Why do we use the words we use?

THE word of 2014 is ‘vape’. It refers to electronic cigarettes, which gradually spread this year. Perhaps you were talking to someone and, suddenly, they made a movement towards their mouth.

The first time they did it, you didn’t know what it was. It looked like they were whispering words, that they couldn’t say out loud, into their hands; and then putting the secret in their jacket pocket.

You know that a word has gained currency when you are asked by an older relative: “And would you have heard of …?” Last year, it was ‘selfie’.

There is another word that should be recorded: the filler. The ‘ums’, ‘ems’, and ‘aahs’, the words that we use when we can’t think of what we want to say, the words that start sentences less abruptly or, more importantly, the words we say when we’re trying to avoid saying something else, these are fillers.

‘Like’ is one of these words. It’s been around for years, particularly in Cork, where it’s used as a substitute for breathing. Coincidentally, it also originated in the San Fernando Valley, in California. But whereas the Valley Girl was “like, whatever”, the Cork girl was “like, allergic”.

In the early years of this decade, the filler word was ‘so’. ‘So’ has always had lots of uses but, in the past while, you’ll have seen it at the start of sentences.

Sometimes it’s in a look-at-me statement: “So I’m single again”. This is a plea for attention, but the ‘so’ indicates that the pleader is being a real trooper about the whole thing. IT professionals use ‘so’ to soften the blow when explaining complex concepts to idiots. “So the plug goes in the wall.”

I’ve noticed politicians are now saying ‘so’ as a way of indicating dynamism, in whatever sort-of solution they are proposing: “So we’ve set up a task-force and they’ll be meeting in 2015”.

The filler words of 2014 have to be “I suppose”. Listen out for them. “I suppose” now peppers the answers of even the most erudite of speakers.

Sports people spend a lot of a post-match interviews “supposing”, as a way of avoiding saying that they won because they were better than their opponents. Their incidence is even higher when studio guests are looking ahead to a game.

This year’s All-Ireland hurling final preview programme, Up For The Match, was almost two-thirds pure supposition.

Suppose is not new. In Cork and Kerry, ‘I suppose’ has been abbreviated to the ultra-efficient ‘I boz’, and appears at the end of the sentence. The finest exponents are farmers standing in a field and conjecturing about the progress of the man driving heavy machinery. “He’ll hardly do both fields before the rain, I boz.

”Some advanced-level users will place it at the beginning and end of the sentence. “I boz the digger’ll hardly go through that gate I boz”; to which the reply is “I boz not”.

Everyone has their own modifier to soften what it is they are going to say.

If you hear me begin a sentence with “I’ll put it to you this way”, get ready for me to expound on some half-baked theory or rant that is largely taken from something a fella said to me in a pub once.

But by modifying the start of it, I’m distancing myself from the fallout. And what do I expect the filler word to be for 2015? So, I spose, well … em … let me put it to you this way …

Colm’s latest book - It’s Earlier Tis Getting The Christmas Book Of Irish Mammies is out now.