The Meaning of Liff

"Yes. As they explain in their foreword, there are a lot of daily experiences without words, and a lot of words that do nothing other than “loafing about on signposts pointing at places.” So they match place names – ranging from villages to countries – to new definitions, so that these useless words can “make a more positive contribution to society.” Douglas Adams is known for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy , the definitive comedic sci fi – equally-beloved in radio, book and TV form. Here he works with John Lloyd, who co-wrote some of the radio episodes with him, and is also the producer behind shows like Not the Nine O’Clock News , Spitting Image and Blackadder . It’s exactly as funny as you’d expect. Yes, and it’s amazing how much variety they get out of that. Many are of the “that’s painfully familiar” school – “ Samalaman n. One who fills in the gaps in conversations by beaming genially at people and saying, ‘Well, well, well, here we all are then’, a lot”, or “ Deventer n. A decision that’s very hard to take because so little depends on it – like which way to walk round a park.” But some are pure whimsy – here’s one at length that is a small world in itself: “ Grimsby n. A lump of something gristly and foul-tasting concealed in a mouthful of stew or pie. Grimsbies are sometimes merely the result of careless cookery, but more often they are placed there deliberately by Freemasons. Grimsbies can be purchased in bulk from any respectable Masonic butcher on giving him the secret Masonic handbag. One is then placed in a guest’s food to see if he knows the correct Masonic method of dealing with it. This is as follows: remove the grimsby carefully with the silver tongs provided. Cross the room to your host, hopping on one leg, and ram the grimsby firmly up his nose, chanting, ‘Take that, you smug Masonic bastard.’” Then you have the definitions referring to each other in a serial running gag – an “araglin” is a medieval practical joke which results in all sorts of follow-up archaic words for its consequences; the successive running gag – “Corriearklet” through to “Corrievorrie” all define the various stages of noticing-and-then-pretending-not-to-notice someone at the other end of a long corridor; and the almost onomatopoeic – “ Caarnduncan n. The high-pitched and insistent cry of the young male human urging one of its peer group to do something dangerous on a cliff-edge or piece of toxic waste ground”. Some of the definitions are given charming usage ‘examples,’ as in “‘She went all gallipoli in his arms’ – Noel Coward”. And after all these, they still catch you off guard with the occasional subversion of form you haven’t seen yet. I laughed out loud at “ Parrog n. God knows. Could be some sort of bird, I suppose.”"

"That’s right. I think it came from a game Douglas played at school with his English teacher, of whom he was very fond, Frank Halford. He pops up in a couple of documentaries. Douglas would play this game with him, and later Douglas played it as a kind of drinking game. They did it from both angles—sometimes they’d come up with a human experience that doesn’t yet have a name, or an object, or a feeling, something that we’d all recognise but doesn’t have a defined name. Then they’d come up with a string of placenames and try to put them together. Yes. Well, there’s ELY (n.) – The first, tiniest inkling that something, somewhere has gone terribly wrong. WEST WITTERING (ptcpl. vb.) – The uncontrollable twitching which breaks out when you’re trying to get away from someone at a party My son’s favourite is really simple, a one liner: DUNSTABLE (n.) – A retired policeman. He was a big fan of John Cleese and Monty Python , that really comes through. Yes, it has that flavour. There’s a surprising amount of toilet humour which is not everyone’s cup of tea. I was actually present for one— GLASGOW (n.) – The feeling of infinite sadness engendered when walking through a place filled with happy people fifteen years younger than yourself. That was Hitchcon 1, in September 1980, in a hotel in Glasgow. I was also a guest speaker there. I sat at his right hand and accidentally knocked his drink over. I was only nine years younger than Douglas, but I did look up to him as a kind of big brother figure, someone I admired hugely. I mean, we all did look up to him because he was so enormous. Our lives criss-crossed many, many times over 20 years until he sadly died, far too young, at 49."