Alan Connor serves as crossword puzzle editor for The Guardian, and his new book is a word lover’s delight. It’s called 188 Words for Rain: A Delightfully Damp Tour of the British Isles Led by Natural Forces (Amazon). The book opens 7,000 feet above southern England, drifting among clouds to eavesdrop on terms for rain in various dialects. A day marked by mist and individual droplets is flisky, while flobby describes swollen, rain-heavy clouds. The book also contains lots of history, like the story of the first Londoner to carry an umbrella, Jonas Hanway, who was pelted with rotten fruit by cab drivers who resented his threat to their rainy-day trade. Witty, whimsical, and smart, the book also makes the case that rain can be incredibly romantic. Just think of those rain-soaked kisses in movies like Four Weddings and a Funeral. Would they have been nearly as sexy in the dusty heat? This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““Flisky” to “Flobby,” More Regional British Words for Rain”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, this show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
We talked earlier in the show about the book A 188 Words for Rain by Alan Connor.
He’s the crossword puzzle editor for The Guardian newspaper, and he’s also a screenwriter who’s worked on several movies, including Borat II.
Oh, so he’s a high thinking writer.
Exactly.
He’s He’s up there at the top.
Well, I think you’ll love his book.
It’s really a word lover’s delight.
It’s witty and whimsical and smart, which is right up your alley, of course.
And it opens this way.
You’re in the sky, 7,000 feet above the bottom bit of the British Isles.
In other words, he starts you out up in the clouds, drifting over Southern England, and you’re gazing down at the locals who are discussing the weather.
And you get to eavesdrop on those conversations, which are filled with dialectal terms for different kinds of rain and the experience of getting rained on.
And then he takes you around the rest of The UK just drifting along with the weather and learning lots of local dialect and weather folklore and science.
And you also learn some history too, like the person who invented Gore Tex and the first man in London to carry an umbrella.
And that’s an interesting little story.
In the eighteenth century, a proper English gentleman would never carry an umbrella because that was considered feminine and frenchified.
And the first guy to do so, a man named Jonas Hanway, was mocked and pelted with rotten fruit and harassed by cab drivers who had good reason to resent him because, of course, rainy days were good for their business and umbrellas threatened their trade.
And you also learned words from this book about rain around The UK, like the words flisky and flobby.
Flisky in Southern England describes a day covered in mist but with tiny individual raindrops as well.
And flobby describes clouds that are swollen up and hanging loose.
They’re large and heavy with rain.
So this book is, it’s a love letter to all those places and a rain itself.
And speaking of love, he points out that rain can be incredibly romantic.
I mean, think of all those rain soaked kisses and movies like Four Weddings and a Funeral.
And as he writes, in A Thousand Bollywood Pictures Where a Downpour Can Make Any Clothing Look Like Very Little Clothing At All.
And then he points out that the great cinematic kisses in the baking heat come less easily to mine.
So it’s this wonderful tongue in cheek book, but you can learn a lot from it.
It’s called 188 Words for A Delightfully Damp Tour of the British Isles Led by Natural Forces.
And the author?
The author is Alan Connor.
We’ll have Alan Connor’s book on our website at waywordradio.org.
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