Roots
 The power of memes
Deepti

Language plays reflector of the times. Some periods tend to create expressions that live on as memes, even if they are retained just for their evocative powers. After World War I, when British society was shocked by the horrors of war, the socialites decided to use nightly revels as a counterpoint to the dread of war. So, in the 1920s, young girls would dress up in frivolous and unconventional costumes and dance the night away. Barbara Cartland, the writer of romance novels, created the phrase ‘bright young things’ for them and it lives on as a meme.

‘Business as usual’ is one such meme that symbolises the resilience of the human spirit. A self-explanatory expression, it was widely used in cities where major destruction took place during World War II. In London, ‘business as usual’ and ‘London can take it’ were phrases that were scrawled defiantly on the walls of damaged buildings. In fact, so strong is the appeal of this meme that Winston Churchill called it ‘the maxim of the British people’.

Stepping away from frenzied activity, on looking at the word ‘buck’, one realises that it denotes many things. For instance, the American expression ‘to pass the buck’, which is used everywhere today means ‘to shift responsibility or evade blame’ but etymologists offer several origins for the word ‘buck’. One version holds that since the phrase hails from the game of poker. The buck here is the token object that is passed to the winner of the jackpot to remind him that when it is his turn to deal the hand, he must initiate another jackpot. This buck was originally a buckhorn knife, named thus after the horn of the buck or male deer out of which it was carved. Some people feel that the buck refers to a piece of buckshot or buck’s tail, which were supposed to be lucky charms. Whatever the origin, the meme remains heavy with suggestion even today, years after the first recorded use by Mark Twain in 1872; that is the power of the meme.