The Horologicon: A Day's Jaunt through the Lost Words of the English Language by Mark Forsyth Page A

nobody should ever see or hear you practise. Thus you take your flute or lute or whatever and disappear well out of earshot and work at your musicianship in secret. Then when somebody says, ‘Hey, Baldassare, do you play the lute at all?’, you can reply, ‘The lute? Hmm. I’ve never tried but pass it here … Oh, like this?’ – and then knock off a little virtuoso performance while looking bored. Everybody gasps in astonishment at your effortless ability, and you appear much better than you would have done had the whole court heard you plink plonk plunking for months on end.
    This Great Untranslatable, graceful nonchalance hiding discreet diligence, simply had to be imported into the other European languages including English, where the OED defines it as ‘studied carelessness’.
    But the Renaissance is dead and done, and with it sprezzatura has wandered nonchalantly from the language. It has been replaced,though, by that most horrible of ideas:
presenteeism
, the belief that you should be the first in and the last to leave and do nothing in between because it’s not work but the appearance of work that is rewarded.
    But imagine, just imagine, if sprezzatura were brought back to the modern office. Gone would be those dreary press releases saying ‘Flumshoe Incorporated are really excited about this new acquisition! John Splunkington, Head of Mergers, said: “I want to thank everybody on the team who have put in the long hours over the last year to make this deal happen.”’ Instead, you would have: ‘Flumshoe Incorporated is filled with languorous indifference at this new acquisition. John Splunkington, who lolls gracefully around the mergers department, murmured: “It was nothing. A trifle really”, and continued to play his lute.’
Earning a living
    But sprezzatura is gone, and it is time to actually sit down at your desk and
quomodocunquize
. Quomodocunquizing is ‘making money in any way that you can’, and was used in this glorious phrase by Sir Thomas Urquhart in 1652: ‘Those quomodocunquizing clusterfists and rapacious varlets.’
    A
clusterfist
is, as you might imagine, somebody who keeps a tight grip on his cash. Quomodocunquizing can be used of governments, football clubs, famous people who advertise things, and of course yourself. For we are quomodocunquizing animals. It is the chief symptom of
plutomania
, which is ‘the frenzied pursuit of money’.
    Incase you were wondering, the planet Pluto is named after the god of the underworld. As gold and silver and diamonds are always found underground, the ancients decided that Pluto was also the god of money, hence plutomania,
plutocracy
(government by the rich),
plutography
(written descriptions of the lives of the rich) and
plutolatry
(worship of wealth).
    The best course for the aspiring plutomaniac is to become a
plutogogue
, which can mean either somebody who speaks only to the rich or somebody who speaks only for them. The former is commonly known as sales, and the latter advertising, but plutogogue is a much more impressive word to put on your business card or CV.
    If you would prefer, though, to have a more rough-and-ready feel to your job description in sales, you could always describe yourself as a
barker
, which was the Victorian term for somebody who stood outside a shop shouting its virtues into the smoggy air. Unfortunately, Victorian slang dictionaries also contain this entry:
    CHUFF IT,
i.e.
, be off, or take it away, in answer to a street seller who is importuning you to purchase.
    A useful phrase for dealing with cold callers.
Email
    These days, the telephone is used less and less and email more and more. It’s enough to bring back the noble business of
screeving
. A screever is a professional writer of begging letters. Theseletters would not be sent, rather they would be given to somebody else who would use them as a sort of certificate of authenticity as they told their hard luck story. Luckily for historians of strange