Sometimes we English find a word too embarrassing so we codify it. We often speak of TLC {tender loving care) when we might be slightly self-conscious about the full version. DT was the result of the same kind of treatment. Delirium Tremens was so unpleasant it was reduced to initials. We give the same treatment to motor neurone disease and reduce it to the manageable MND.
Sometimes, magnificently, we have a new word coined for us. It describes something altogether splendid and causes no bother. This was the achievement of Miles Coverdale and we all owe him a huge debt for his inventiveness. He gave us the English word ‘lovingkindness’. The word did not exist before. Coverdale brought it into being.
Coverdale was rather special. Like Tyndale, he was a Bible translator. And for that he was chased from pillar to post. He produced the first complete English Bible. Small thanks he got for it. True, he was something of an amateur at translation. He had a patchy knowledge of Greek and Hebrew and worked from Latin and other translations. But his English was something else and when he came to the Hebrew word chesed, he knew what was required of him. This was a pivotal word but Coverdale saw there was no English equivalent. ‘Steadfast love’ comes somewhere near it but ‘near enough’ was not good enough for Coverdale.
Psalm 107 is, if you like, a meditation on the word. The psalmist finds a continuing pattern of consideration and love for his creature. His child is never forgotten, never neglected. We think of Hardy’s Mayor Casterbridge, a plump respected citizen one day, a destitute drifter the next, or Godfrey Cass, a sneering ne’er-do-well one moment, the next he loses his way in fog and drowns in a stone-pit. Circumstances change. God’s lovingkindness does not. He does not break the bruised reed or snuff out the smoking lax in the lamp.
Lovingkindness is the granite that determines the landscape. We do well to find our place in the loving purpose of God.
NEOLOGISMS
Other new words that have established themselves in the English language are:
banana republic, meme, nerd, workaholic, feminist.
NORTHGATE POETS
It’s poetry study time at St Michael’s, Northgate, Oxford. On three Tuesdays during Lent at 5.30 p.m. visitors to the church will be invited to consider George Herbert, Christina Rossetti and R.S. Thomas. Richard Smail leads the studies. St Michael’s is an inconspicuous church but its Saxon tower is said to be the oldest building in Oxford.
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