What do the terms flummox, butterfingers, and the creeps have in common? They were all either invented or popularized by Charles Dickens. The earliest citations we have for many familiar words and phrases are from the work of the popular 19th-century novelist. You can find more in What the Dickens: Distinctly Dickensian Words and How to Use Them by Brian Kozlowski. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Dickens’s Words”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
Grant, I have three words that have something in common.
I love you.
No, what are they?
I know.
What are they?
They are flummox, butterfingers, and the creeps.
Flummox, butterfingers, and the creeps.
They were all coined by the same person.
How did you know?
I guessed.
I don’t know who it is.
Are you serious?
Is it all…
Oh, my gosh.
I was going to give you the hint that they were all.
It’s a baseball writer.
Well, no.
No?
No.
And I shouldn’t say coined because we’re not sure that they’re coined.
But the first citation for them.
Is it Shakespeare?
It’s not Shakespeare.
It’s another author a little later.
I don’t know.
Prolific dude in the Victorian.
Swift.
Good guess.
No.
I don’t know who.
No.
And a guy who came up with a lot of crazy character names.
Dickens?
Yes.
Dickens.
Oh, okay.
Nice.
The first citations for flummox, the creeps, and butterfingers are all by Dickens.
And where did you learn this?
Well, I learned it from the Oxford University Press Oxford Words blog.
Oh, nice.
That’s really cool.
Yeah.
And there’s also a new book called What the Dickens, Distinctly Dickensian Words, and How to Use Them by Brian Kozlowski,
Which also is a delightful dip into all these different words that he didn’t necessarily coin, he might have, but he for sure popularized them.
Because he was so popular, any word that he used was sure to be repeated by others.
Yes, yes.
One of those authors who was enormously successful in his day and wrote more than a dozen novels and just had this kind of linguistic exuberance.
That’s a great way to put it.
Flummoxed.
Well, if you’re flummoxed about a thing having to do with language,
We would love to give you an answer.
And don’t have the creeps about the microphone.
You can send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.
