AskOxford: Wantaway, snoutcast, smirting

With the World Cup looming ever nearer, the beautiful game will be uppermost in the minds of many at present. While some England supporters are reported to have been swotting up on must-know German vocabulary (mainly of the order of ein Bier bitte) in the interests of Fanfreundschaft (fan friendship), such terms are unlikely to be absorbed into English or become contenders for an Oxford dictionary entry.

Wantaway, on the other hand, is familiar to most footy fans: it's been around for a while, especially in sports journalism and on fan sites. An adjective used to describe those players who are eager to leave their current club for pastures new (and generally a more lucrative contract), wantaway often carries connotations of greed or disloyalty to the club concerned, as shown by the earliest citation (1989) on our databases:

Wantaway is a compound derived from the informal verb phrase want away, shorthand for 'want to leave' - there are similar phrases such as want out or want in, which crop up in general contexts in both British and US English. The adjective has recently morphed into a noun, as evidenced by this snappy headline from the Scottish Daily Record (28 April 2006):

We've also noticed that wantaway is making inroads into other sports and even the wider culture: there have been references to wantaway Rugby Union players and Formula One racing drivers, wantaway Brits buying second homes abroad, and wantaway stars of TV series. If it all gets too much, there's a lot to be said for joining the wantaway sportsphobes who are fleeing the Fussballfest in favour of a distant mountainside or tropical beach.

Snoutcast

As nicotinees from New Zealand to Norway will be aware, health concerns have ensured that ciggy-free environments are becoming increasingly popular. With the ban on smoking on public places introduced in Scotland earlier this year and one set to become law elsewhere in the United Kingdom in 2007, it's inevitable that several new coinages describing smokers and their activities will begin clamouring for a place in the language.

Although smirting and the rarer variant smlirting (smoking outside and flirting) have already had a fair bit of media attention, it's debatable whether people, even if indulging in the activity, are actually using these words. The same goes for snoutcast, though I confess to a sneaking fondness for this one. It perfectly describes anyone obliged to smoke outdoors and is a blend of snout in the slang sense 'tobacco' (or 'a cigarette') and outcast.

Although snout can also mean 'a nose' or 'a police informer', lexicographers are divided as to whether the words are linked or not. The 'tobacco' sense was first recorded in 1885 and is known chiefly as prisoners' slang. One explanation, which links neatly with current prohibitions, is put forward in The Cassell Dictionary of Slang (Jonathon Green, 1998). This suggests that, during a time when tobacco was banned from prisons, inmates would rub their noses to hide illicit smoking. Strangely, there's no sign of snoutlaw as yet, but given people's linguistic ingenuity and the likelihood of further anti-smoking legislation, it can only be a matter of time.