June 2020 — Words of the week

As regular readers will know (hello Mumsy!), last week I left you with something of a wordy cliffhanger. While researching the background of ‘maverick’, I found out that Samuel Maverick’s grandson, Maury Maverick, coined the word ‘gobbledygook’. So, this week we’re going to look at exactly how that came about. Better than EastEnders, right?

Maury Maverick was born in 1895 in Texas. After various jobs he became a Democratic member of the US House of Representatives from 3 January 1935 to 3 January 1939. After losing out on a third term in office, he wound up working for a company called the Smaller War Plants Corporation (anyone know what a small war plant is?). And it was here that he wrote a note to his staff imploring them to stop using complicated bureaucratic language and jargon in memos, and just get to the point (can I get an amen, copywriter pals?). His exact words were:

Stay off the gobbledygook language. It only fouls people up.

Maverick’s inspiration for the word was the turkey, who, he said is ‘always gobbledy gobbling and strutting with ludicrous pomposity’. (Personally I think he missed a trick by not saying that it ‘fowls people up’, but that might just be me.)

This is a rare case of a word whose invention we can trace back to the actual day it came into being. So that’s nice. Here’s an article which was published in the Pittsburgh Press about it on 31st March 1944. I’m going to try the last line on some of my clients – I’ll let you know how it goes.

A maverick is an independent-minded or unorthodox person/sexually ambiguous American pilot who feels the need, the need for speed. But it has a second, less well-known meaning – it’s also the name given to unbranded calves in the world of ranching in the good ole US of A. It’s named after one Samuel Maverick, a Texas lawyer, politician and land baron (awesome job title) who was born in 1803. Maverick was a cattle owner and, unlike his contemporaries, refused to brand his cattle to show they belonged to him, because he thought it was cruel. At least that’s what he said – other, more cynical cattle-type people said he only did it so he could claim any stray non-branded baby cows as his own. Whatever the actual reason, Maverick’s name was soon used to describe any calf found without an owner’s brand, as well as people who refused to conform.

Samuel was married to Mary, meaning his wife’s name was Mary Maverick, which is pleasingly alliterative and sounds like a superhero alter ego. Their grandson was Maury Maverick (love it), a Texas politician who coined the word ‘gobbledygook’. More on that next week. Ooh, an etymological cliffhanger. Doesn’t get much better than that, right? Right…?

Oh, and thanks to my sister for telling me about maverick’s origins on this week’s family Zoom call (we might have run out of things to talk about…).

PS If all that etymological excitement hasn’t worn you out, here’s the Top Gun anthem for you. It features a grand piano alongside a man who looks like a woman with enormo hair playing guitar while wearing a sparkly tracksuit and standing on the wing of a plane (because, 80s). If it doesn’t make you punch the air at least once, then you’re dead inside.