Monday, 15 February 2010

Word of the day

Today's word is rissole, used as a verb. This wonderful Australian usage was unknown to me until I read it in Clive James's recent book, The Revolt of the Pendulum: essays 2005-2008. James describes (page 193) rissole as "the classic Australian term, drawn from the culinary arts, for something being reduced to a wreck. (Used as a noun, the word 'rissole' denotes a kind of proto-hamburger, but used as a verb - as in 'Strewth, we've rissoled the Holden' the same word means that the machinery has ceased to work.)" The use by James is deliberate; David Free, in his review of the James book in Quadrant, leads off with the above quote.

I spent some time just looking for examples of the verb, to rissole. Most of them come from sport. For example, here's the Guardian's Lawrence Booth in 2007, quoting Kate McDonald (the Fifth Test, day one) "... there are several meanings to rissoles, etymologically speaking, and you are right, some are very rude," says Kate McDonald. "What the ABC blokes mean by being rissoled could more easily be explained as being barbecued or roasted on a spit. Barbies always come into the conversation at this time of the year, you understand. How's your apple corer, by the way?"

Overwhelmingly, the word is used in a sporting context. "If you want to get absolutely rissoled", a contributor to a Manchester United fan forum said. A piece in the Brisbane Courier-Mail by David Cohen with the imaginative headline "Spice of truth in the mince" has another example of a cricketer being rissoled. Emma Tom, in the Australian, used the word in just the same sense - to mean wiped out.

Rugby, cricket, football, horse racing, whatever - there are lots of examples, and rissoled comes across with the clear meaning that someone has been completely defeated, stuffed, skewered. It is just one example of the rich linguistic inventiveness of the sporting world, enriching us all, and James has very deliberately taken a word from a demotic context to introduce it to another world.
The best-known use of the word is by a British band of the 70s, Gonzalez, who had a song, Rissoled - you can find about it here. And poets too. There is a poem by the New Zealand poet Peter Olds, Letter to Hone Tuwhare, whih describes the old man's "rissoled boiler-maker ears." Poets have the first and last words on rissoled, and rightly so.

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