GROOVY!

Cod diatribe by
Justin B Rye 01-Apr-97

I suppose you may never have noticed, but isn't it strange how many meaningless but popular words for good/trendy – like brill, cool, or groovy – are taken from the names of obscure kinds of fish?  There's hip, fab, hake, smart, dace, dab, rad (herring), smelt, keen, ace, bream, neat, gear, char, plaice, gnarly, guppy, funky, tunny… the list is endless!

Many of them of course are now hopelessly dated – nobody has used ruddy or chubser for at least a century – but there are also a few that have survived by becoming sex/drugs/rock'n'roll jargon; witness bass (guitar), roach (cannabis cigarette), sole (music), skate (-punk), cod (-piece), and jazz (formerly jads or shads).

You may imagine that groovy is a counterexample, but as a matter of fact gnuibheadh is an old Gaelic word for salmon – as in Beinn Gnuibheadh (pronounced ben groovy), a mountain near Loch Rannoch, which is widely suspected of being the Mons Graupius of Arthurian legend.

(And if you thought that was irritatingly dumb, try the -X Files…)