Some of you will know that my first degree was in Linguistics – the study of language. Whilst this knowledge is now sadly incredibly rusty, I still get a little frisson of excitement when someone introduces me to a new word, and I couldn’t wait to share it on here!
During a bit of small talk in one of my Mental Health First Aid courses this week, we reflected on how sometimes language can constrain our communication. We have words like “ok” and “fine” to convey how we feel (or how we feel about something), but sometimes they’re not enough. “Meh” is good for texts and emails, but the group largely felt like we wouldn’t use this in spoken communication.
For a long time now, me and my eldest niece use the phrase “comme ci, comme ça”. I’m in no way fluent in French, but I understand it to be equivalent to “so-so”: neither good nor bad. My niece and I use it to discuss food, experiences, feelings… anything where I don’t want to pressure her into expressing enthusiasm for something that she didn’t truly love, whilst also not writing off a whole experience as “terrible”. We obviously also feel awfully cosmopolitan and educated for using a little Franglais in our everyday parlance!
One of the group told us about the phrase “frobly-mobly”, a 19th century phrase which Suzie Dent so evocatively defines for us here:
So, the next time you’re feeling a bit meh, you’ve now got a new (or in fact, very old!) way to describe it!
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