stop talking about heliotropes we just can't um another example of a word where i feel like we can sympathize with its misuse and because because the misuse form is a little bit more familiar is the phrase guilt-edged which there are many examples in football journalism where the reporter will have used g-u-i-l-t and and you can see where the motivation might come from because it's like well yeah it was an embarrassing thing to do and he may well feel guilty for doing it but you know the true form of it is also quite But odd, guilt-edged seems like a weird thing to describe something.

51:57Yeah, so again, I've not heard this in football terms. So how's it being used? Charlie, I would say a really presentable chance that it was quite embarrassing to miss.

52:07Charlie Eccleshare:A presence awarded to them. Okay, so easy. Because guilt-edged is really, and that hasn't got that meaning in the dictionary, but it just means of the best quality, the top quality, I suppose, guilt-edged. so interesting that it's being used in football but not not surprising as you say that it's being hijacked in different ways and again we do that all the time and it's called um there's a category of language that are called egg corns which is when we think it's like misheard song lyrics it's when we think something is felt or is is presented in one way we've got it completely wrong and there are so many of them and many current english words and expressions actually were mistakes in the past where we got something slightly wrong.

52:52Interesting. We hear a lot about gilts. Well, the last few years, we've heard a lot about the gilts, you know, in terms of the economy and stuff. And I don't know what that, I still don't know anything about them. Is it gold? It must be gold related, right? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

53:06Charlie Eccleshare:Thank God. In fact, I think it is a riff on, I was talking about riffs, on guild, yeah, to guild. So to guild was to cover with a very thin layer of gold. Oh yeah, so Charlie, it's not that precious a chart. It's only gold plated. It's not pure gold all the way through. It's low carrot, is what I'm saying. So maybe we should consider the XG of a guilt-edged chance. I was going to say, yeah, what is that in XG terms? I do like that we make that leap to guilt, that you feel really guilty about it. I think it's fine. It's one of the more understandable mistakes that our colleagues use. If you miss a lot of guilt-edged chances, Dave, you could be sort of labelled as profligate.

53:44Charlie Eccleshare:It's such a weird word that's sustained itself in football. you don't see a great deal but when you do you just think do you really know what this means originally because there's a lack of kind of heft behind the usage of it like i don't know what profligate means and therefore i would be reluctant to use it in text obviously it's a football word i'm trying to think whether i might have used it at all when like i don't know not in speech surely i think i sort of think when you you know when you don't know what it means like when you're first getting into football when you're young and stuff when you're in your teens and you're sort of chucking around words that you don't know what they actually mean you could these sorts of words you could end up just sort of ham fisting them into some sort of essay or something definitely it's often i mean you'll often hear as well like the tories will talk about you know the labor government being profligate and that sort of thing i know what you mean and that it might have like when you're starting out as a writer as well you might chuck it in because you think it sounds cleverer than just like wasteful basically well this is an issue because susie is someone who's sort of pumping society with new words or at least unfamiliar words on almost on a daily basis how do you feel about people using words that they don't really they've seen and they think they know the meaning of and it might well be accurate but if they don't have the kind of knowledge behind it should we be using words and sort of match reports like that it it depends i think as i said language is always evolved by us getting things slightly wrong and sort of shifting it towards something else that's an actual process of language but i think if then the message is lost because there are too many people going what that's not that's that's not right or getting really irked by it then the beauty of the message is lost so i think you know i don't care about accuracy because of old latin rules or anything but when the beauty of the communication is lost and and there is a beauty to commentary um then i then i think it does matter can i just like there's like the word pragmatic which has just been bastardized in football and again marino is it's not his fault but the way people talk about him has been a big contributing factor here.

55:38Pragmatic in football has just come to mean defensive. And that's not what pragmatic means. Mourinho, if he was pragmatic, he would just do what he needs to do to win. And if that meant playing really attacking football, and you could argue maybe at Real Madrid, he was pragmatic because he did play with an attacking team because that's where they were. So Alex Ferguson was pragmatic. He would constantly be shape-shifting and if he thought the best way to win was with two wingers and whatever and attacking football, he'd do it. But now you just, and again, I think it is a little bit of a word people use they don't really know what it means but they think sounds kind of clever do you think it's got a negative connotation now charlie definitely yeah but it just it because it's come to mean like defensive and sort of anti-football and parking the bus a little whistle stop tour

56:22Charlie Eccleshare:through um some other words in football that just seem very strange uh supremo for a kind of chief executive or an owner of a club which is again a sensational word it's very tabloidy but i don't mind it it's it's speaking of um those those egg corns and things that we get slightly wrong i have heard um the head of a company being called the head poncho which i love i don't think that's going to get in the dictionary but it made me laugh i want to be known as the head poncho for this podcast from now on please what about stalwarts again a really footbally word you might hear it here and there elsewhere but I'm called the stalwart Labour stalwart the dictionary corner and it no but that makes me it's been amazing it's been ancient there's something quite it's an ugly word about it isn't there it's just not it's not yeah yeah it doesn't sound like a compliment football is a very angry place and there are lots of words that are used for kind of verbal kind of confrontations between various people and my two weirdest ones are lambast and tirade which for years I pronounced as tirade and lots of people took the piss out of me so So I'm willing to hold my hands up about that one.

57:31Charlie Eccleshare:But yeah, really weird words. But which one's worst? Lambasting someone or launching a tirade? You're a lambaster, are you? Yeah. Oh, no, I've got a lambast. Normally. Jesus, it sounds a bit northern for me, so I didn't want to say it. I quite like that. I can see that one coming a mile off. Should we do Segway next, then? I've been guilty of SIGU before. The worst moment. I have said SIGU on Countdown before. I think, thankfully, they cut it. I just literally wasn't thinking. Oh, God, that's worse than my Sieg. That's actually worse than my... I just went for Sieg. Yes, it is. Sieg is way worse.

58:07Yes.

58:08Charlie Eccleshare:While you're here, come of Theo or come of the man. No, we're getting into that. Just on that as well, linked to kind of lambasting and that sort of thing, I do remember... Because obviously football has an incredible vocabulary for disappointment. Yeah. And I remember as a kid writing, you know, a story or whatever, and I used the word sad, and my teacher, I would have been about nine. She was like, you know, could you think of a better word for sad? And I was like, and my mind just went, I was like, well, desolate, distraught. You know, just all these words I'd seen in football. And she thought I was some sort of genius.

58:37It was like, where have you learned all this? Football's great for your vocabulary.

58:41Charlie Eccleshare:Just do. Yeah, I was just like, that's just what happens, you know, and a team gets relegated and you're describing the fans or the players or whatever. It was such a life hack. Yeah, that's true. Lambast is really quite, because I think it goes back to literally giving someone a really big beating to lamb someone was to really um punch them up yeah so it's got it's quite it's quite kind of grim but again it's got that that force yeah definitely is again it's a very dynamic word probably that probably edges it ahead of tirade tirade is more aimless because you could be launching a tirade about anything but as you've got to lambast someone directly it requires a direct object yes transitive all right you would go on a bitter tirade wouldn't you in a press conference antonio conte launched into a bitter tirade against the spurs hierarchy you wouldn't do a lambast true yeah tirades more like a shotgun you've got sort of various bits flying in various directions um to pick a phrase which not only feels really out of place despite having a very evocative usage in football and also has a very disputed origin to it susie what about at sixes Oh, yes.

59:47Very much disputed origin that's been claimed by lots of people and some lovely stories attached to it. But it was first recorded by Chaucer, I think. And it was actually nothing to do with the position of order in the processions of livery companies, which is what we often hear. It actually is to do with gambling. And originally the expression in French was a cinq et a six, five and six. In other words, you were really gambling against the odds because the odds of landing the two highest scores on a pair of dice, a pair of dice, was, you know, it was one of the highest odds. And so because of hyperbole, we had it even in the 14th century, a cinq et a six became six and seven, which is of course impossible on Dyson so it kind of lost its its origins but what we don't know is why it came to mean just like all over the all over the place at sixes and sevens and sort of you know slightly discombobulated maybe I suspect it just sort of shifted over time and that that origin became lost but despite all the lovely etymologies that's the one we think is true

1:00:52Charlie Eccleshare:it's properly old as well Charlie I mean we we've talked recently about how keystone cops for a fence that's completely out of position and slipping over themselves is old and that's what early 20th century and this is this predates that by about 600 years it's great so at sixes and sevens but it's great in football like everybody knows what that means just by having not a clue about its origin which is an effective use of language and sort of demonstration of how it evolves charlie yeah i mean and i do have a memory of hearing that expression for the first time not in a football context when i was younger and being slightly because it does like it take it out take it out of its context and now just knowing it it is a very strange expression it's interesting to hear the origin that maybe it was you know uh five and six because you know god bless him i could hear i could imagine merce on soccer saturday go you know jeff here at fives fives and sixes over it five sixes and sevens here so yeah another good example of as you said right at the top that the language of football is actually fairly solid and doesn't doesn't move a great deal it's not It doesn't move with the times a hell of a lot.

1:01:54Charlie Eccleshare:But yeah, if Sixpence is there, why not use it? So we've celebrated the richness of the language of football. And if anything, we're overstocked with words for various situations. But in some situations, we don't have any words for them at all. And we need them. So I was directed towards an article you wrote about four years ago, introducing some potential new words that could be used in football for certain characteristics, should we say. A couple that stood out for me. Princock, the goal hanger who is only there for the glory and who somehow neglects to thank the teammates who did all the heavy lifting.

1:02:24Charlie Eccleshare:So again, yeah, it's quite almost peacock-like. Yes, there's Pavoniser for being peacock-like as well. Pavoniser is to strut around like a peacock. Pavoniser is so good, Charlie. I feel like that has a chance to embed itself in the language of football. I think he's a Pavoniser, Geoff. He flattered to deceive. I don't actually know what flattered to deceive actually means. I've used it a lot. Don't really get it, I have to say. It's another great expression. Pavoniser is good. That's got heft to it, Dave. pavanizer could work definitely though uh print and cocker podcasts don't quite have the same ring as goal hangers no um elsewhere cacafuego spanish for fire shitter this is the player who is all bluster and little substance cacafuego was an impressively armed spanish galleon captured easily by sir francis drake uh so yeah it did put up the fight that they expected but um oh it's it's the dictionary i have to say is far better on insults than it is a compliment and they have so many for people who just sort of are full of hot air and strut the stage as if they own the world.

1:03:24And, you know, everyone knows that they don't. Loads and loads for those. I think a team could be a Cacafuego as well. One of those who, you know, you know ultimately, you know, like how Spain themselves used to be at major tournaments. You know, you knew they had great players and, you know, they'd come in with expectations. Some might say England.

1:03:43Charlie Eccleshare:I was looking at this list of words that you sort of commandeered for potential usage in football, Susan. It really did betray someone who was really into Wenger era Arsenal. You've got Wiffler, the thoroughly indecisive player who looks around frantically before passing and inevitably losing the ball. You've got a Nickham, the cheat whose dives are theatrical tour de force. And you've got Dan Dilley, the fan's darling who can do no wrong. These are all very Arsenal-y concepts to me. I'd like to think he would have put some of those into his language somehow. Because I think he did speak with Flair, didn't he?

1:04:15I never actually managed to interview him for that book. I really wanted to, but I just sort of at third degree. So I wrote up a list of questions and then they asked him, which was very nice. And he did write me a letter when I had done 20 years on Countdown, which was very kind of him. Yes, basically saying, you know, we've both been doing our jobs for a very long time. I'm pretending that you watch Countdown. But there was no clamour to get you out, Susie. Well, I'm sure they're going to be placards. You didn't have to dent out at some point. And dividing the fan base.

1:04:44Charlie Eccleshare:Now, finally, we do have a pretty modern dilemma. The concept of stat padding in football is such that we have creative ways of sort of expressing a footballer's numerical achievements over the course of a season. And we like conflating goals and assists for a player to sort of bump up their numbers. So the best phrase that footballers come up with, and it doesn't look like it's put a great deal of effort into it, is goal involvements, which is really clunky, very unsexy. what can we do for a word that combines goals and setting up goals? There must be a better verb slash noun for this. Can we just call them GNA?

1:05:19No? Goals and assist? I mean, I'm not the only one for abbreviations anyway, but GNA is nicer than goals involvement. Goal contributions as well. We need a single word, don't we, for goal participation in some way.

1:05:30Charlie Eccleshare:Goal participation. What I have seen is a lot of new words that enter the dictionary tend to be sort of portmanteaus. Yes, exactly. really sort of slangy sort of trendy portmanteaus could we do this could we call them gassists or something like that for glussists i don't know i think it go lists you should ask your amazing listeners to come up with something because that's very often particularly i mean blending or making out portmanteaus the most productive way of producing new words it's the it's the one that we all turn to these days and those are the ones that tend to stick and then we've been having them for ages like brunch and things goes by ages motel etc but i i definitely think you should my my favorite discovery in recent times is actually the um the the person on your street and most of us have one who always puts their bins out first and everyone else follows like lemmings and then influencers i really like them i love that right but um i think a portmanteau is a brilliant idea and i think you should ask your listeners i can't think of one but there must be one yeah we could turn it into a democratic kind of situation, Dave, but, you know, do we really want to follow in Soccer AM's path too far?

1:06:33Charlie Eccleshare:No, but it's democratic, and that's what English is all about. I'm not saying a petition, but it would just, if it gets used enough, who knows? You could watch it fly. Yeah, look, surely. I mean, if there's one thing on the list of achievements we could possibly hope to achieve with this podcast, is getting a word into the dictionary. Oh, that would be great. That would be, actually, now you've said it, that has become my life ambition. Susie, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the Football Clichés podcast. Thank you so much. And I knew I was going to learn some stuff and I am very much put right with Tyler's Woman.

1:07:02Thank you. I'm going to go and hide my head in shame.

1:07:05Charlie Eccleshare:Thanks to you, Charlie Eccleshare. Thank you. And thanks to you, David Walker. Thank you. And thanks to Susie. Good luck with the rest of the tour. You're about halfway through? Well, halfway through this year. So yeah, just most weekends, I'll be somewhere. Looking forward to it. Yeah, please turn up to one of our shows with Collins and see what happens. I won't mind. I always love people to come. Thanks everyone for listening. We'll be back on Tuesday. See you then.

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