Although I did five years of German and six years of French at school, English has been my only language in my sixty-eight years. I can’t remember the first time I heard the word balaclava, but it was obviously when I was very young. I’m sure I owned at least one when I was a kid.
I know American-English is very different from English proper, what might be called BBC standard English – two nations divided by a common language and all that – but it never occurred to me that Americans, especially white Americans, would not have heard the word balaclava. This came up during the Kohberger hearings. For the benefit of future readers, Bryan Kohberger is the man accused of what has become known as the Idaho Student Murders - the horrendous knife massacre of three young women and a dude in November 2022. He will stand trial later this year as things stand.
A witness who saw the killer leave the house in the small hours said he was wearing a mask, and drew a sketch of his face. At some point the word balaclava was thrown into the mix, and some people asked the question what’s a balaclava? This prompted me to ask if Americans had heard the word trousers as well, which was met with a contemptuous rebuff.
I should have been less full of it because yesterday I heard a phrase I have certainly never heard before: rainbow baby. Under other circumstances I wouldn’t have had a clue what this meant, but from the issue under discussion it was obvious, and when I looked it up, this obviousness was affirmed – a baby born after a miscarriage. For one awful moment I thought it might have had something to do with sexual perversion, be it homo or trans.
I don’t keep tally of these things but as far as I recall, I first heard the word jitty on April 19, 2022; this is a small passageway. The word shellacking requires no explaining now, having been in regular use for the past couple of years, but the first time I recall hearing it was some time in 2022.
And to cap it all, I had been misspelling the phrase ad nauseam throughout my life, something I noticed for the first time late at night or in the small hours of July 18/9, 2022.
