Wordfall, by Kaleem Omar

Back in the nineteenth century, when well-heeled English civil servants and army officers (as opposed to their less well-off counterparts) coming out to postings in Karachi or other parts of British India used to book their passage on steamships belonging to the P & O Shipping Line, they would specify a port cabin on the outward-bound voyage and a starboard cabin on the homeward-bound voyage – on the theory that port-side cabins were supposed to be cooler than starboard-side cabins on the way out and starboard-side cabins cooler than port-side cabins on the way home, those, of course, being the days when there was no air-conditioning or even electric fans.

These passage-booking instructions soon got abbreviated on P & O’s tickets to Port Out, Starboard Home, which, in turn, got further abbreviated to the acronym POSH. Because these cabins were cooler, they cost more than starboard cabins on the way out and port cabins on the way back. Thus it was that the word posh was born, meaning something that was swanky and therefore cost a lot. It wasn’t long before the word passed into the language.

The word is still around, though P & O passenger ships stopped sailing to Karachi long ago. Indeed, there are no longer any passenger ships that sail from Europe to Karachi, not even ships belonging to the Italy-based Lloyd Trestino Shipping Line, which remained in service until the late 1960s – sailing from Genoa, in Italy, via Port Said and Aden to Karachi, then on to Bombay (I refuse to call it Mumbai), Colombo, Singapore, Jakarta, Hong Kong, Manila, and back.

The round-trip from Karachi to Hong Kong and back to Karachi on Lloyd Trestino’s vessels – M.V Asia and M.V. Victoria – took a month and cost Rs 13,000 per passenger in first class. This was a very good deal indeed given the fact that it included passengers being allowed to sleep in their cabins even while the ship was in port, thus allowing you to avoid paying steep charges for hotel rooms. And because the ships used to stay in port for two or three days en route, it gave you a chance not only to shop till you dropped but also to see something of the country.

My first cousin Ajaz Anis and I, along with our respective spouses, traveled first-class on M.V. Asia from Karachi to Hong Kong and back in January 1963. The problem with traveling first-class, however, was that most of the other first-class passengers were old fogies who weren’t exactly the life and soul of the party in the evening, while the tourist-class passengers were a much younger lot. We soon discovered that the tourist section was where all the fun was, especially when it came to shaking a leg on the dance floor in the evening. The upshot was that we took to spending our evenings in the tourist section, and a good time was had by all.

As we were entering Bombay harbour, I happened to be standing on deck by the railing next to an elderly English lady, watching the city’s approaching skyline. Looking at the scene, the elderly lady said to me, “You know, it all looks very different from when I was last here. Of course, that was 60 years ago!” “Yes,” I replied, straight-faced, “it must have been very different 60 years ago.” Of such moments is life made.

When the Asia got to Hong Kong, it stayed in port for three days, giving us plenty of time to shop like crazy. Manila, too, proved to be a shopper’s paradise, for things like replicas of its famous bamboo church-organ. By the time we got back to Karachi a month later, we had – between the four of us – 68 pieces of luggage of assorted shapes and sizes, including movie cameras, 16mm movie-projectors, record-players, crockery-sets, you name it.

Man, it is said, is a creature of habit. That’s why people tend to frown upon and suspect anything that is new. When in 1585 Sir Francis Drake (of Spanish Armada fame) brought the potato from America to Britain, the people of Elizabethan England shunned the strange tuber. For a long time, in fact, they decried it as a dangerously unhealthy vegetable. And thereby hangs a tale concerning the linguistic root of the word spud, slang for potato.

Following the arrival of the potato, food fanatics in England, so the story goes, went so far as to establish special associations to warn and discourage the population from eating it. They called themselves the Society for the Prevention of Undesirable and Dangerous Species or, according to another tradition, the Society for the Prevention of Unwholesome Diets.

Too much of a mouthful to be remembered, those societies soon came to be referred to by their initials alone, as the SPUDS. It did not take long for the name to be identified with the potato itself.

According to some scholars, however, the real, linguistic root of the spud is the instrument used to dig it up. A short knife, generally employed as a weeding tool, was known as spudde. And out of it, slightly shortened, grew the (potato) spud.

This latter version probably also explains why people in the oil industry still talk of spudding in a well, as in drilling (digging) a well and striking oil, even though the multimillion-dollar oil-drilling rigs of today are a far cry from the humble weeding tool used to dig up potatoes.

The French, who are very fond of good food and take justifiable pride in their cuisine, say: “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs” – meaning, you can’t get something for nothing. It is nevertheless a fact that there is not a single egg in an omelette, linguistically speaking. All an omelette tells is its (supposed) shape. The chief ingredient of the omelette is lamella, for thin plate – the Latin diminutive of lamina.

An omelette therefore, if properly cooked, according to the rules of language should never be fluffy but thin as a blade. But one never knows how wrong one can go when things get heated. Gourmet chefs tend to get very upset if – horror of horrors – their omelette falls flat. If only they knew how true to the language their cooking is.

So what’s the origin of the word dessert, then? Again, it comes to us from France. In former days, once the main course had been served and eaten, the table was completely cleared, to make room for the sweets, and that is what the dessert, from the French desservier, says. It refers to the removal of all plates and dishes from the table.

I, for one, however, have an aversion to the word dessert. Even though its origin is French, it has always struck me as an Americanism. I prefer the traditional English word pudding. But if you were to ask for pudding in a restaurant in America, they wouldn’t know what you were talking about. “Don’t you speak American?” they would say, rolling their eyes heavenwards.

On the subject of pudding, the lamington is a “dinkum” (honest) Australian cake. A square piece of sponge, coated with a soft chocolate icing and rolled in desiccated coconut, once it belonged to every garden party and church fete not only in Australia but also in England. Even so, its name has no connection with the English town of Lemington Spa. Even the spelling is different. Like Peach Melba and Melba Toast, it honours a person.

Historians tell us that Lamington was the titled name of the Scottish-born eighth Governor of Queensland, Australia. Appointed to the office in 1895 (when Australia was still a British colony), he assumed his duties the following year. It is said that he so endeared himself to the people that on his departure, they named their favourite cake after him.

The pineapple, on the other hand, got its name from its shape. Seeing the fruit in the Caribbean islands for the first time, 16th Century European travellers said it reminded them of a fir cone, known as pina in Spanish.

The word cup is much more poetic than it now sounds. From a Sanskrit root, it described a (little) well, though one of limited flow, it appears. Which may help to explain why Omar Khayyam wrote in his “Rubaiyat” (in Edward FitzGerald’s classic translation): “Ah, fill the cup, what boots it to repeat / How time is slipping underneath our feet? / Unborn tomorrow and dead yesterday, / Why fret about them if today be sweet?” Why, indeed?