The most interesting words, if you ask me, can often be those that irritate people. Not that I don't love decorous words like apple or amenable or zebra or byzantine. Like the studious kids at school, you have to acknowledge their good work and solid achievements. But at the same time there's this niggling feeling that the really interesting stuff is happening down on the lower field where the bad kids hang out.
I was reminded of this a while back when a friend told me how annoying he finds American tv sports commentators’ practice of describing teams as “the winningest” in the competition. I’m ashamed to say I felt an immediate and profound fondness for winningest in that moment, for no other reason than that it annoyed Tony.
Given Tony was also a client, that may not have the smartest reaction on my part. I’m pretty sure I was buying him a beer at the time though, and where I come from that earns you automatic forgiveness for a wide range of misdemeanours not to mention one or two major felonies.
But let’s take a dispassionate look. Is winningest really that terrible?
It’s certainly unique in being the only superlative - or the only one I can think of - created from a present participle. Whether that makes winningest bad is an interesting question. It’s certainly a brave soul who breaks with any of the underlying conventions of the language when coining a new word.
On the other hand, it doesn’t break with one important convention. If a thing is more anything – let’s say fast – than another thing, we usually pop -er on the end of the base adjective. If it’s the most fast of all, we give it -est. Fast. Faster. Fastest.
Winningest undoubtedly obeys that rule, which is why no one needs to have its meaning explained to them when they first hear it.
It's also been around a while. The Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster place its origin in the early 1970s. Fifty years of usage not only lends it some legitimacy, but also suggests it’s here to stay.
But I do get Tony’s objection. Winningest has a clunky sound to it and is also a little cheesy. To my ear, it sounds like whoever came up with it was striving just a little too hard for effect.
But is that a reason to hate it? Hardly. What sounds odd in one country may sound perfect in another. Just because some beer-addled client in New Zealand doesn’t like a word, get a joke, enjoy an accent, or get all gooey at the poem on a greeting card, doesn’t mean it won’t hit all kinds of the right notes in a different culture.
Also, winningest is a mostly humorous usage, like shebang, flapdoodle and doozy. Or, as the Oxford English Dictionary prefers to say, “informal”. That’s a good reason to cut its users some slack.
Finally, if you speak British English, you've probably heard the expression curiouser and curiouser, coined by Lewis Carroll. If you have have no problem with that (and if you do, drop me a line and I’ll explain why you’re wrong), then taking offence at winningest is a little inconsistent and may be nothing more than chauvinism on your part.
In fact, part of Tony’s reaction against winningest is his admitted dislike of Americanisms.
But I say, go America! Any culture that can give the world jazz, Citizen Kane, Huckleberry Finn, The Basement Tapes, that wonderful writer of high quality pulp fiction Elmore Leonard, the New York poet Frank O’Hara and his stupendously brainy yet irreverent friend John Ashbery, as well as that dissolute, giant-hearted, one-man bar-room brawl called Tom Waits is okay by me. Those people and the works they’ve created all spring from a rich, anarchic, bold, egalitarian, experimental and endlessly inventive place that revels in new creations, unconstrained by how things should be, or have been, done.
I put winningest in that glorious pile of junk and jewels. While it’s hardly the greatest ever lexical invention, it continues the United States’ fine tradition of fearlessly messing about with stuff – including the King’s English – to see what shows up. When you do that, now and again glorious miracles happen. Just listen to Kind of Blue one afternoon and tell me that ain’t so.
Bits and specious
Here’s Tom Waits performing Lucinda on Conan O’Brien a few years back. For an even grittier performance, listen to his live album Glitter and Doom.
Also, if you’ve never listened to Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, drop everything and listen to it now. Your life will never be the same.
In the 1990s, the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary had an attack of extreme political correctness and removed words like fatso and redneck from its lexicon. Get the full story here.
Last week I mentioned a number of Australian animals whose names sound Aboriginal, but aren’t. Reader Peter Ingham points out that the Nullarbor Plain, which stretches 1100 km between Adelaide and Perth, is another Aussie decepticon. Its name is - most aptly - from the Latin for “no trees”. One of my favourite cartoonists, Tom Scott, once did a strip showing poor souls trapped on a train making the seemingly endless journey through this unchanging landscape. Eventually, one of them leaps up and screams, “I can’t take any more! I’m going to shoot someone!” To a person, everyone else in the cabin cries out, “Shoot me! Shoot me!”
This is the last Lingwistics for 2022. I’ll be taking a couple of weeks off to tend to my garden and enjoy whatever sunshine this fickle summer decides to send our way. Happy holidays and see you in 2023.
Quote of the week
Winning may not be everything, but losing has little to recommend it.
Dianne Feinstein, longest (longestest?) currently serving female US Senator. 89 years old, recently widowed, and still going strong. Just extraordinary.
I'm just downloading Miles Davis on Spotify. Kind of Blue is over 45 minutes long, so it can't be too shabby. May I suggest The Koln Concert by Keith Jarrett? In my humble opinion he's also worth listening to if you haven't already, Ken.
Found myself using the word today : ‘Gary Lawson : the most winningest bowler in New Zealand’