“Cheer up love, it might never happen”: a sentence guaranteed to make any glum passer-by feel even worse than they did already. Judging by the sea of frowns at England’s football match against Slovenia this week, or among the audiences of every election debate, many of us feel that it has already happened.
Disgruntlement and disapproval abound, and we are it seems ready to cock a snook – or, when it comes to Gareth Southgate, a few plastic beer glasses – at anything and anyone who doesn’t come up to scratch. Have we finally reached the “pessimum”, the worst of all possible worlds?
It might feel as though we have nothing to deliver but a universal thumbs-down, but language tells us that, if anything, such a dismal outlook is nothing new.
Take the word “happy”, which didn’t appear in English until the 14th century. Until then, you would simply be “glad”. When it did come, happiness leant heavily upon chance. “Hap” meant “fortune” or “fate”, so that “perhaps” means “if fate allows”, a “happening” was a chance occurrence, and “hapless” became a description for someone who never has much luck at all.
The message seems to be that happiness has always been precarious, if not entirely random. In fact, a riffle through a historical thesaurus offers just 12 synonyms for “happy”, and over 50 for the opposite. Just like us, our words seem wired for pessimism.
After 30 years of studying them, it’s clear that much-loved library of dictionaries leans towards sadness. Words reflecting a pessimistic expectation – whether about the weather, politics, or other people – outweigh more positive choices by some margin. The lexicons for “ugly” and “stupid” are far fuller than those for beauty or success. Even words that start off neutrally can take on an edge as they sweep through time. “Ambitious” might simply express a drive to succeed, but it has also acquired a tacit edge of unscrupulousness.
Of course, approval, or the lack of it, is the theme of the moment, whether it involves the England football team or the party leaders seeking our votes. It is also a word with expectation built in: “proof” and “approve” are close relations, meaning that, linguistically at least, approval won’t be given without proof that it is deserved. Without it, many of us stick to the pessimism corner.
Richard Osman summed it up for an awful lot of us during the final group matches of the Euros this week: “If the mathematics of England’s last-16 draw are confusing you, it’s really very simple. If Portugal win this game then England will be losing 2-0 to the Netherlands in the last-16, but if Georgia win it then England will be losing on penalties to Slovakia.”
It is a cynicism born of experience of course, the adjunct to our stereotypical self-deprecation. But being “cynical” wasn’t always so popular. The original Cynics were members of a school of ancient Greek philosophers who spurned wealth and luxury in favour of self-knowledge. According to one theory their name began with the Greek word “kuon”, meaning “dog”, with the implication that any cynic was “dog-like” and churlish.
“Sarcasm”, another of our popular retreats, has an even heavier history. It too is rooted in Greek, in this case the word “sarkazein”, “to tear flesh” (which also yielded the word “sarcophagus”). A sarcastic remark carries a nasty bite.
Such negativity may be long-standing, but it’s not necessarily good for us. Psychologists estimate that over half of us are low on the “positive affective” spectrum, as opposed to those with sunnier dispositions who are higher on that spectrum. In a scary and unreliable world, we have evolved to be prepared for the worst. And yet more and more we are hearing that “manifesting” good outcomes in our lives will help make them happen.
The same seems to be true of language, where our choice of vocabulary can be directly proportional to our success and happiness. Research has shown that not only are those who draw on a wider range of vocabulary for their emotions better able to cope with them, but they can actively change their outlook with their word selection. Those with a bigger and more positive vocabulary are apparently happier, healthier, and more popular than the rest of us.
It’s far from an easy task. Given the chance, our language veers instinctively to the dark side. Perhaps we need more proof and fewer promises to guarantee our approval. Truthful testimony can be hard to find amongst the fakery – on which note, it’s worth saying that “testimony”, from the Latin “testis”, “witness”, and “testicles” are all etymologically one and the same. A man’s testicles were believed to be “witnesses” to his virility. Perhaps talking bollocks has always been part of the deal.
That thumbs-down that we seem so intent on giving, by the way, is another lesson in pessimistic thinking. It’s well known that its story began in Roman amphitheatres and the traditional gesture of approval or disapproval for a gladiator’s efforts. But the original was the reverse of our current assumption: the Romans used “thumbs down” to signify that a beaten gladiator should be spared, while “thumbs up” was the signal for death.
Perhaps, then, we can all make a conscious effort to give the ancient thumbs down to Gareth Southgate and to others populating the current stage. Who knows what might happen if we compliment instead of attack, and predict the optimum not the pessimum? As Shakespeare taught us so eloquently, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”.
Susie Dent is a lexicographer and etymologist. She has appeared in Dictionary Corner on Countdown since 1992, and co-hosts with Gyles Brandreth the podcast Something Rhymes with Purple