An Irishman's Diary

NEVER MIND the F-word. An organisation called the American Dialect Society has declared the G-word – Google – to be the defining term of the past decade; and it’s hard to disagree. Conceived as a college research project in 1996, the search engine has since achieved such global dominance that, this week, its threat to pull out of China was embarrassing the normally unembarrassable regime in Beijing.

Another measure of its extraordinary success is that, when you Google “Google”, the inevitable Wikipedia article on the subject does not even make the top 10 list of results.

Wikipedia is the informational equivalent of the Japanese Kudzu bush: an invasive species, extremely aggressive, and capable of very rapid growth. Once attached to a host body, it advances relentlessly to become the most popular source of information about that subject. Except Google, its article on which limps in at a mere 17th place in the rankings, with the first 16 slots occupied by sites owned by the search engine itself.

But back to the American Dialect Society, which also nominates a word of the year, its choice for 2009 being “Tweet”. Again it’s hard to disagree, however much one would like to.

When I first heard the Twitter concept explained – this time last year – I confidently predicted it would die of shame within months, after which recovering Tweeters would try to pretend that this sorry phase of their lives never happened.

Instead, a year on, the phenomenon continues to prosper.

I share the bewilderment of Ricky Gervais, who the other day admitted that he just doesn’t “get” it.

“I’m sure it’s fun as a networking device for teenagers,” he said. “But there’s something a bit undignified about adults using it, particularly celebrities who seem to be showing off by talking to each other in public.”

No doubt that’s unfair to Twitter’s adult users, a few of whom are personally known to me and, in every other way, seem to be good, self-respecting people. But I can’t believe the fad will survive another Christmas. I now give it till July.

Words-of-the-year lists are a relatively recent thing, too. The aforementioned ADS is credited with starting the trend in 1990 (although the society had existed for a century before that). And the fact it now has a 20-year archive at least allows us, like children viewing their parents’ hairstyles in old wedding photographs, to have a laugh at the terms that were considered fashionable in previous years.

Some words of the year have held up surprisingly well, in fact. “Web”, for example, chosen to represent 1995 (and later named word of that decade) seems to have achieved permanence. So too does “9-11”, from 2001. And although it’s too early to say yet, the 2007 champion – “subprime” – also looks to have staying power.

But was “Bushlips” (1990), a variation on “bullshit”, derived from Gorge Bush snr’s “read my lips – no more taxes” promise, ever really popular? And although “Not!” (1992), as spoken at the end of a sentence you didn’t mean, certainly was popular, now it just sounds quaint.

As for “millennium bug” (1997) and “Y2K” (1999), we might pause over their mummified carcases only to remember that techies were once so convincing about the potential problems of the year 2000 for computers that they won the word-of-the-year competition twice.

And then there’s “Information Superhighway”, the term that defined 1993.

If it really were an embarrassing haircut in an old wedding photograph, this one would be a mullet. It shouldn’t sound as overblown as it does, because the thing it described really did have wide and far-reaching implications.

Yet it had hardly been coined before people started using it only in the ironic sense. Then it was abandoned altogether, like another world famous highway, Route 66, but without the songs.

TALKING OF G-words, I want to thank the game of rugby for giving a new lease of life to one of my favourite terms of abuse: that old Hiberno-English classic, "gouger". Traditionally meaning a "low-class city lout", this used to be a particular mainstay of country gardaí, describing the sort of character they had to deal with when they came to Dublin.

But more recently, it seemed to be on the endangered terms list. Then the notorious offence of eye-gouging on the rugby field revived it. Now, even as the sport’s authorities try to eliminate the practice, they have given the word a needed boost.

Gouger’s Dublin companion – “Gurrier” – is still going strong, meanwhile, although its origins remain as mysterious as ever. In his Hiberno-English dictionary, Terry Dolan suggests it derives from “gur cake”: a confection once popular among the poor. But Myles Na gCopaleen, who seems to have introduced the word to this newspaper (in 1947) and who was definitely fond of it, attributed paternity to the old French guerrier (meaning soldier).

This might explain why the word used to have a more positive meaning than it does now. Benedict Kiely once recalled that, in his early years in Dublin, “gurrier” was a compliment. “In the Thirties and Forties to be a ‘great little gurrier’ was to be a bosom friend, a fine fellow, a taproom companion,” he wrote.

But the evolution of language is a mysterious thing. At some point, the gurriers started hanging around with the gougers, with predictable results. Both have been in trouble with the law ever since.