Lost Word Of The Day (56)

It is a long time since I worked in an office but one of the most irksome features of office life was the presence of a quiddler, someone who hung around wasting time and striking up conversations with those who were trying to get their heads down. Another word to describe such a person is blatteroon, defined by Thomas Blount in his Glossographia of 1656 as a “babbler, an idle-headed fellow”. In other words, someone who just would not shut up.

Curiously, blatteroon had a second albeit short life in the world of telegraphy. In order to cut the cost of the telegram, where the price was set by the word, companies recommended the use of single words to take the place of common phrases. Leiber’s code, published in 1896, proposed the use of blatteroon to signify the phrase “did you reserve?” while in the New General and Mining Telegraphic Code of 1903 it meant “almost certain to float”, a phrase useful for students of the stock market. The Western Union Telegraphic Code in 1901 left it as one of those words which the sender and recipient could agree amongst themselves as to its meaning.