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CALENDAR Sunday 20 February: Seventh Sunday of the Year (Year A) Monday 21 February: Feria or St Peter Damian, Priest & Doctor Tuesday 22 February: Chair of St Peter, Apostle Wednesday 23 February: St Polycarp, Bishop & Martyr Thursday 24 February: Feria Friday 25 February: Feria Saturday 26 February: Feria Sunday 27 February: Eighth Sunday of the Year


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Independently audited certified average circulation per issue of THE TABLET for issues distri buted between 1 January and


30 June 2010 is 22,000. Volume 265 No. 8883 ISSN: 0039 8837


THE LANGUAGE GAME


Nudge nudge, wink wink JOHN MORRISH


BEN FOGLE, the television presenter, used a “nudge” to tackle a fox that was menacing his dog. Robert Huth gave the ball a “nudge” with his knee to equalise for Stoke City against Sunderland. And David Cameron hopes that a metaphorical “nudge” will be enough to make us change our unhealthy ways. “A nudge is a gentle push or prod, especially with the elbow, usually intended as a prompt or hint to someone,” says the Oxford English Dictionary. “Also, a slight shove given to an object, especially to dislodge or free it.” The word is first recorded as a verb, in Thomas Hobbes’ translation of The Odyssey, published in 1677. Odysseus, pretending to be someone else, is telling his old goatherd Eumaeus, who doesn’t recognise him, a tale about the siege of Troy: “When a third part of the night was gone, I nudg’d Ulysses, who did next me lie.” The noun is recorded first in 1699, in The Adventures of Covent Garden, a novella pub- lished anonymously but most likely written by the playwright George Farquhar. “Peregrine would have answered, but a pluck by the Sleeve obliged him to turn from Selinda to entertain a Lady mask’d who had given him the Nudg.” The word’s origins are obscure. It might be related to a Shetland Isles dialect word, “to nug” (pronounced to rhyme with jug), mean- ing to prod or nod the head. That in turn is said to be related to various Scandinavian words, notably the Norwegian nugge, to push or rub. It remained an uncommon word for a long time. In 1825, the noun appeared in a glossary of “North Country Words”. An article in the New Monthly Magazine a year later used it with caution: “She was leaning on my arm; and I could feel her every now and then giving me a nudge, as it is called, which I afterwards discovered were hints that I should buy some oranges.”


The figurative use, in which to nudge is to hint, remind or steer gently in a desired direc- tion, is first recorded in an ode by the poet and humorist Thomas Hood, from about 1845. He suggests that judges might discourage crime by “giving tipplers gentle nudges” towards tem- perance.


Giving tipplers gentle nudges sounds like


a policy that would appeal to our present gov- ernment, which has come under the influence of a book called Nudge, written by two Americans: economist Richard Thaler and lawyer Cass Sunstein. Nudge: improving decisions about wealth, health, and happi ness, to give it its full title, was first published in 2008. It preaches “choice architecture”, in which choices can be presented in ways that help to achieve desired outcomes. In other words, if you put fruit by the supermarket till rather than sweets, people will buy more fruit. In another genuine example, if you paint a fly inside a public urinal, men will aim at it instead of sprinkling carelessly around: they have tried it at Amsterdam airport, and it has apparently reduced splashing by 80 per cent. The authors call their philosophy “libertar- ian paternalism”: it allows governments and others to let people make their own decisions (rather than legislating for behaviour), while gently steering them in the direction they want them to go. So attractive did David Cameron find this idea that he met Professor Thaler, recommended the book to his MPs as sum- mer reading, and has now set up his own “behavioural insight team”, colloquially known as the “nudge unit”, inside Number 10. Sadly, nudging may not work, according to health researchers. For every nudge in the direc- tion of leafy green vegetables and jogging, there is a hefty shove in the direction of pizza and slobbing out in front of the box.


Glimpses of Eden


FEBRUARY, AND the land I’m walking through wears a pinched, starved look. Skeletal hedges follow me like sleepless eyes; these


scourges of blackthorn and haw hold no comfort. The grass is sere, as though stricken by some catastrophe. What a difference a month will make but today the earth remains under austerity measures, bitten as a moonscape. Maybe it’s because the cold began in


November that this winter feels longer than others. The effects of its bitterness have been far ranging. Back in January, after weeks of being thickly iced over, our little pond thawed to reveal a knot of dead frogs. Bloated and grey, they had drowned as the air bubble under the


ice was exhausted: at least twenty corpses in a space not much larger than a baby’s bath. It was the grey of their distended bodies, and their pitiably outstretched legs, which upset me. Some of their toes had strained for life so desperately that they longer seemed webbed. But, like February itself, such disasters are never the last word. Frogs often face similar Armageddons; their numbers easily bounce back given the right environment. Thinking about this, I climbed a stile on to a woodland ride. I hadn’t gone very far when there was a sudden movement in the leaf mould. A beau- tifully green frog, with liquid topaz eyes, was emerging from its hole. A single female like this can lay 4,000 eggs.


Jonathan Tulloch


40 | THE TABLET | 19 February 2011


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