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Dictionary publishers like to end the year by announcing the new words that that they have added to the lexicon based on the frequency with which they have appeared in print during the preceding 12 months. Not all of these words are new, and this year’s crop consists mainly of familiar words that have undergone shifts in meaning. Thus, Cambridge nominated ‘manifest’, a verb closely related to ‘manifesto’ that means ‘to make known, to show or make explicit’. Now, apparently, it can be used to describe the belief that wanting something badly enough is more likely to make it happen. Dua Lipa, the singer-songwriter, is quoted as saying that she had ‘manifested performing at Glastonbury’, meaning that she had ‘written, wished, and dreamt about it’ for many years prior to doing so in 2024.
Three of the nominated words of the year in 2024 relate to social media: Merriam-Webster’s word was ‘polarization’ (sic: it is an American dictionary) to describe the way that issues tend to be presented now as black and white, with no subtle shades of grey. Dictionary.com proposed ‘demure’, meaning to refrain from the kind of excessive, forceful, aggressive, and abusive language that characterises so much social media interaction, and instead to remain calm, composed, and courteous. Oxford nominated ‘brain rot’, defined as ‘mental fatigue from digital overload’ (to which Sherds would like to add ‘and excessively long online meetings’).
No matter how well-read you are or how wide your vocabulary might be, there are always new words to learn. Sherds discovered the original meaning of ‘pittance’ recently, while reading James G Clark’s The Dissolution of the Monasteries (Yale University Press, 2021). The Oxford English Dictionary defines this as ‘a very small or inadequate amount of money’ and gives as an example: ‘he paid his workers a pittance’. But historically it meant the opposite: derived from the Latin pietas, it referred to an extra allowance of food or wine paid for by a donor in return for prayers on the anniversary of his or her death or to mark a seasonal commemoration, such as a particular saint’s feast day. James Clark’s point was that the number of pittances was so great in some monastic institutions that special foods were typically being served on two days out of seven, undermining the monastic principles of fasting, sobriety, and abstinence.
Jumping on a bandwagon
‘Charrette’ is another word previously unknown to Sherds. It is to be found in the British Museum’s 2024 Christmas message to supporters, in which the Director, Nicholas Cullinan, referred to a new display in the Round Reading Room featuring models and proposals from the five teams shortlisted in the architectural competition to redesign the museum’s Western Range. The Director’s message contained a link to an ‘exclusive video for supporters’ that ‘offers insight into the charrette we conducted with the shortlisted teams this autumn as part of the selection process’.
Apparently, ‘charrette’ refers to a collaborative process for arriving at a solution to a problem by integrating the views of a diverse group of people with an emphasis on creative innovation. Unknowingly, Sherds has been involved in any number of ‘charrettes’ over the years, but we have missed a trick by referring to them as plain and simple workshops (back in the last century they might have been called ‘brainstorming’ sessions, but that term is no longer used, even though leading epilepsy charities have said they do not consider it offensive).
Derived from the French for cart, ‘charrette’ originally meant working up to the deadline: working en charrette, ‘in the cart’, meant applying the finishing touches to the design even as the product was being conveyed by cart to the client – perhaps like Mozart feverishly working through the night to compose the overture to Don Giovanni for performance the next day. Now it is mainly used in the architectural profession as a technique for engaging stakeholders and of avoiding future conflict. Sherds suspects that many more charrettes are going to be needed in the next five years as a result of the Westminster Government’s plan to build 1.5 million homes between now and the 2029 election.
Could Cambridge lose its cows?
And how about ‘pinder’ or ‘pounder’? This word, again new to Sherds, refers to a manorial official employed to round up animals found to be grazing unlawfully on somebody else’s land. Perhaps uniquely, Cambridge City Council still employs a pinder, whose job it is to rescue cattle that get into trouble grazing the city centre’s commons – for example, by tripping over boat mooring lines and falling into the river, or being injured by dogs or collisions with cyclists and vehicles.
The sight, sound, and smell of heifers and bullocks grazing the banks of the Cam along Granchester Meadows has been one of the joys of Cambridge life for centuries, bringing the countryside into the heart of the city and maintaining a link to its medieval past. Now the council wants to pass the rising costs of the pinder service on to the cattle owners.
Farmers already pay £75 per head of cattle for access to the commons, and Mark Drew, one of the farmers with grazing rights, says it would not be economical to do so if he has to pay any more for the pinder service. He argues that his cattle save the council money: ‘if they lose the cattle, they’re going to have to mow the commons’. Another cattle owner says that she could not afford to pay the thousands of pounds needed to support the pinder service, but believes that urban farming is important for keeping people in touch with food and livestock. Public opposition to a previous attempt to withdraw funding led to the pinder service continuing, but the council now maintains it has to cut its ‘substantial and growing budget deficit’.
Candle lamps
Staying in Cambridge, Historic England reported in November 2024 that three street lamps had been stolen at various times between about 13 September and 1 October from Jesus Lane, St John’s Street, and Trumpington Street. The lamps are listed, but do not imagine they consist of something ornate and Victorian: these are known as Richardson Candles and they are part of a group of 120 street lights installed in 1957 to replace the city’s pre-war gas lamps.
The Cambridge City Surveyor of the day considered commercially available lamps at the time to be unsuitable for use in streets full of historic character, so he approached the Royal Fine Art Commission for expert advice. They suggested Sir Albert Richardson – best known for the design of Bracken House in the City of London as the head office of the Financial Times, the first post-war building in England to be listed (at Grade II*) – as a designer for the new lamps. Richardson also loathed post-war street lighting – especially lamps made of concrete – describing one located outside his home in Ampthill (Bedfordshire) as ‘a monstrosity’.
Richardson seized on the commission to design the new street lighting for Cambridge as an opportunity to realise his own mid-century taste for simplicity. The resulting lamps consist of a tall tubular lantern of translucent glass containing three or four fluorescent tubes, mounted on a slim, fluted column of bronze-coloured cast iron; a variation on this design consists just of the lantern, affixed by brackets to a building wall. The design was not all that original, for it was a simplified version of the REVO Festival lamp, designed in 1951 by the REVO Electric Co. Ltd for the streets of central Birmingham and named after that year’s Festival of Britain.
Nearly half of the original Cambridge lamps survive, all listed at Grade II. The list description refers to the ‘bespoke design, of high-quality materials and elegant proportions, the streamlined form of which has been designed specifically to be in sympathy with the perpendicular lines of the historic Cambridge townscape’, adding that ‘Cambridge is the last city in the UK to retain its own custom-designed lighting stock from the post-war period’.
Historic England described the ‘unexplained disappearance of three of the lamps’ as an ‘apparent heritage crime’. Sherds wonders if there really is a thriving black market for such plain and functional products? Is it not more likely that they will turn up one day as trophies in some college bar or rugby club? Or perhaps contractors removed them while digging up the pavement, put them in a store, and simply forgot to put them back again when they completed their work.
