Viking Manbags

It is amazing where spirals of procrastination lead to. Reading something blatantly non-work-related I came across the word "douchebaggery", which made me amused and bemused. To me the word sounds awkward, but I do see the need for an abstract noun for this fun American common noun which differs slightly from the British "wanker" and "wankiness". Having thought that something a bit smoother than "douchebaggery" must be possible, I checked the expanding universe of cyberspace, but found nothing.

The word sounds etymologically slightly weird, so I checked where "bag" came from. I assumed it would be French as the word baggage sounds it and as it is easy to picture the French inventing something so frivolous like a bag. But I was wrong and identity of the first bag-bearers blew my mind: the Vikings. Yes, bag comes from Old Norse, meaning it was not poncey Frenchmen that invaded England armed with handbags, but the fearsome Vikings did. Just to blow all stereotypes, the Vikings even gave the French the word baggage.
A manbag, therefore,being a gift from the manly Vikings, is the most manly accessory one could sport apart from a horned helmet, a claymore or double-axe.


Damn, that means that being a "douchebag" is a bit manly after all.
It means that if one wanted to go for etymological faux-authenticity "douchebaggery" would be out of the question. The two suffices of Norse origin that make adjectives, verbs or common nouns into abstract nouns are -lock (wedlock) and -red (kindred), but they both sound terrible with douchebag ("douchebaglock" and "douchebagred").
So the best bet is to go with good old Old English ones. Bagginess is a real word, but it is a bit too removed semantically from bag to make "douchebagginess" not awkward sounding. In a similar vein, "douchebagging" is also awkward as "to bag" means to gain possession and who would want to gain possession of a douche? 
The established suffix is ery, which is -er + y, and generally represents a place or an office (bakery), which when used on douchebag makes it sound the official role of a douchebag, so "douchebagship", "douchebaghood" and "douchebagdom" could be alternatives. On second thought, I think I quite like the word "douchebaggery" after all...

The -meal suffix

An Old English suffix that has been unjustly forgotten is the -meal suffix.
If something is done gradually the phrase that is normally used is x by x, in archaic English -meal suffix can do the same thing, similarly to the Latin -atim. It is not constructive anymore, but several examples are present in the OED:

• piecemeal: piece by piece —only one not obsolete
• stickmeal (styccemǣlum): bit by bit
• yearmeal (gēarmǣlum): year after year
• sheafmeal (scēafmǣlum): sheaf by sheaf, although the later pagemeal works better
• stemmeal (stemmǣlum): turn by turn, alternately
• stepmeal (stæpmǣlum): step by step, gradually
• namemeal (nammǣlum): name by name
• dropmeal: drop by drop
• flockmeal: group by group
• footmeal: foot by foot
• heapmeal: heap by heap
• limbmeal: limb by limb
• stoundmeal: hour by hour
• cupmeal: cup by cup
• gobbetmeal: fragment by fragment
• littlemeal: little by little
• parcelmeal: parcel by parcel
• pennymeal: penny by penny
• piecemeal: piece by piece
• poundmeal: pound by pound
• ravishmeal: rapidly (a Latinisms  by Wyclif from raptim)
• tablemeal: iPad tablet by iPad tablet (from tabulatim)
• fitmeal: jitter by jitter
• inchmeal: inch by inch
• jointmeal: joint by joint
• lumpmeal: lump by lumb
• pagemeal: page by page

Unfortunately, converting the imperial units to metric, sounds terrible, eg. millimetremeal, so they'll have to stay imperial.

Verbatim et letteratim is an expression that means word by word and letter by letter, in other words, with insane thoroughness. It is a rather cool, so with the above it would be wordmeal and lettermeal.

The only problem is that, even knowing the meaning, the words wholemeal, wheatmeal and oatmeal spring to mind…

My experience with Anglish

English is an unusual language due its hybrid nature, but what would it be if it were not?

Before 1066, the Angles and the Saxons spoke Old English, a Germanic language like German and Swedish.
Old English contained only a handful of words that where of Latin origin, mainly church-related. In the north of England, specifically in Danelaw, the viking occupied land, several Old Norse words (the language that evolved into Swedish) were seeping into the vocabulary. However, when the Normans conquered England in 1066 (by cheating in true french style) Old French was the official language and a multitude of words entered the vocabulary to the point that 1/3 of English words nowadays are of Old French origin. But this was not the only hybridization event: several centuries later, the usage of Latin and Greek words was seen as sophisticated resulting in another inflow of words that did not descend from Old English. Today, Greek and Latin words are seen as poncy, so the inflow has changed to a more cosmopolitan medley of sources.

This raises the question of what would English sound like if it lacked this hybrid nature and this is were the Anglish Moot comes in. The Anglish Moot is an online community that experiments with this concept by writing in "Anglish". It is a curious language that sounds like Shakespearian English (early modern English), namely it is clearly English, but with some benighted (obscure) bits. I found it so enthralling I was quickly sucked it.

However, it became slowly shire (clear) that the goalwork (project) is a banefall (disaster). Even the grounder (founder) forlore (abandoned) it years ago having become unbewitched (disenchanted) with it. I lost westumscat (interest, from wæstmsceatt: literally fruit treasure) in it for three frumes (reasons).

Firstly, all the adighters (editors) did their own thing, sometimes pulling in gainstanding (opposing) wardings (directions), without betwixtdoing (interacting) with each other, therefore edframing (reinventing) words or not telling each other of their findings. This offled (resulted) in an utter lack of suchness hold (quality control) and of an bestriding (overarching) underwrap (theme), a flutter (mess) in other words.

Twithly (Secondly), it did not have any rootfast (fixed) standards (okay, I give up) or guidelines: some editors wanted to replace words that entered after 1066, others all non-germanic words regardless of date of entry, while others replaced words with little rational justification. How replacement words were found changed from editor to editor, when a fully equivalent synonym of Old English origin was absent, some editors simply used less specific similar words, others would look for an obsolete synonym and if none existed would revive an Old English words by modernising the spelling and ending, while others would combine two words regardlessly. This last approach is the only way for modern concepts, but different methods were employed even for this, some looked at German or Icelandish equivalents, while others translated the Graeco-latinate word bit by bit.

The main criticism on the internet is that Anglish is a kind of etymological xenophobia. This is actually a misunderstanding as the drive is not to forspill (eradicate) outlandish (foreign) words but to ross (explore) the "what if" frayn (question) of a more Germanic English language. However, after a while all words not of Old English origin started to seem tainted to me, so etymological xenophobia is a side-effect, which is probably worse.

I must, however, say I learnt a lot of interesting things and words, such as elfsheen (ethereally beautiful) and hagship (hag-like ugliness). Unfortunately, I have not yet had the chance to use these words, but I am hopeful...

New-Zealandish

In English one can use nouns as adjectives in a role called adjectival nouns, which is great when there are no adjectives to use. However, it does stop adjectives from appearing. Even awesome ones.
New Zealand is a country (proper noun) without a real adjective (apart from the slag kiwi) making the noun the only option (New Zealand lamb), which does cause any ambiguity given the fact that nobody really knows the location of the original Zealand, so no numskull is going to think that new Zealand lamb is a new lamb from Zealand.
However, it should have one. It has one in Italian (neozelandese), where they also convert the new (nuova) bit into a fancy schmancy neo- prefix and they did not even colonise the place.
Okay, I'll have to ignore the horrific Greek/Latin suffix in Icelandic which is a counter-argument for having an adjective for NZ. But I want one and outlandish as it first sounds, the adjective should be New-Zealandish as land is of Old English origin, like the suffix -ish (and landish was actually an adjective meaning native).
Furthermore there is nothing new in new-zealandish as the adjective exists in German (Neuseeländisch), so there is no reason not to use new-zealandish apart from the fact, I suppose, the incredulous stares one would receive would be really bad...