Moonballs from Planet Earth: The Meaning of Liff

Sunday 9 May 2021

Lamenting the loss of Kalami, Scramoge and Scackleton, while celebrating the triumph of Hextable, Scraptoft and Corriecravie

This blogpost started as an elegy for words from The Meaning of Liff which are no longer relevant.

Consider Kalami: The ancient Eastern art of being able to fold road maps properly.

Or Scarmoge: To cut oneself whilst licking envelopes.

Or Scackleton: horizontal avalanche of CDs that slides across the interior of a car as it goes around a sharp corner.

It’s been at least a decade since any of us were folding maps, licking envelopes, or stacking piles of CDs in a car. These things are no longer a part of our material culture.

However, it turns out that some The Meaning of Liff words have been amplified even if the material culture around them has changed.

Consider Hextable: the record you find in someone else’s collection that instantly tells you you could never go out with them. A Spotify playlist is now a perfect Hextable, even if vinyl records played on turntables are no longer a thing.

Or Scraptoft: The absurd flap of hair a vain and balding man grows over one ear to comb it plastered over the top of his head to the other ear. Who would have thought an American President would be the world’s #1 Scraptoft?

Or this set of corrie words:

Corriearklet: the moment at which two people, approaching from opposite ends of a long passageway, recognize each other and immediately pretend they haven’t. This is to avoid the ghastly embarrassment of having to continue recognizing each other the whole length of the corridor.

Corriedoo: The crucial moment of false recognition in a long passageway encounter. Though both people are perfectly aware that the other is approaching, they must eventually pretend sudden recognition. They now look up with a glassy smile, as if having spotted each other for the first time (and are particularly delighted to have done so), shouting out “Haaallooo!” as if to say “Good grief!! You!! Here!! Of all people! Well I never. Coo. Stap me vitals,” etcetera.

Corrievorrie: Corridor etiquette demands that once a corriedoo has been declared, corrievorrie must be employed. Both protagonists must now embellish their approach with an embarrassing combination of waving, grinning, making idiot faces, doing pirate impressions, and waggling the head from side to side while holding the other person’s eyes as the smile drips off their face, until, with great relief, they pass each other.

Corriecravie: To avert the horrors of corrievorrie (q.v.), the corriecravie is usually employed. This is the cowardly but highly skilled process by which both protagonists continue to approach while keeping up the pretence that they haven’t noticed each other – by staring furiously at their feet, grimacing into a notebook, or studying the walls closely as if in a mood of deep irritation.

Cellphones have made it easy for the whole world to corriecravie without being suspected of cowardice.

Moonballs from Planet Earth would like to propose that the magical powers that cellphone screens seem to have is not because of their hypnotically glowing pixels, but because they save the world from the torture of Corrievorrie.

BTW…one pleasure that I did not have when I first encountered The Meaning of Liff was googling up the places that lend their names to these words.

The Women’s Institute of Hextable picture is especially evocative. I wonder what these WI members have in their record collections/ Spotify playlists?