When I discover a new word I am delighted. ‘Autochthonous’ is one I have seen occasionally, but which I have never bothered to look up in the past. Do you sometimes do that? Come across an unfamiliar word, but even though you don’t know what it means you can work out what the sentence means so you just read on? I’m sure you’ve sometimes done that – we all do. But I decided this time I would look up ‘autochthonous’ and properly learn the word. I came across it in a review of a new collection of the poems of Seamus Heaney. What does it mean? Is it an unpleasant skin disease? Of course not (I was just being stilly when I thought of that). What the word actually means is ‘a person indigenous to a particular country’. So, in the context of the review, the point was that Seamus Heaney was always deeply Irish. So, why not say that? Why not just say that his poetry is very Irish? Because the reviewer (Michael Hoffman – let’s name the guilty party) was busy parading the enormous size of his vocabulary. Mind you (just to confuse things) ‘autochthonous’ can have other applications. It can also refer to micro-organisms or rock formations – but always (as far as I make out) in terms of being ‘indigenous’ to somewhere. So, there you are – now you have a sparkling new word to add to your already enormous vocab. (At which point you respond: ‘Kel, I’m way ahead of you – I already knew this word. So there!’) And if you are now interested in the poetry of Seamus Heaney, Google his poem ‘Digging’ (him thinking about his father as he sits at his desk writing). It really is great poetry!