Miles Kington: The spy who came in from the OED

'I think you'll find the word "nigella" is already in the dictionary. It's the name of a plant'

The papers the other day were full of the news that the word "Delia" had been included in a new dictionary. I remember reading it at the time and yawning. It wasn't that I found it boring. It was just that I had known about it for six months already and it was old news to me.

I knew that they were going to put "Delia" in their dictionary, because last summer I had been at a planning meeting of another dictionary, The Independent 21st-Century Dictionary. (Don't rush to your bookshop to order The Independent 21st-Century Dictionary. A few more years of the 21st century will elapse before the dictionary appears. You can't rush these things. Why, only the other day we took out the word "Birtite" from the dictionary, having put it in four or five years ago. You'd be amazed how many words come to the end of their shelf life before a dictionary is even published.)

There was a knock at the door and a message was brought in to the chairman. He banged the table and said: "The spy from the opposition is here to report!"

(You probably don't know this, but all the main dictionary makers have industrial spies in each other's premises. We have to keep an eye on what trendy words and new profanities they are including, what old-fashioned ones they are knocking out. You have to be ahead of the game the whole time.)

The spy came in. He was a tall young man with crumpled lapels. He stood holding a bit of paper in his hand.

"Welcome, Robert," said the chairman. "What news from the enemy?"

"Just a bit of press release news," said young Robert. "They're going to go heavy on the word 'Delia'. That's their lead entry"

(There's something else I have to explain here. Press release news. When a dictionary is sent out for review or coverage, in theory the reviewer should retire to bed for four days and read the thing from end to end, spotting new trends and new definitions. In practice, the reviewer has got a couple of hours in which to work up a short piece, so the publisher kindly sends along a press release which does all the work for him, pointing out all the newsworthy new words. Nobody writing about a new dictionary has ever read the book. Just the press release.)

"Is 'Delia' a proper word?" said someone. "Surely not!"

"Well," said Robert, "they're going to say that it means a dish devised by Delia Smith which becomes so popular that when you go out to dinner and get it, you turn to your partner and say, 'It's that Delia again.'"

"I would have thought that doing a Delia," said the chairman, "meant doing so many recipes involving cranberries that all the supermarkets in Britain run short, and cranberry shares go through the roof."

"So would I," said Robert, "but the enemy has gone for the other meaning."

"The point is," said the chairman, "are we going to put 'doing a Delia' in our dictionary? Or are we going to put up a rival?"

"How about a 'Jamie'?" said someone.

Everyone sighed.

"How about a 'Nigella'?" said someone else.

"Hmm," said the chairman. "What would 'doing a Nigella' actually mean?"

"Well, I think it would mean 'fluttering your eyelashes at the camera in such a way that nobody noticed whether you were a good cook or not'," said one particularly crusty committee member.

"That's not helpful," said the chairman.

"Actually," said Robert the spy, "I think you'll find that the word 'nigella' is already in the dictionary. It's the name of a plant."

Everyone sighed again.

"That's the trouble with words," said the chairman. "They won't do what they're told. Remember how excited everyone got one year when dictionaries included the name of that show-jumper to mean a V-sign? Harvey something?"

"Harvey Wallbanger?" suggested someone.

"Harvey Nichols?" said someone else.

"Harvey Smith," said the chairman. "But that proves my point. Nobody uses the expression any more."

"Nobody uses V-signs any more. They just put their middle finger up. What is the right name for that, by the way?"

And so the talk rambled on and on. All committee meetings are like that. I should have left the committee years ago, but I have stayed on long after my departure was due. Or "doing a Stephen Byers", as the dictionary will say. If anyone has heard of him by then.