It is simples, take an unfriend and, if he be found to have email, pull his muggles for he will never manage a google no matter how hard he might bang.

Such cool, modern and trendy language from me, don’t you think? You might think, however, that I have misused such terms. Harry Potter fans, for instance, may be puzzled by what I mean. Cricket fans, however, should have an inkling.

While the sentence above is, of course, nonsense, it is also grammatically correct according to the blog Interesting Literature‘ who’ve come up with another gem of a post.

All the above ‘modern’ words are, in fact, older than at least the computer age and, in some cases, considerably older than that. As such, in my book, they gain credence and I will now bore everyone I meet silly with my profound literary eloquence while also annoying my teenage daughter at my attempts to be ‘hip’. Win-win, I think.

To whet your appetite, here’s the first word used explained – who’d have guessed one of my favourite authors, James Joyce, would have been behind it? You’ll have to click on the link to read the rest. Why not stay and sign up at Interesting Literature for email notifications while you’re at it. I’ve yet to be disappointed by a single post by that team.

Oh, by the way – yes, one of my words above was a little rude. Forgive me, but as the word comes from a play I loved when studying A Level English Literature, I had to include that little bit of naughtiness for the sake of fond memories. 🙂

Simples. Known in Britain thanks largely to a meerkat-led marketing campaign, this word – used often as a colloquial variant of the more usual adjective ‘simple’ – is found in James Joyce’s modernist classic Ulysses (1922): ‘The first fellow that picked an herb to cure himself had a bit of pluck. Simples.’

via Ten ‘Modern’ Words with Older Literary Connections | Interesting Literature.

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