A Brief History of Bumf and Alphabetary

Hello,

This week’s words are with thanks to “The Dictionary of Lost Words” by Pip Williams. With a title like that you might expect nonfiction but actually it’s a charming historic fiction novel about a young woman’s coming of age during the early 1900s in the shadow of the First World War, the female suffrage movement, and the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. She collects neglected words along the way and these included bumf and alphabetary.

First to alphabetary. This is a word the heroine loves but which isn’t included in the dictionary (hence the idea of lost words). This sadly obsolete word means rudimentary (i.e. basic) and has its roots in the Latin word alphabetarius. As you’d expect this all links back to the alphabet (the letters of a language arranged in a particular order) which has been in English since the late 1500s. Alphabet is borrowed from Greek alphabetos which was compounded from alpha and beta – the first two letters of their own alphabet.

As for bumf, its origins are somewhat less lofty.

Bumf is used to describe unwanted leaflets and excess paperwork. Apparently it entered English in the late 1800s as slang by British schoolboys for toilet paper. Certainly by the advent of World War One it was in widespread use perhaps by soldiers lacking certain basic supplies? The idea is that it’s a shortening of bum-fodder (hence the toilet link). I can only hope my books are never regarded as bumf!

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

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