Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language

A Lexicographer writes

issue 03 January 2004

So many much-loved books have been badly done on television — The Irish RM, and just now The Young Visiters, which anyone could have seen would be difficult to do well on telly — that I wonder how much longer they can resist dear old Parson Woodforde. I’ve been reading bits of his diary again and wondering about some of his characteristic uses of language. Some are just strange, such as spelling off as ‘of’, like William P. Taplow in Private Opinions of a British Bluejacket.

A puzzling usage was plumb in plumb-pudding. I half remembered Charles Lamb explaining in jest that he spelled plumb-pudding himself with a b because it made it sound heavier. But James Woodforde does it consistently with no hint of a joke. When I looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary I was surprised to find that three out of the four citations for plum-pudding from the 18th century spelled it plumb.

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