Do you like eggs? Do you like corn? Then you’ll love eggcorns. Eggcorns are those common expressions that are frequently mispronounced, like ‘Doggy-Dog world’ (it’s dog-eat-dog, you numpty), ‘on tenderhooks’ (tenterhooks, whatever they are*) and ‘damp squid’ (squib, man, squib!).
There are many types of squid, ranging from the delicious little ones that you might eat cooked in their own ink in an Asturian cafe to the colossal ones that swallow whole ships before slipping back into the lightless profundity of the deep ocean; but there is no record of anyone ever encountering a squid that wasn’t damp. Dampness is, you might say, a pre-requisite of being a squid.
Anyway, without labouring the point, it’s important to understand that a squib is not – as you may have been led to believe – a non-magical person born to magical parents, it’s a small firework; hence, a damp squib is something that promises the spectacular but fizzles disappointingly out. Like England.
The surname Squib is of Saxon origin and proliferated from a noble seat in Dorset in the 13th century. I also had a great aunt (ie an aunt of my father’s, as opposed to a really outstanding aunt, although she was pretty ace, to be fair) called Squibby. That wasn’t her real name. Her real name was Muriel and I never got to the bottom of why she was called Squibby. Was it because her surname was Squib? No. Was it because she promised the spectacular but fizzled disappointingly out? Not in my experience. Was it because she lived in the lightless profundity of the deep ocean and her sisters couldn’t pronounce ‘squid’? I think I would have noticed.
Anyway, my recollection of Squibby is that she was cheeky and she sat on the sofa in that classic pose of the turn-of-the-century generation of dowager: sherry in hand and legs akimbo. See, we always get there in the end.
Akimbo is itself something of an eggcorn. It looks like it might have originated in Swahili or Algonquin or possibly Japanese, but it is actually a mispronunciation of an Old English term ‘in kenebowe’, which referred to a stance with the legs apart, hands on hips and elbows jutting out in a sharp (keen) arc (bow). The sort of pose Errol Flynn adopted when playing Robin Hood.
These days, while the dictionary definitions still cite the defiant Robin hood elbows pose, ‘akimbo’ only ever seems to be used in reference to legs. Like one of those birds that clean the teeth of crocodiles, or those sucky fish that hitch a ride on sharks, it has secured its survival amid the upheavals of linguistic evolution by going wherever legs go, ready to perform its adjectival function at the drop of a hat. Or a flash of frilly smalls.
*Tenterhooks were hooks in a frame (tenter) that wool or cloth was suspended on to stop it shrinking as it dried.
