Veronica has become quite an addict of Twitter, just as the rest of the young are forsaking it. ‘It’s easy to hide from the trolls and death threats,’ she tells me encouragingly, ‘but there’s one thing that annoys me.’
The one thing is a cliché serving as click-bait for fellow twitterers. It takes the form of the exclamation: ‘Wow! Just wow!’ The hyperbole seldom lives up to expectations, and even when it does, it is diminished by having expressed the emotion in second-hand language.
I was surprised to find that wow does not belong to the 20th-century world of Batman’s Pow! and Bowie’s son Zowie. It far predates the ‘wow comedy song Say It With Liquor’, the hit of 1921. As an interjection, it is, I discover, first recorded in the translation of the Aeneid (under the title Eneados) by Gavin Douglas (who finished the job just before the battle of Flodden in 1513 and his subsequent appointment as a bishop).
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in