Paying paeans to Dahlesque devils

My little niece was agog with excitement the other day. She had seen one of her favourite book characters, the Big Friendly Giant or the BFG, on the big screen. Jumping and jiggling around with joy, she just couldn't stop jabbering on how good a job Steven Spielberg had done in making a movie “The BFG” out of the book she had recently read. It's an adaptation of Roald Dahl's bestselling classic children's book, “The BFG”. Perhaps, with stars that only seven-year-old eyes can have, she was transported to the adventurous realm of giants along with Sophie, the little girl who was 'kidsnatched' by the BFG in Roald Dahl's 'gloriumptious' and 'scrumdiddlyumptious' novel. Fans of Dahl's flair of writing style would be familiar with these and many more such words that the gifted author coined by combining or twisting existing words to onomatopoeiaic effect. For the uninitiated, this blurb from “The BFG” could help:

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“Every night, when the world is sleeping, big gruesome giants guzzle up whoppsy whifffling human beans. And there's only giant who can stop them - the BFG. He's the kindest giant there is and, with his friend Sophie in his top pocket, he sets out to rid the world of the Bloodbottler, the Fleshlumpeater and all their rotsome friends forever….” Noticed 'human beans'?

Well, I am transported back to my childhood when my favourite pastime, along with that of my twin sister, was reading. In the absence of Cartoon Network etc, we had nothing but our imaginations to conjure up the characters so vividly etched by Roald Dahl. When we kids cuddled in the bed at night, we definitely believed what Sophie had been told in “The BFG”:

“The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her, was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep, deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world to themselves.” The witching hour? Very evocative!

Then, on September 13, my lucky little niece got a chance to yet another fun educative activity that was missing during our early days: she was invited to an interactive storytelling session by the British Library to mark the birth centenary of Roald Dahl (September 13, 1916, to November 23, 1990). We had fun as she retold the tale.

And, it seems that all this reading, telling and retelling all over the world has made some words coined by Dahl so common that the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) accepted them in its latest edition on the birth anniversary of one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century. He gave birth to such adorable literary characters as Willy Wonka, Matilda, and BFG. A British fighter pilot, he wrote novels, poems and screenplays. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide ever since he rose to prominence in the 1940s.

So, now we have six legitimate freshly minted words to express ourselves more colourfully: Dahlesque (relating to Dahl), golden ticket, human bean, oompa loompa, scrumdiddlyumptious, witching hour. Some of the revised phrases are frightsome, gremlin, scrumptious, splendiferous.

While many of us may have missed out on Dahl's works, few can claim to have passed school without knowing Shakespeare. Coincidentally, the world is also commemorating Shakespeare as 2016 is his 400th death anniversary year. The Bard of Avon is credited with contributing over 1,700 words to the English language through his works. He would devise them by changing nouns into verbs or verbs into adjectives or adding prefixes and suffixes, besides coining original words and phrases. Who doesn't know “Et tu, Brute”, “lily-livered”, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, “Love is blind”, “Make an ass of yourself”, etc, etc? And, wouldn't the Queen's language be less likely to be the lingua franca (a language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different) but for words that were first penned by the Bard, such as champion, countless, assassination, undress, lonely, mountaineer, swagger etc etc?

Exactly! Swagger (or swag) that is currently the favourite pick of popular Punjabi poets for movie songs and music albums. On knowing this, today's tech-savvy cool dude gabroos would blurt: “Shakespeare rocks, bro!” They would say that for even the OED when they realise that their social media expression 'yolo', yogalates (combination of yoga and pilates) and clicktivist (one who uses social media and internet to advance social causes) have been included in the dictionary. Yolo is the acronym for “you only live once.” 

When I met my school friends over coffee a couple of days back, we all let go of our diet-consciousness and indulged in sinful food. After all, yolo, we laughed.

By the way, as far as birth anniversaries go, today is my birthday along with that of my late twin sister. I pay tributes to her and the delightful memories that we shared with this joke:

Husband and wife went for a divorce to the court. 

Judge: Divide everything 50-50. You have three kids...How will you divide them?

After a long discussion, the couple said: “We will come next year.” 

Nine months later, they had twins.

The fight is still on.

hkhetal@gmail.com