How to mull correctly
Current music: The drone of bagpipes from yonder mystic loch. Nah, not really
Some time ago, whilst idly surfing the Weird Web of Wonders, I found a screensaver based on the book, 'The Deeper Meaning of Liff: A dictionary of things there aren't any words for yet' by the late, great Douglas Adams, and his friend John Lloyd. In case you haven't heard of it, here's a little explanation:
"In life there are many hundreds of common experiences, feelings, situations and even objects which we all know and recognize, but for which no words exist. On the other hand, the world is littered with thousands of spare words which spend their time doing nothing but loafing about on signposts pointing to places. Our job, as we see it, is to get these words down off the signposts and on to the mouths of our babes and sucklings and so on, where they can start earning their keep in everyday conversation and make a more positive contribution to society."
In other words, Adams and Lloyd made up funny meanings for place names.
The screensaver shows random entries from the book, some of which are quite amusing. Included below are a few examples that caught my eye:
CANNOCK CHASE (n)

Picture taken from http://blog.yam.com/janicelau/archives/2005-09.html
HEWISH (adj)
In a mood to swipe at vegetation with a stick.
PARROG (n)
God knows. Could be some sort of bird, I suppose.
SUTTON AND CHEAM (n)
Sutton and cheam are the kinds of dirt into which all dirt is divided. 'Sutton' is the dark sort that always gets on to light-coloured things, and 'cheam' the light-coloured sort that clings to dark items. Anyone who has ever found Marmite stains on a dress-shirt or seagull goo on a dinner jacket (a) knows all about sutton and cheam, and (b) is going to some very curious dinner parties.
And of course, the meaning of 'liff':
LIFF (n)
A book, the contents of which are totally belied by its cover. For instance, any book the dust jacket of which bears the words, 'This book will change your life'.
Out of respect and general admiration for Adams' wit and inventiveness, as well as my own predilection for verbal fabulation, I came out with a few definitions of my own. One day I might put them together and get them published in my own book, possibly under the title, 'How to Mull Correctly: The REAL meanings of place names you think you know'. I am open to suggestions for alternative titles. Anyway, without further ado, I am proud to present to you the first few entries of:
The REAL meanings of place names you think you know
BRIGHTON AND HOVE (n)
Terms describing two different types of residential area.
Brightons are usually suburban estates and feature identical rows of large, beautiful houses with immaculate front lawns and neat gravel drives. A brighton is a place where everybody wants to live but nobody can, because (1) it is hugely expensive, and (2) the management evicts anyone who: makes any noise louder than the snore of a sleeping mouse; attempts to change his/her letter-box without the approval of the President, Head Committee and all twelve Sub-Committees of the Residents' Association; or re-paints his/her walls in any colour other than magnolia. Stepford is the prime example of a brighton.
Hoves, on the other hand, tend to be urban districts, characterised by grim, grey tower blocks constructed mainly from concrete and graffiti; the surrounding air is often permeated by the smell of incontinent drunks and disinfectant. Trees are conspicuous only by their absence, whereas litter is almost unnoticeable in its ubiquitousness. A hove is generally populated by warring gangs, and by people who would very much like to live somewhere else.
LITTLE SODBURY (n)
Any region in which anything annoying that can happen, does happen. Scientific tests have shown that in such areas, a piece of buttered toast falls to the floor buttered side down 99.99% of the time. The remaining 0.01% of the time, the toast either spontaneously combusts due to aerodynamic friction, or falls through an inexplicable wormhole that suddenly opens up in the floorboards. Also called MURPHYSTOWN (n).
N'DJAMENA (n)
The cheerful, often buxom cook in a country B & B who makes excellent pancakes / flapjacks / waffles, and whom everyone refers to as their "Aunt Jemima" through a mouthful of the aforementioned battercake and sweet, sticky syrup / honey / jam.
ULLSWATER (n)

An interesting property of ullswater is that any attempt to remove it results in its mysterious spontaneous regeneration within the confines of the vessel, thus maintaining an equilibrium. If, on the other hand, the amount of water is increased beyond ullswater, the vessel will sink with an embarrassing blooping noise.
Picture taken from http://www.ravenblond.com/DaveGloeckner/images/boat.jpeg
Last, but not least:
MULL (v)
(mulled, mullnering, mulls)
To harass sheep by chasing them round a small field, calling "Here, sheepsie sheepsie sheepsie!" or some other equally ridiculous sobriquet, in the mistaken belief that:
1. Sheep actually come when they're called;
2. Fully grown sheep enjoy frolicking as much as lambs do; and
3. What a sheep wants, more than anything else, is a half-eaten cheese sandwich.
Hence:
mullneration (n) - The act of mullnering
mullner (n) - A person who mulls
mullnish (adj) - Inclined to mull
Also:
mullnee (n) (pl. mullnees) - A sheep that is being mulled
Examples of usage:
- Joe's favourite pastime in the country is mullnering, which he finds more invigorating than cow tipping but less cruel than shooting.
- Harry always feels particularly mullnish after consuming cheese sandwiches; following a large dose of mature English cheddar, he can mull continuously all afternoon, much to the distress of his reluctant mullnees.
I hope you enjoyed that. If you have any interesting place names just dying for a definition, or if you would like to make a literary contribution to my collection, feel free to drop me a line!
7 Comments:
At Tuesday, June 27, 2006 2:10:00 pm,
Aureala said…
Wot, no comments? That's not very encouraging, is it? And I was so pleased with that entry. And thus, such bright and promising ideas fizzle out and die with a brief scream of anguish...
I think I shall have to start leaving comments on my own blog as decoys, drawing casual readers to the 'Comments' link and hopefully inducing them to leave one of their own.
Anyway, at least one person apart from me has been reading my blog, because my ol' mate Jono had this to say on the subject of mullnering:
"Well, 'mullnering'... Certainly it sounds like a good use to put a word to, which would otherwise just be hanging around in a broody sort of way off the coast of Scotland. Personally though, I think the 'sheepsie, sheepsie' call is mainly for beginner mullners - once you become more advanced, you tend to move onto other calls, such as 'sheepie-weepie', 'likkle-baa-sheeps', or 'woolly-woolly-woolma'. Also, you can start to experiment with different kinds of cheese sandwiches (cottage cheese or ploughman's lunch are both possibilities). The strange thing is though, however advanced you become, it seems to have absolutely no effect on the behaviour of the mullnees, who just keep running away whatever you do. Oh well... Such is the life of a mullner."
You heard it, straight from the expert.
At Wednesday, June 28, 2006 9:17:00 pm,
Anonymous said…
I theorise that the dearth of comments on this particular entry may be related to the cleverness of the original entry. For when the original entry is so witty, imaginative, interesting and fantastic to read (and indeed your original entry ticks all the right boxes) that anyone who reads it leaves with such a sense of satisfaction and fufilment from having had the opportunity to meet with such quality of intellect, they may:
1. feel so invigorated that they continue to think about the ideas long after the words have been absorbed and thus forget to leave a comment, or;
2. feel so intimidated by the quality of the original entry that even if they make it as far as the comments box, they can only stare blankly at the screen, think for two minutes, come up with nothing and eventually close it down and return to work.
Such is my theory.
For example, look at the lettuce entry. Nobody would sell, "I don't like lettuce" in Waterstones, but just this phrase generated plenty of discussion amongst the Anblogeda Chasing Community.
My mind is forming phrases like, "the solitude of genius," except my ego resents specifying anything quite this cheesy or melodramatic, so let us scrap this concept and use an example instead. A good blog entry is like one of these terribly charismatic people you meet every now and then at parties*; they talk and everyone else listens. People nod and think, "I should make friends with this person and invite them to my parties," but they still don't know what to say in reply.
Alternatively, you could choose to be a blog tart and write only repetitive, thoughtless blogs that [cough] "get along" with everyone, but rather like real tarts, these lose readers every day and I don't recommend it.
I have an interesting place name: Godalming (Surrey)
*not to be confused with those terribly irritating people at parties who talk because they love the sound of their own voices and nobody listens
At Wednesday, June 28, 2006 9:19:00 pm,
Anonymous said…
What does that wheelchair by the side of the word verification box do?
At Thursday, June 29, 2006 4:07:00 am,
Anonymous said…
I just couldn't let the subject of Godalming pass over uncommented-on. I happen to have a particular fondness for the place, having spent a significant part of my misspent youth there. I'd like to suggest that 'Godalming' could mean wandering aimlessly but thoughtfully next to a river, as that's something I often used to do there. Anyone engaged in such wandering would then be referred to as a Godalmer.
At Thursday, June 29, 2006 6:57:00 am,
Anonymous said…
ah, I concur with Louise. Your blog is like a game of Balderdash at 4am in the morning (or at midnight) - still great fun, but my brain is not ready to step up to the standards set. Plus I can't think of a good word to talk about. the only contribution I can think of is this: New Zealand has more sheep population than people!
At Wednesday, July 05, 2006 1:56:00 pm,
Aureala said…
Aah... Thanks for making me feel better guys! "The solitude of genius"? You flatter me, Louise - I don't think I really qualify as one, as my head is full of fluff. But if I were a genius I'd rather be the sort to get out there and party, instead of the sort who sit scribbling behind piles of papers, quietly geniusing away in a small and dingy room, and are separated from the world outside by a thick oak door.
Wait a minute. That sounds suspiciously like what I'm doing now (scribbling - check; piles of papers - check...), except I get a tiny cubicle, not an office with a thick oak door. And I'm not geniusing so much as correcting the mistakes of other people's genius.
The mention of 'blog tarts' (which I assure you I have no intention of becoming) for some reason made me think of 'Pop Tarts', which are those super-sweet rectangular baked, uh, products that are covered with icing on the outside, and hold a scanty filling of some fruit jam or chocolate on the inside. They do not resemble tarts in the least, and probably contain more sugar than a dozen 2 L bottles of Lucozade, but you do pop them in the toaster, and when they're done you hope they pop out again before they start to catch fire and burn your house down. I think I only bought them once out of curiosity; they were a little too sweet even for me (a girl with a dozen sweet teeth).
I had no idea what the little wheelchair was for, so I clicked on it to find out. It gives a little audio prompt and some people read random numbers out. I suspect it's an alternative for people who have difficulty in reading the word verification letters when they're written in a weird wiggly font.
Thanks to you all for the new ideas. I shall put up my thoughts on the subject in the next post!
At Wednesday, July 05, 2006 2:01:00 pm,
Aureala said…
PS What's the game Balderdash about?
Post a Comment
<< Home