By Tony Thorne
Penguin, NZ$TBA | Reviewed by Simon Sweetman

WE KNOW THAT the invention and swift dominance of the cell-phone has ruined certain words. We’re told now to Nt B L8 (rather than not be late) and expected to know abbreviations (or abs; isn’t it about time a word as long as abbreviation was shortened?) that seem quite baffling. But it’s not the cell-phone, blog or email that is at the heart of the problem. The problem is business. Office-speak corrupts the English language far more frequently and rapidly than a bunch of failure-to-thrive tweens could ever hope to. Yup, as well as buzzwords, there are bizwords that we must contend with. And to help us out – pointing at the absurdity of so many of these daft linguistic inventions – is Tony Thorne (lexicographer) and his amusing dictionary of cringe-worthy terms, Shoot The Puppy.

It’s a great book to dive in to, swim around between the pages, hunt and gather – and have a laugh. It’s written in a style accessible enough to actually read cover-to-cover as with generic novel or non-fiction, but it’s a book that, by its nature, is designed to dip in to, fish around for a few gems, see if you can integrate them in to your own conversations and social interactions (or e-communications) and then head back for another peek.

It’s not all embarrassing – there are some classic (good) phrases and words contained in this small tome: taking a ‘vocation vacation’, for instance, is a temporary change of career. And sure, it might seem a little too pleased with itself, but at least it’s a term that plays with language rather than merely clubbing it over the head.

British rhyming slang (derived from Cockney) is shown up to be lacking in any logic beyond the tenuous – growing more absurd with each derivation. A ‘Lady’ refers to a five pound note (or “fiver” as the slang goes) which, coming from Lady Godiva sort of makes sense, right? Well how much is fifteen pounds? If you answered ‘Commodore’ then you’d be correct. But why would you even dream up such an answer? Well Lionel Ritchie’s former band, The Commodores are well known for their hit ‘Three Times A Lady’; three ladies (or “fivers”) would equal fifteen; hence a Commodore. Mad?! Pretty funny all the same.

But the brilliance of Shoot The Puppy is not just in the fact that over 260 pages, Thorne serves up some spectacular word-plays (‘adhocracy’ is a business model where the decision-making is spontaneous) and some head-scratchingly pointless contrivances (‘nanostalgia’ is a fondness to recall stuff from extremely recent history) it’s in the full-length descriptions. All words and terms are defined – and then the origin (or at least some theory behind the origin) is taken in to account, looking beyond linguistics to examine the speed of technological evolution, cultural theory and the fact that English is both a written and oral language.

Acronyms are common abbreviations and a BOBFOC refers to someone who has a “body off Baywatch and a face off Crimewatch” – or if your misogynistic repulsion is mixed with some further biological confusion you could use the term BOBFOK (same pronunciation you’ll note) which describes the Baywatch physique this time as “body of Barbie” with “face of Ken” attached. Erm, yeah... there’s also the numerical term ‘1661’ – which suggests a date of some importance but instead, rather cruelly, refers to a woman who from behind looks 16, but from the front looks 61. Hmmm...

Jargon shows no signs of slowing, quite the opposite; blogs and websites (and apparently a ‘blook’ is a book whose contents originated in blog-form, meaning the film of the book of the blog is deliciously titled a ‘flook’) have seen the creation of many non-bizword buzzwords. And of course business continues to create its own conflated, conflicted, convoluted terms, supposedly for convenience – but so often just for confusion.

An ‘iPod’ is no longer just a portable listening device, the ubiquitous nature of white-headphone-wearers has seen one wag label the users by that very set of letters – now standing to mean a ‘discontented young adult’: either “insecure, pressurized, over-taxed and debt-ridden”, or “infantile posse of overindulged drunks” (whichever definition you think is kindest I guess).

‘Kicking Dead Whales Down The Beach’ refers to performing a deeply unpleasant, seemingly endless but often essential task. The ‘Ketchup-Bottle Effect’ describes a period of stasis followed by a sudden splurge (perfect for pointing out over office-cubicle walls) and to ‘feed the rat’, for some reason, is the term used when a craving for excitement is satisfied. The answers to why and how these terms have come about are all contained in the book. And there’s a glossary of terms at the end of this near-exhaustive list.

And the book’s title? Well apparently to ‘Shoot The Puppy’ suggests daring to do the unthinkable – which just might be what Tony Thorne has achieved here (in a good way though, not in the negative office-speak way that the phrase is generally used). This book, which no home or office should be without is a cruel acknowledgment of what batty people we all are (and the most fun had reading a linguistic volume since Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue).