2 weeks Ago By Pravina-rudra
The day I came across the word “eucatastrophe” was a big one, even for a seasoned lexicographer. The relief I felt in its mere existence was disproportionately huge, and not just because it was the creation of JRR Tolkien , who as a Professor of Anglo-Saxon and an editor of the Oxford English Dictionary (let alone author of glorious stories) knew more than most of us about language. Tolkien took the drama of the word “catastrophe” and turned it on its head by adding eu , meaning “good”.
A eucatastrophe is a sudden and unexpected turn of events for the good: the ultimate happy ending. As an incurable catastrophiser, I still find the word intensely comforting. For most of my life I have lived without that “eu”.
Any of my friends will tell you that I am a worrier, with a brain and body that seem to love nothing better than a cascade of cortisol and adrenaline as the next worst-case-scenario arrives on the scene, relegating the last one to the back-burner (where it can return to full flame at the merest whiff of oxygen). To paraphrase Henry Kissinger , I can’t have another crisis this week: my diary is already full. I’ve tried most strategies, including profuse swearing in a private space.
Research into the power of profanity shows that it can significantly reduce frustration and anxiety by reducing stress hormones and raising serotonin. It even has a name: lalochezia, and while this certainly helps in the moment it can only be tested in solitude rather than the supermarket’s cereal aisle. My catastrophising is not unusual in its choice of subjects.
Health, family, and the judgement of others tend to top the list. I’d like to say my worries are familiar friends whom I can greet in a “hello again” way, but my body’s fight or flight response smothers all sense of proportion so that they have become nothing but the enemy. There is however one balm I have discovered which brings long-lasting relief.
It involves words that remind me how universal such physiological responses really are, and have always been. Words like “uhtcearu”, from Old English, which proves that even a millennium ago people would lie awake in the darkness worrying about everything under the yet-to-rise sun. Uhtcearu is “twilight anxiety”: the terror that racks up in the hours before dawn, when everything feels impossible.
I often wonder whether it is because I am a lexicographer that my mind instinctively wanders over to the dark side. Finding sparkle amidst the grey is difficult for anyone right now, but even a short riffle through a historical dictionary suggests that life has always swung this way. Words born out of a pessimistic expectation – whether about the weather, politics, or other people – tend to outweigh more positive choices by some margin.
Words for “ugly” are more plentiful than those for “beautiful”, and the dictionary is chock-full of insults rather than compliments. There are multiple words for hate, yet only one word for love. Other words start off neutrally but take on an edge as they sweep through time.
The word “ambitious” can simply express a drive to succeed, but isn’t there now an extra, unspoken implication that an ambitious individual might also be a little unscrupulous? Not that our vocabulary was always irredeemably pessimistic. We are all too familiar with negative adjectives such as “ruthless”, “gormless”, and “feckless”, but what about their opposites? In the past, you might be gruntled or gormful, or full of ruth (compassion) and feck (effect). Joyously, in the 17th-century people might also feel “respair” rather than despair: a word for fresh hope and recovery.
Perplexingly, all of these were abandoned in favour of their antitheses. There are many more negatives that now linger only in the dusty corners of the dictionary. The German Schadenfreude – pleasure in the misfortunes of others – is now all too familiar.
But how many of us know its near-opposite in English, “confelicity”, which is joy in another person’s happiness? Read Next Why the Brontë sisters have their dots back at last You might ask, as many have done before, whether language simply reinforces our pessimism or actively promotes it. Ongoing research is making it clear that our choice of vocabulary can be directly proportional to our success and happiness. What is at play is our “emotional granularity”, a term coined by psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett.
Her work has shown that not only are those who draw on a wider range of vocabulary for their emotions far more able to cope with them, but they can actively change their outlook by their selection. Reach for more positive vocabulary and we may become happier and healthier as a result. If I determine today to reframe the filmic descent into calamity that plays out in my head (what the Germans call Kopfkino , “mind cinema”), it wouldn’t be the first time.
But I really do notice a lightness in mood when I stick to the cheerier end of the dictionary spectrum. The lost positives are waiting to sprinkle some renewed happiness over proceedings. We may not be guaranteed the fool-proof happy eucatastrophe that Tolkien made possible for us, but we will sure as hell feel a little more consolate.
This week I’ve been...
Reading...
While looking through the attic the other day I found my teenage diary. It was pretty melancholy, funnily enough, but lovingly written as I lurched through hormones and friendship woes. It was also embarrassingly short.
Having kicked off with lengthy excursions about family outings and my love of Starsky and Hutch , it began to peter out to a whimper by the end of February. Clearly I’ve had to learn a thing or two about perseverance since then. But it did remind me what a daydreamer I’ve always been: living in my head whilst staring at a stretch of water or cup of tea.
Not a lot has changed since. Remembering..
. In the same attic I found a copy of my school magazine which my father had saved for me. It was my first time in print as I’d entered a school story competition and won a prize.
To my older ears the story is ridiculously breathy and overblown. It involves someone being chased through a dark forest by some unknown peril. I called it Pursuit.
Unsurprisingly I didn’t risk fiction again for another 40 years. Listening ..
. to the Uncanny podcast series all over again. I’ve always been a sucker for a ghost story, and this is no exception, although falling asleep to them may not be the best idea.
Danny Robins takes listeners’ tales of the supernatural and scrutinises them with the help of a sceptic and a believer. Both experts tend to deliver verdicts that are equally implausible yet utterly compelling. Robins loves to ham things up to the max, but it’s a great listen.
Susie Dent’s debut novel, Guilty By Definition , is published by Zaffre Books.
