‘Remind me what incel means again,’ said my husband. There was no point, since he’d forgotten twice already. I suspected a psychological barrier to learning. Incel (a label for people unhappy at being involuntarily celibate) was a runner-up for Oxford dictionaries’ word of the year, won by toxic.
But to me the word that captures the flavour of Britain this year is shouty. It identifies a trait that people dislike yet are given to. It belongs to an informal register (like not wearing a tie). Protesters are literally shouty, and metaphorically so are capital letters, some films and even aromatic food. There was sympathy, I read in the Guardian, for Theresa May being ‘surrounded by shouty men’.
Shouty belongs to a group of words expanding in number in the 19th century, such as beery or catty. They were formed freely to express ridicule or contempt.
Shouty is found earliest in a satirical poem by Leigh Hunt (not published till 1860) on the coronation of George IV: ‘How I feel betwixt ye! / Curlies, burlies, / Dukes and earlies, / Bangs and clangs of band O! / Shouty, flouty, heavy rig, and gouty, / When shall I come to a stand O!’ Leigh Hunt here uses words of various kinds ending in y.
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