Deadly

 April 4 Word of the Day: Deadly

 

“DEADLY. This and ‘mortal’ are often synonymes now; thus, ‘a deadly wound’ or ‘a mortal wound’: but they are not invariably so; ‘deadly’ being always active, while ‘mortal’ is often passive, and signifying not that which inflicts death, but that which suffers death; thus, ‘a mortal body’, or body subject to death, but not now ‘a deadly body.’” Thus, Richard Chenevix Trench in his ‘A select glossary of English words used formerly in senses different from their present’ Second edition, revised and improved (London, Parker, 1859). To what extent Trench’s Victorian senses of the word have any relationship to the contemporary Australian Indigenous use of ‘deadly’ is wide open to discussion. ‘Deadly’ here is a term of highest praise: excellent, great, fantastic, cool, awesome. Emerging in the seventies, such is its widespread use that by the nineties national awards were initiated for excellence in music, sport, entertainment, and community achievement among Indigenous Australians called, very straightforwardly, the Deadly Awards. Theories for the emergence of this present sense of ‘deadly’ are based as much on guesswork and circumstance as empirical evidence. That the adjective is used in Ireland in similar positive ways is one thing, while the OED tells us that ‘deadly’ used in the English colloquial sense of extremely or excessively dates from at least the 16^th century. It’s worth keeping in mind the sense, too, of anything about which there can be no argument at all, like death itself: to stamp anything as ‘deadly’ is to say that that’s the final word. At which stage a word turns from slang into common speech is a perennial question of vocabulary. Its use in this awesome sense may and in fact does differ in meaning and cultural value in the Irish, English, and Australian contexts. The word ‘deadly’ for First Nations Australians will have significances all their own, and within the reality of the fatal impact. Trench continues: “It was otherwise once. ‘Deadly’ is the constant word in Wiclif’s Bible, wherever in the later versions ‘mortal’ occurs,” then he quotes, “Elye was a deedli man lyk us, and in preier he preiede that it schulde not reyne on the erthe, and it reynede not three yeeris and sixe monethis. Jam. V. 17. Wiclif.” In the Letter of James, Elijah is presented as a ‘deadly man’, which is to say mortal just like us, but that through prayer we like him can do things that are not only good, excellent, cool, but even awesome. Any body at all.