When Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press he was asked if Israel was breaking international law in its war on the terrorist group Hamas. His answer was one word: ‘hogwash’. This nice word has meant ‘nonsense’ since at least 1870. But before then (long before) ‘hogwash’ had other meanings. From around 1450 ‘hogwash’ was used more or less literally to mean ‘kitchen refuse and scraps (especially in liquid form) used as food for pigs; pigswill.’ So hogwash was never the (muddy) water with which pigs were washed, but the pigswill they were fed. Then from around 1610 ‘hogwash’ was used as a kind of insult meaning ‘any liquid for drinking that is of very poor quality, such as cheap beer or wine’. That metaphorical use makes sense: ‘Hey bartender! What did you put in this? It tastes like pigswill!’ But the third meaning of the word (worthless, ridiculous, or nonsensical ideas) is less obvious. Perhaps the connection is lack of value. Pigswill is stuff discarded from the kitchen as scraps or leftovers: worth nothing. And if the argument or comments you are spouting just don’t fit reality, are totally worthless, perhaps that’s why they are labelled ‘hogwash.’

The verb ‘to obnubilate’ means ‘to darken the mind.’ It can also mean to cover with clouds or fog. It’s recorded in English from 1583 and comes from a classical Latin source word: obnūbilāre – meaning ‘to darken or obscure’. It strikes me as a nice word to apply to some politicians. We’ve all heard answers given in question time that shed no light at all – in fact, that make whatever they’re talking about foggy and unclear. They are ‘obnubilating’. William Safire tells the story of a reply President Bill Clinton once gave to a question on Russia. Later a reporter asked White House press secretary Mike McCurry what the President meant – was he for or against the Russian parliament ratifying a new treaty? McCurry replied, ‘He obnubilated’. In other words – he intentionally dodged making his thinking clear to the waiting press, and covered the subject with dark, cloudy, foggy words. This is not a word that turns up very often – but you can see its usefulness, can’t you? I’m trying to work out who (in our current crop of politicians) we should call our Obnubiliator-in-Chief. Who would you nominate as the master of foggy language?

Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, has described his opponents as ‘leftards’. That was certainly the word in the translation at the bottom of the screen (what the equivalent is in Spanish I don’t know). According to the hyper-hip online Urban Dictionary ‘leftard’ means: ‘a leftist person with retarded thought process’ – and says that the expression has been around since 2017. At one level it is simply offensive, since there are some people in our community who suffer from an intellectual disability. On the other hand, this is clearly addressed to people who have brainpower but don’t bother to use it. The expression has received 351 likes and only 14 dislikes at the Urban Dictionary. The term ‘leftard’ is a portmanteau word (or blended) word that merges ‘left’ and ‘retard’, creating a neologism that has gained a certain amount of traction. It is important to note that the usage of this term remains controversial. Mind you, I suspect that whoever coined this intended it to be derogatory and offensive to leftists. And for a long time now the political left has been describing anyone with right of centre opinions as ‘far right’ or ‘hard right’ and this seems to be a response to those verbal attacks. As well as the Urban Dictionary ‘leftard’ appears in Wiktionary (the online dictionary) and in the Collins and Cambridge dictionaries. So, it appears to be making its way into the English language and it’s probably only a matter of time before it appears in the Oxford, the Merriam-Webster and the Macquarie. In the meantime, it’s yours to use, if it appeals to you.