Buckshee

Those who had a father or grandfather who served in the Canadian military during World War Two are likely to have heard the word “buckshee”. My Dad used it all the time. I’m not sure I ever used the word, and my kids probably have never heard it. With the passing of his generation, the word has slipped into oblivion. That’s how language works, new words enter, old words pass, just as we ourselves do.

In the First World War, British servicemen in Egypt and the Middle East picked up a bit of Arabic, including the word baksheesh (بخشش). In Arabic, baksheesh connotes gracious generosity on the part of the giver. So, “Baksheesh, Tommy!” was offering the serviceman an opportunity to be gracious and generous. The soldier understood it to be “Give me something for free!”

Before long the word “buckshee” passed into army slang, meaning a freebie, a perk, an extra, a bonus, or an off-the-record goodie. My Dad and his friends used it all the time: “I got an extra day’s holiday, buckshee!”

Many in my generation have no idea what our children and grandchildren are talking about, and in turn, they often look at us curiously as we speak. “Grandad, what does groovy mean?”

Words which have meaning to one generation may connote something altogether different to another. Take “booty”, for example. To my generation it has to do with pirates, to my kids’ generation, well, if you don’t know, ask them.

Consider the word “holidays” which were originally “holy days”, that is, special days designated by one’s religion, whether Christmas, Hannukah, or Ramadan. Over time, because these days generally also resulted in time off work, the word “holiday” came equally to mean any “time off work” such as Labour Day, and by our times, little of the religious connotation remains.

Language purists “have a bird” (have a fit, lose their minds) when words shift meaning, when new words are introduced, and when older usages and spellings slide into oblivion. We needn’t be so prissy, language evolves, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Consider Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written in the everyday language of six hundred years ago. Here’s what he wrote (and here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MJzr6buuQg) and here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3y88HGb6Hc) how it sounded):

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye,
So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

Middle English sounded quite German, with a good dose of French vocabulary thrown in, to us in the 21st century a barely-intelligible foreign tongue. What’s happened in just over six centuries? Our language has continued to pick the pockets of its neighbours, modify (and sometimes overturn) word meanings, and fiddled with (but never really fixed) spelling and grammar.

That’s the nature of language. And it’s all buckshee.