Word play
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday November 28, 2009
POLECATS aren't cats but English weasels or American skunks. Bombay duck is a type of fish, and the geoduck a clam. Glass snakes or horned toads are both lizards, while velvet ants are wasps.Koala bears despise honey. Glow worms are beetles. Starfish are echinoderms and not always stellar. Inchworms are caterpillars while titmice hate cheese. The same little birds prefer nuts and insects, possibly silverfish, which of course don't swim.Meantime, the porbeagle is not a wretched dog but an endangered mackerel shark you wouldn't touch with its own anagram - a BARGEPOLE.Unlike beagles, the prairie dog doesn't bark, nor does the basenji, which is a dog. Sea lions can roar, yet hang around in pods not prides. And if you own an oinking guinea pig (or groundhog, for that matter) you'll clean up on eBay.And that's one slice of the animal kingdom. Add to that list the gaffe I made last week in the Quick crossword. "Flying fox's navigational aid," read the clue. SONAR was the misinformed answer, as a Turramurra solver reminded me:"Flying foxes navigate by vision, not echolocation. I refer you to Ron Strahan's Complete Book of Australian Mammals ... and I quote ... " Et cetera. I copped an earful and deservedly so.Making clues for a crust, you need to thread this pedantic zoo that is English. Blind Freddy could tell you a flying fox is not a fox with wings but thanks to this wake-up letter I've now learnt that not every bat needs sonar.Blind as a bat, in fact, is part-way idiomatic, just as every beaver must occasionally take a smoko, while the lark is surely prone to mood swings.Beyond the world of fur and feather, misnomers are equally rife. Last month, preparing a meal for a gluten-intolerant friend, I discovered buckwheat is a closer cousin of beech trees. We need to dissect the labels. Packaging and dictionaries - always read the small print.Black boxes, for example, are orange tubes and the Ben Folds Five was a trio. Last year a cranky sci-fi fan informed me that Daleks aren't robots but armoured mutants from the planet Skaro. As for the Bayeux Tapestry - try embroidery.So much duplicity in one tongue! If peanuts are legumes, and Mark was never a disciple, how can we ever trust each other? I'm starting to think misnomers may be our celestial permission to fib. Why not? Words do it all the time. If you tell me you're faithful, then I'll tell you the English horn is a Polishoboe, and Bob's your uncle, which he probably isn't.PS: if this week's column contains a blue of any colour, please forward your smoking gun, which is figurative, to Scotland Yard, England.
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald