Wapping a dead blonk
David McKie
Thursday 8 May 2003
The Guardian
On the edge of Sheffield city centre there's a thoroughfare called Blonk Street. How many who walk up and down it ask what the name means? Happily, there's a clue in the Middle English poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
"He spoke to his squire," says the unknown author, "who swiftly him answered/ And bade him bring his byrnie and his blonk saddle."
A blonk is, or rather was, a horse.
Sheffield's horse fairs used to be held in Blonk Street. It is one of a good many words in Gawain which at some time or other have silently left our language. "The snow snitered full snart," the poet says at another point, "and snaped the wild/ The werbeland wind wapped from on high." And "by each cock crow he knew well the steven". There are plenty of dead (or as dictionaries say, obsolete) words here, some of which it's a shame to have lost. Steven, for instance, means the appointed hour, while wapped is almost onomatopoeic, evoking the sound of objects flapping about in a gale. Its subsidiary meanings, the Oxford English Dictionary tells us, include the striking of a pugilistic blow (19th century) and "to copulate", or as we might nowadays say, "to bonk", as in: "He took his lockam in his famble/ And a-wapping he went."
"Lockam", I'm happy to say, does not occur in this dictionary. "Famble" means hand. But blonk is a word we can manage without. For all its romantic allusions (it is derived from the French word blanc, and originally meant a white horse, exclusively) the word plops wetly on to the page today, suggesting something blank and clonking and plonking.
"A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!" cries the stricken king at the end of Richard III. Substitute "blonk" for "horse" and the line collapses.
Language is an evolutionary process. Words we need spring into being; words we no longer need crawl into a corner and die. Others change their meaning, as existing words are appropriated because there is a gap in the language. The word "disinterested" used to mean having nothing to gain or lose in a given situation. Nowadays it is used to mean "bored". This is unjustified. "Disinterested" is too useful a concept to have its meaning eroded, and if people don't want to say bored they can always prefer "uninterested".
But the word "prestigious", though it sets the teeth of pedants on edge, is a different matter. Without it, we would have no adjective conveying prestige. In a world as prestige-minded as ours, we need it.
Evolution is sometimes slow on the draw. An example of that which is almost inescapable nowadays is the word "leafy". The dictionary will tell you that "leafy" means covered with or having leaves, or resembling a leaf or leaves, but in practice the presence of leaves often has little to do with it.
Take a handful of examples perpetrated already in the papers this leafy May: "Leafy Sutton Coldfield", "leafy Dulwich" and in several reports of the controversial North Korean embassy, "leafy Ealing". The embassy, as I understand it, is really in Acton, but no one says "leafy Acton", because Acton is seen as downmarket. What this word really means in these contexts is privileged, well-heeled, comfortable, cosseted, going on spoiled (spoiled as in the sense of "spoiled children", that is -most places described as "leafy" are also described as "unspoiled"). Botany has nothing to do with it. Dulwich is still "leafy Dulwich" even in bleak midwinter.
Tooting is never "leafy", though Tooting is full of trees. The language has failed to provide a suitable word meaning privileged, well-heeled, comfortable, cosseted, going on spoiled; so leafy has been purloined.
What we need is some kind of equivalent of the Académie Française to inspect our language from time to time and identify gaps like these. The culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, should act in this matter today. The steven, as you might say, has arrived. It would not always be necessary to invent new words to repair the deficiencies. Lurking in Chaucer, I guess, or in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight itself, is some word that long ago drifted out of our common currency which would serve very nicely, letting "leafy" revert to meaning just leafy. It is time for the minister to order her squire to bring her byrnie (a coat of mail) and saddle her blonk.
If, let us say, this coming December, as the snow sniters full snart and snapes the wild, and the werbeland wind waps from on high, she has failed to take any decisive action, she is going to need her byrnie to protect her, and her blonk to sweep her away from the justified wrath of the literati.
McElsewhere@aol.com