The wets, the drys and those who are ready for all weathers. (And Another Thing).(Brief Article)

Publication: Spectator

Publication Date: 28-DEC-02

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2002 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)

I am grateful to those anonymous benefactors who give us new, useful words. `Bonk', for instance--accurate and unambiguous but somehow inoffensive, unlike that other four-letter word. I like `wet' too (its opposite, `dry', is an afterthought and less satisfying and resonant). Contrary to what most people think, `wet' is not Etonian slang--from `wet bobs' and `dry bobs'--but surfaced as a political term of abuse via White's Club in the age of Randolph Churchill, and was then popularised by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. It has, however, a public-school twang about it, and probably goes back to Arnold's Rugby, deep in the 19th century. A schoolboy alternative is `drip'. The OED's earliest citation is 1916, from `Taffrail', pseudonym for Captain H. Taprell Dorling (1883-1968), who had a long, adventurous naval career culminating in a key staff job under that exceedingly dry admiral, Andrew Cunningham. In his bestseller, Pincher Martin, he has an old salt say, `I'll give you a clip 'longside the ear'ole if you're ain't careful. Don't act so wet.' There is a famous definition of `wet' by GBS in Candida.

I find `wet' useful for argumentative rhetoric, i.e., when the object is not to persuade but to punish an opponent....

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.