Jonnie Robinson, Lead Curator of Spoken English, writes:

So congratulations to Andy Murray on his well-deserved victory at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year (SPOTY) awards, one of countless ceremonies that take place at this time of year as clubs, societies, institutions and industries recognise the outstanding people, events or phenomena of the previous twelve months. In a year dominated by political upheaval it’s perhaps not surprising that linguists at Oxford Dictionaries chose ‘post-truth’ as their Word of the Year 2016 from a list of candidates that included several items reflecting contemporary societal challenges – Brexiteer, glass cliff and alt-right. Here then, in similar spirit, are my ten nominations for the 3^rd unofficial British Library Sports Word of the Year (SWOTY) selected from examples of interesting English usage in the British sporting press and media in 2016:

January (Lawrence Ostlere on Jade Clarke signing for Loughborough Lightning, Guardian Sport): The mid-courter values her time abroad and wants to see more young players experience the ANZ Championship

January (Richard Williams on the treacherous Hahnenkamm downhill slope in Kitzbühel, Guardian Sport): This week’s new snow will enable the skiers to tackle the Streif’s whole length, from its near vertical start to the fiendish icy traverse of the final schuss

March (Eddie Jones on the Welsh RFU’s vacillation regarding Joe Marler’s alleged description of Welsh prop Sampson Lee as ‘gypsy boy’, Radio 5 Live) They don’t know whether they’re Arthur or Martha

May (Robert Kitson on Saracens wing Chris Ashton, Guardian Sport) The player who used to appear several scones short of a tea party has matured and learned from his mistakes

June (Neil Lennon on Wales v Northern Ireland at Euro 2016, Radio 5 Live) The game’s a bit eachy-peachy

June (Barney Ronay on England’s humiliating Euro 2016 defeat to Iceland, Guardian Sport) For the next few months a post-Royxit vacuum beckons

July (Andy Sullivan on how to hit a fade shot, Sky Sports 1) I […] just open my stance up to hit that little lemonade

August (Aaron Bower quoting Gareth Ellis in the build-up to the Challenge Cup Final, Guardian Sport) Last year I was limping around with a pot on [my foot] and now I’m leading Hull out at a cup final

August (Emma John on the women’s Olympic hockey final, Guardian Sport) The first four shuffles had gone begging before the Dutch keeper Joyce Sombroek was ruled to have deliberately fouled Sophie Bray

November (Simon Hughes on the wicket for India v England 2^nd Test): [It’s unlikely to be] a raging Bunsen straightaway

As in previous years the list is drawn from the usual suspects – football and rugby union (two entries each), rugby league, cricket and golf (one each), but this year includes netball, skiing and hockey for the first time. The ten nominations have been chosen as they demonstrate a range of linguistic phenomena from jargon, slang and dialect to loan-words and neologisms. Having spent several years teaching German I’m particularly pleased to include the skiing term schuss [= a straight downhill descent] as a rare example of a sporting loan-word. English dominates sporting discourse for a number of reasons – not just the current status of English as a global language, but also the influential role played by the British in codifying many (but by no means all) international sports. Thus loan-words are relatively rare, but alpine sport, understandably, is a notable exception as illustrated by e.g. piste, après-ski (both from French), langlauf (like schuss, from German), slalom and, of course, the word ski itself (both from Norwegian). Loan-words surface from time to time in other sports – in recent years football has appropriated rabona, tiki-taka and last year’s SWOTY winner, gegenpressing, for instance – but unlike schuss these tend to appear italicised or within speech marks in print, reflecting their novelty or status as exotic, potentially temporary terms. Schuss is an example of sporting jargon – a technical term used by participants, coaches and fans and universally understood within those circles to describe a particular action, skill or element of the sport. The other examples of jargon here are shuffle [= a system used to determine the winner of a drawn contest in hockey in which an attacker has 8 seconds to score a goal in a one-on-one situation against the goalkeeper] and mid-courter [= netballer who specialises in playing centre, wing defence or wing attack]. Thankfully, GB goalkeeper, Maddie Hinch, cemented her reputation this summer as the world’s best at penalty shuffles and anyone familiar with netball (or basketball) will know the value of a versatile mid-courter.

Six entries reveal sporting discourse as a particularly rich repository of vernacular forms. Three items might reasonably be categorised as dialect: eachy-peachy [= phrase equivalent to ‘six of one, half a dozen of the other’]; pot [= plaster cast]; and not know whether one is Arthur or Martha [= to be in a state of confusion]. The other three might be classified as slang: several scones short of a tea party [= slightly, albeit endearingly, mad]; lemonade [= rhyming slang for ‘little fade’, i.e. a golf shot that is directed intentionally left of the target and drifts right in the air before landing]; and Bunsen [= rhyming slang for ‘Bunsen burner: turner’, i.e. a wicket likely to be advantageous to spin bowlers]. Finally, Royxit [= the resignation of former England football manager Roy Hodgson] demonstrates the enthusiasm with which the media latched on to neologisms formed by analogy with Brexit – a blend of <British> and <exit> that quickly established itself as universal shorthand for the UK’s decision to leave the European Union following this June’s referendum. Politics, of course, has always had an impact on language so it will be interesting to see if forms like Brexit prove as prolific as the infinitely productive suffix <-gate> that originated in the Watergate scandal of the 1970s which prompted the resignation of US President Richard Nixon. In July 2016, for instance, Coiffeurgate trended on Twitter following revelations of French President François Hollande’s allegedly extravagant hairdressing bill, and, during television coverage of this summer’s Olympic marathon, Steve Cram urged fellow BBC commentators, Brendan Foster & Paula Radcliffe, to end a long-winded discussion of Bahrainian athlete Alemu Bekele’s frequent stops to tie his shoelaces with the phrase enough of Lacegate. Guardian journalist Sean Ingle’s use of Chexit and Lexit to refer, respectively, to Chelsea’s and Liverpool’s current absence from European football competition demonstrates how such light-hearted wordplay appeals to our sense of linguistic creativity.

Not surprisingly, Brexit merits an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary, unlike Royxit, which, as a neologism, is unlikely to meet criteria for inclusion. Many of this year’s candidates are recorded in authoritative reference works, but some have yet to reach the attention of lexicographers, so their presence in the British Library’s newspaper collections, web and sound archives is an invaluable resource for language scholars monitoring the continued evolution of English. The Oxford English Dictionary, for instance, includes mid-court and schuss, Collins English Dictionary categorises not know whether one is Arthur or Martha as ‘Australian and New Zealand informal’, while the Dictionary of the Scots Language records eachy-peachy from the 1960s. The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (2006 edition) includes several examples of NOUN short of a NOUN (e.g. sandwich short of a picnic) and the BBC Voices survey (2004/5) captured numerous similar variants (e.g. slice short of a loaf and brick short of a load) confirming this is an extremely productive metaphor for mild eccentricity, although neither features scone short of a tea party. I’ve been unable to find the others in print glossaries, although the Cockney Rhyming Slang website suggests Bunsen burner is established rhyming slang, albeit for ‘earner’, i.e. easy/quick profit, not for ‘turner’. Proof of their authenticity, however, can be found in specialist reference works and publications: Martin Williamson’s glossary of cricket terms includes Bunsen in the sense recorded here and a Golf Digest article confirms the use of lemonade in this sense and both forms bear witness to our enduring fascination with, and affection for, rhyming slang. Wikipedia explains the importance of shuffles in hockey, while pot is captured in a recording submitted to the Library’s Evolving English WordBank.

And so to this year’s winner … given the incomprehensible absence of female athletes in this year’s SPOTY top three and comparative lack of representation in the nominations here drawn from women’s sport – a reflection of the glaringly disproportionate prominence of men’s sport in the mainstream media – combined with the presence of glass cliff in the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year nominations I’m going for shuffles in honour of the extraordinary achievement of GB women’s hockey team securing their first Olympic Gold. Fingers crossed for an increased profile for women’s sport and continued success in women’s hockey in 2017 – especially @DUHC1 Women’s 1^st XI and @southgateHC Ladies 2^nd XI.

Gill Ridgley, Lead Curator Contemporary Archives, introduces a new archive acquisition for the Library

An early international match programme

Women’s football is a popular participatory and spectator sport throughout the world, yet in football’s country of origin: Great Britain, women and girls were discouraged from playing the game for many years.

This was not always the case, because football matches between women are recorded from at least the 19th century; and during the First World War female munitions workers famously organised a number of games for the purpose of raising money for war charities. These were extremely well attended; in fact at one point the women’s game looked set to become more popular than the men’s.

Unfortunately, as a result of a ruling by the Football Association in 1921, women were banned from playing the game, a prohibition which lasted until December 1969.  The ban was stringently applied: parks and football clubs were not allowed to let female players use their pitches, and registered referees were banned from officiating at women’s matches. Not surprisingly, the lack of such facilities made it impossible to sustain the sport.

Despite this, some women’s teams – such as the Manchester Corinthians and Dick, Kerr’s Ladies – continued to play, so the flame was kept alive to a certain extent, but it was England’s World Cup triumph in 1966 which really ignited public enthusiasm for all forms of the game. Using this impetus, a group of enthusiastic female footballers - with the help of a number of sympathetic men - created the Ladies FA of Great Britain in 1969.  Women’s teams from across the country were organised into leagues and a number of tournaments were held, including a knock-out cup sponsored by Mitre. Within a few years the sport was making real progress and the Ladies FA – now known as the Women’s Football Association (WFA) - was finally recognised by the FA in 1972 and affiliated to that body in the mid-eighties. 

The Mitre Challenge Trophy was the women’s equivalent of the FA cup. The tournament began in the 1970-1971 season and was won in this first season by Southampton.

Life was certainly not easy for the WFA in the early years. Despite increased sponsorship, money was short, and the association relied on the strong commitment of its volunteers and well-wishers. It is therefore a pleasure for the British Library to announce that the hard work of these pioneers of the women’s game can soon be examined in the archive of the WFA, which the Library has just acquired, and which is about to be processed. 

The archive contains the minutes of the WFA’s Council, Finance & General Purposes Committee; Officers meetings and AGMs; and also the deliberations of the WFA/FA Joint Consultative Committee which eventually oversaw the winding up of the Association and the handing over to the FA of the organisation of the women’s game.   There are newsletters & journals spanning 1972-1992, many of which the Library does not hold in its general collection (e.g., Women’s Football Information Sheet; Women’s Football; WFA News; Sunday Kicks) and a number of other fascinating items.

All of these materials will prove valuable additions to the British Library’s strong women’s history collections and they will rest on a foundation of unique materials that the Library already holds. One such is an interview in the oral history collections featuring Sue Lopez, who is one of the celebrated proponents of women’s football in the UK (this oral history forms part of the ‘Sisterhood and After’ project and can be accessed via the following page):
http://www.bl.uk/collection-items/sue-lopez-a-lifetimes-contribution-to-sport

Competition for an England place was strong; this is an England trials programme, featuring he final match between ‘Probables’ and ‘Possibles’.

Hopefully in the future the archive will form the basis for a number of Library projects which will enhance the collection itself and which will shine further light not only on the history of women’s football, but on the history of women themselves and their fight for equality.

On 24 October this year, the British Sociological Association and the British Library will hold their Sixth Annual Equality Lecture. The speaker, Professor Andrew Sayer, will talk to the topic ‘Why We Can’t Afford the Rich’ about which he has written a book, aimed at a public audience.

Professor Sayer is Professor of Social Theory and Political Economy at Lancaster University. Over the last 40 years, he has written on the philosophy of social science, industry and unequal development, political economy, divisions of labour and their economic and social implications, the causes of inequalities and their impact on individuals, and on dignity and ethics in everyday life.

In the last 15 years he has also worked on ‘moral economy’, examining the justifications of particular economic institutions and relationships, and the relationship between economic practices and morality in everyday life. This work has been extremely valuable to those interested in the complexity of everyday practices which enable inequalities to persist in our society.

The subject of ‘Why We Can’t Afford the Rich’ couldn’t be more topical. For instance, the tax affairs of the super-wealthy continue to receive regular press coverage in the UK. Meanwhile, some of the world’s richest companies have been reported as benefiting from complex and lucrative tax avoidance schemes, and there is much online speculation about the social ends to which this money might otherwise have been used.

Image: Professor Andrew Sayer © Andrew Sayer

The broad collections at the British Library are able to show aspects to this debate within its wider historical context. The relationship between wealth distribution, social responsibility and morality has been debated across time, and across cultures, within social, legal and religious writing as well as within famous works of fiction. For instance, Charles Dickens is well known for his explorations of wealth inequality, morality and human behaviour in Victorian society.

In previous years, the Annual Equality Lecture has covered topics including equality for people with disabilities; the meaning of liberty; egalitarian social capital; the value and of equality and; equality and wellbeing. The expert and passionate speakers we have been lucky enough to host have delivered thought-provoking lectures, many of which are available as podcasts and videos.

We hope that you can attend the event this year for an evening of intellectual discussion, followed by conversation in the bar. For further information about the event and booking details, please see our ‘What’s On’ pages.

Update! We won! Very pleased to say that our film won the Courseware and Curriculum Non-Broadcast award. Details are at http://bufvc.ac.uk/events/learningonscreen. Congratulations to Director Alec Millward, author and presenter Maiken Umbach and all involved. 

We're very excited to report that one of the films from our online course Propaganda and Ideology in Everyday Life has been nominated for a Learning on Screen award.

The Battle for Civilisation, British leaflet from Word War Two

The award, to be announced on the evening of 28th April, is in the category of Courseware and Curriculum non-broadcast production. Our film, 'From the "Just War" to the "Unjust Peace"', features in week 2 of our course, which addresses issues related to justice and protest. The film is presented by Maiken Umbach, Professor of History at the University of Nottingham and one of the lead educators on our course. Learners are asked to consider the problem of violence and justice, reflecting on an exhibition of photographs made by Lee Miller. The photographs document the liberation of Nazi concentration camps, including images of violence against the Nazi perpetrators of atrocities. For our course, the question is whether violent methods have a role to play in justice, and the role of war as a means of restoring justice.

The films in our course are designed to explain current thinking and research around issues that are often complex and contested. Bringing a range of perspectives on propaganda and ideology, they feature researchers from disciplines, including history, politics, sociology, media studies and psychology. Our course has 18 short films in total, four of which were made at the British Library and feature material from our collections of maps, Chinese posters, and British World War Two publications.

As with other learning steps on the course, the aim is to generate an informed and diverse debate on politically significant topics that have relevance to our everyday life. When we first ran the course last year, we attracted thousands of learners from over 20 countries around the world. Across the five weeks of the course, participants learned from each others' experience and opinions, and drawing on the leading-edge research presented in the learning steps.

We're very excited that a film from our course has been nominated for a Learning on Screen award, and wish Maiken, director Alec Millward, and the production team the best of luck for Thursday evening. Our course starts on 16th May, and you can register for free now at http://www.futurelearn.com/courses/propaganda

Our free online course Propaganda and Ideology in Everyday Life starts on 16th May 2016

Svoboda po-amerikanski (Freedom, American Style) by B Prorokov, 1971

Freedom, justice, community, place and choice: words which are politically-charged and fundamental in our experience of everyday lives. Over five weeks, our online course explores how words and images gain different meanings, how we interpret the symbols we encounter, and how these interpretations are sometimes 'quoted back' to us with a specific political intent.

Our course is developed and delivered with the Centre for the Study of Political Ideologies at the University of Nottingham. Learners can sign up for the course now, free of charge, at the FutureLearn website. Learning is structured across a small number of activities each week, which are broken down into simple steps. A step might be a short video presentation, or a reading or a question to discuss. Discussion is the most important part of our course, allowing us to learn from each-other's experiences and opinions. The nature of a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) means that we can explore our shared interests in comparative political study and the way in which our material worlds reflect and shape our political experience.

This is the second year in which we have run this course. In 2015, we had nearly 12,000 learners from 20 countries around the world. Our focus on learning through discussion meant that all participants, including those of us who developed the course, learnt through contributing to a lively debate that ran through all five weeks. Some of this learning has been incorporated into this year's course, including a focus on the experience of migration in expressions of identity, and how definitions of the 'unnatural' influences our political views. In preparation for this year, we have reviewed and updated course content, including the addition of four new films.     

A unique feature of our course is that we ask participants to share images either that they find online or of photographs that they have taken themselves. These images relate to the themes discussed each week, and are surprising in how they reveal our responses to concepts such as 'freedom', 'nature' and 'community'. Many of the images shared last year were of open spaces, representing nature as an expression of freedom but also as something threatened by unrestrained freedom or consumption. You can see a selection of images shared on our Flickr site.

We were incredibly impressed by the quality of interaction on our course last year, and learners were very positive about course content and the course leaders. We hope that you will join us from 16th May when the course restarts, and sign up today at www.futurelearn.com/courses/propaganda/

 

 

On 7th June 2016 the British Library redacted approximately 20% of the content on its Spare Rib website. In this blog post (originally published 8 April 2016) Curator Polly Russell explains why the redactions are taking place and calls for Spare Rib magazine contributors to come forward.  

The British Library continues to seek contributors to Spare Rib magazine to request their permission to reinstate their works. For more information please email [email protected].

Image: Karate woman, Spare Rib Front Cover Issue 55 (Feb 1977) Usage Terms: © Michael Ann Mullen Creative Commons Non-Commercial Licence

Vibrant, relevant and irreverent, over its lifespan (1972-1993) Spare Rib magazine documented the evolution of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the UK and tackled subjects like abortion, the gender pay gap, domestic violence, racism and sexuality, breaking taboos and setting the political agenda for a generation of women.

It was partly a love of Spare Rib magazine – of the hope it came out of, of what it tried to embody in its collective structure, of its courageous call to arms and of its embrace of debate and challenge – which drove the British Library’s ambition to digitise Spare Rib three years ago.

From the outset we knew that the project would be difficult. Spare Rib was a unique publishing phenomenon; organised as a collective, the magazine had over 4,700 individual contributors. Attempting to clear the rights for these copyright holders has been a fiendish task, not least because the vast majority of Spare Rib contributors were not professional authors, but ordinary women encouraged by the magazine to share their experiences and get involved.

Early on in the project we enlisted the support of four former Spare Rib collective members to advise us and to help us track down contributors. In May 2015, after two years of seeking contributors and encouraged by the positive response of those we contacted and by a new body of copyright law which enables libraries to digitise in-copyright material, we launched the digital Spare Rib, publishing the entire run of magazines on the Jisc Journal Archives site and a curated learning resource on the British Library website.

The response from the feminist and research community was overwhelmingly positive. However, following the launch there has been some feedback from trade bodies representing the rights of authors and visual artists.

The feedback prompted us to undertake a full review of all the content on the site, working closely with the trade bodies who approached us in order to ensure good practice around rights clearance procedures.

Since the launch we have continued to clear rights for a further nine months, but there remain around 1000 contributors for whom the legal copyright status of their works remain difficult to resolve. 

It is with regret that after careful consideration and discussion with stakeholders, we have decided to redact the images and articles by these contributors.

The majority of the material on the website (approximately 80%) will remain available, the physical magazines remain accessible to researchers in the British Library Reading Rooms in London and Yorkshire, and we will do everything we can to reinstate material where we do receive permissions from these contributors in the future.

Spare Rib was, and still is, a terrific magazine. When it was first published it pioneered a new kind of politics and publishing. It campaigned for women’s rights and for women’s voices to be heard. It is not without irony, therefore, that in its digital incarnation it has been at the vanguard of testing the impact of new legislation and new technologies which force us to consider the difficult balance between the rights of individual copyright holders and the desire to share an important feminist legacy with as many people as possible.

Marsha Rowe, Rose Ades, Ruthie Petrie and Sue O’Sullivan, members of the Spare Rib Advisory Board, commented:

 “The four of us from Spare Rib were delighted to work with the British Library on their ground-breaking project to digitise Spare Rib magazine and make it accessible online. 

Spare Rib was the most public, passionate and popular publication emerging from the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s and 80s. It showcased every facet of feminism nationally and internationally in its wide and challenging coverage. Spare Rib’s inclusive and radical practices transformed readers into activists who became valued contributors. 

The quality and value, both to researchers and activists, of this vital and unique historical resource is threatened by the loss of 1000 contributors' work, leaving black holes in the fabric of those twenty years of feminist representation, unless permission is granted for the work to be included. So, Sisters/supporters, if you contributed 'content' in any form and haven't yet been in touch with the British Library, please do so urgently. We need to hear from you!”

If you are a contributor to Spare Rib and you have not yet heard from us, please get in touch and let us know if you give permission to publish your work by emailing [email protected].

More information about the redactions to the Spare Rib can be found on the Spare Rib website .

Blog by Polly Russell, Curator of Contemporary Politics and Public Life at the British Library

Are you a PhD student currently studying at a UK Higher Education institute? Are you looking for an opportunity to gain valuable careers experience, apply existing research skills, and develop new ones?

Yes? Then please take a look at the 17 projects being advertised as part of the British Library’s PhD placement scheme.

The below projects will be of particular interest to PhD students in social science research and policy.

(1) Exploring Food activism through the archives: the relationship between animal rights campaigns and food activism in the UK, 1950-2015

Working with the Contemporary Politics and Public Life team, this PhD placement holder will focus on the newly acquired archive of prolific animal rights campaigner, Richard.D.Ryder, with the intention of mapping the relationship between animal activists and food activist in the UK.

By cataloguing the collection and scoping out wider connections to other British Library holdings, the successful PhD student will help to inform future collection development, particularly as it relates to political and public life from the 1950s onwards, and the intersections between social movements, civil society and parliamentary politics.

(2) Exploring British Library collections through twentieth and early twenty-first century anti-poverty activism

Image: People’s Assembly March Against Austerity. Photo credit: RonF; The Weekly Bull, Flickr. Reproduced under the Creative Copyright Licence

The theme, anti-poverty activism, presents an exciting opportunity to explore the British Library’s holdings. The successful PhD candidate will engage in new research which spans across the Library’s collections; drawing on anything from personal archives, sound material and items of ephemera to images, newspapers and government documentation.

At the heart of this project lie questions about cross-disciplinary research methods; about both overarching and discrete connections between the different collections, and about the value the British Library’s holdings as a whole.

By identifying, and generating discussion about potential collaborative opportunities, the placement student will both contribute to the work of the Research Development team, and enhance their own understanding of cross-disciplinary approaches in relation to their own research career.

(3) Research on the British Library’s ‘zine collection to improve user access

‘Zines offer a fascinating insight into popular culture outside of mainstream publishing; however, by their very nature, they can defy standard cataloguing conventions.

This placement calls for a PhD student who already has knowledge about a particular area of UK popular culture, and who is interested in focusing on a particular genre, subculture or time period in order to produce detailed descriptions of a subset of the collection.

Work on this project will help improve the existing catalogue records, and make the 'zines more accessible to all those who wish to use them.

The placement offers the PhD student the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding about collections and custodianship, storage and conservation, and associated ethical and legal issues.  

Further information

The application deadline for all of the PhD placements is Friday 19 February 2016. Further information, including eligibility criteria and details on the application process, can be found here:

http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/highered/phd-placement-scheme

All applications must be supported by the applicant’s PhD supervisor and their department’s Graduate Tutor (or equivalent).

Please forward any questions to: [email protected]

Jane Shepard, Research Support Intern

Jonnie Robinson, Lead Curator of Spoken English, writes:

It's that time of year again when clubs, societies, institutions and industries reflect on the previous twelve months and nominate people, events or phenomena for special recognition. In November, for instance, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) stunned linguists and pedants alike by choosing a pictograph – the ‘face with tears of joy’ emoji as their Word of the Year; VLM reviewers deliberated the merits of Foals’ What Went Down and Tame Impala’s Currents for their Album of the Year; and on Sunday BBC Sports Personality of the Year was awarded to Andy Murray. So, in a year where, despite recent events on the football pitch, Jose Mourinho’s outstanding contribution to our sporting lexicon drew academic attention, here are my nominations for Sports Word of the Year 2015 selected from examples of interesting English usage in the British sporting press and media:

February (BBC online Cricket World Cup live update) [Tim Southee] sends down an absolute jaffa which cuts Dilshan in half

May (Guardian Sport): [Martin Guptill] made a brief and extremely eye-catching return to crowd-pleasing one-day stylings with this massive six to cow corner

June (Mike Selvey, Guardian Sport): Tim Southee joined a pretty exclusive club of Test pace bowlers who have conceded a gallon in both innings of a Test

June (ex-Aussie cricketer Jason Gillespie, Radio 5 Live): we’re not playing for sheep stations

July (Jim Maxwell, Test Match Special, Radio 5 Live): 120 looks a bit too skinny for Australia to defend

September (Robert Kitson quoting Orrel Director of Rugby, Ian Hollis, Guardian Sport): around here they still think union’s a game of kick and clap

September (Robert Kitson, Guardian Sport): he doesn’t care where he’s playing, who he’s playing against or what Twickenham alickadoos make of his appearance

November (Jamie Jackson, Guardian Sport): The victory was a triumph for Klopp’s gegenpressing ethos

November (George Riley, England vs. New Zealand Rugby League First Test, BBC1): if ifs and buts were chips and putts we’d all be Gary Player

December (John Rawling, Fighting Talk, Radio 5 Live): Dennis Wise a nasty little five footer

The dominance of cricket and rugby in this year’s nominations reflects the fact 2015 featured a Cricket World Cup, an Ashes series and Rugby Union World Cup, but golf and football also make the cut. Seven items are restricted to the discourse of their respective sports of which three are international cricketing slang: cow corner is an area on the leg-side boundary to which a batsman plays an ‘agricultural’, i.e. unconventional slog; a jaffa is an unplayable delivery; and if a bowler concedes 100 runs in a single innings he has the dubious distinction of recording a gallon – the less desirable equivalent of a batsman’s century or ton; kick and clap is used by British Rugby League fans as an expression of disdain for Rugby Union deriving from a typical Union crowd’s penchant for politely clapping repeated passages of kicking in contrast to League supporters’ enthusiastic encouragement of running and passing; alickadoo is used within Rugby Union circles, equally disparagingly, to refer to a somewhat out of touch ‘hanger-on’ or feckless club administrator; gegenpressing refers, in football, to the tactic of collectively pressurising the opposition immediately after a turnover of possession; and a Dennis Wise is golfing shorthand for a relatively short but annoyingly scary putt – a jocular reference to ex-professional footballer, Dennis Wise, who had a reputation for confrontation despite his diminutive stature. Two are idiomatic expressions: not playing for sheep stations is an Australian phrase roughly equivalent to ‘it’s not a matter of life and death’; while if ifs and buts were chips and putts we’d all be Gary Player adds a sporting twist to a well-known saying – Gary Player is a South African professional golfer and nine-times major winner; finally skinny refers here to an uncompetitively low run total.

Most importantly, the ten have been selected as they demonstrate a range of linguistic phenomena, from jargon and slang to dialect and proverb. Perhaps surprisingly not many are documented in conventional dictionaries or glossaries, so their presence in the BL’s newspaper collections and/or TV and radio archives represents an invaluable record for language scholars investigating developments in the English language. The OED (online) includes skinny as a colloquial form for ‘mean/stingy/grudging’, which captures the way it is used in northern dialect and one can readily see how, by extension, this might apply to a low score in cricket – sports reporters often refer, for instance, to a ‘miserly defence’. The OED also has an entry for alickadoo, categorising it as originally Irish English, while John Miller’s Essential Lingo Dictionary of Australian Words and Phrases has an entry for playing for sheep stations (2015: 161). Geoff Tibball attributes Dennis Wise to British journalist and presenter, Des Kelly, in his compilation of sporting quotations, The Bowler’s Holding the Batsman’s Willy (2008: 189) and the Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (2005) includes the proverb if ifs and ands were pots and pans, there’d be no work for tinkers’ hands as a ‘traditional response to an over-optimistic conditional expression’ – i.e. a common retort to someone wistfully saying ‘if only …’. Coincidentally, a variant of this also made an appearance on a recent episode of Coronation Street (16 November 2015) when Erica Holroyd comforted Liz McDonald over her latest calamitous relationship break-up: as me mother always says if ifs and buts were whisky and nuts we’d all have a merry Christmas.

To my knowledge, none of the other terms have been captured in English print reference works. An internet search for gegenpressing, however, returns 219,000 hits so this is clearly well established sporting jargon. As a former German teacher, I find it a particularly intriguing loan word as it contains a German element gegen [= ‘against’] blended with an English gerund pressing. Similar constructions occur in German sporting discourse even when unidiomatic in English – das Dribbling, for instance. Like other loan words in football (cf. tiki-taka and catenaccio) the relish with which it has been adopted by the British press not only speaks volumes for the charisma of Liverpool manager, Jürgen Klopp, with whom it is most closely associated, but also reflects our constant desire to adopt the latest European tactical innovation. Cow corner, on the other hand, transports me to my schooldays and a Yorkshire cricket master, who viewed any shot in that direction with utter contempt. Neither this nor jaffa warrant entries in print dictionaries, but both appear in Wikipedia’s Glossary of Cricket Terms; gallon is surprisingly absent, but is included in a rival online cricket glossary, while kick and clap appears in League Freak's Rugby League Dictionary.

So to this year’s winner: much though I sympathise, as a Castleford Tigers fan, with the sentiment expressed in kick and clap and was delighted to see Kevin Sinfield come runner-up on Sunday, deep down even football fans with no affiliation to Liverpool (myself included) have to admit we’re all rather excited about the arrival of Jürgen Klopp, so it’s got to be gegenpressing, hasn’t it?