kebab

verb

to act aggressively or to threaten someone

• Kebabbed by militant vegans

• If you carry on like this I am going to kebab you

hen having a few too many drinks in a pub and I am with people whom I casually know and I want to maintain a conversation that's not hundred per cent drunken and boring you may hear me talk about how clever the English language is. There are many reasons why English is a unique and very clever language, all of which are fascinating in themselves. For instance, English is the only European language I am aware of in which one can have a rock band called "Man Eating Sharks," in which case we can never be sure as to who's eating whom. But the chief reason for my admiration is that anything is allowed in English, unlike French where you can have words banned by acts of parliament or even by committees, or Greek where you can have an entire language made up and enforced upon the hapless Greeks by their parliament. To make my point clear in these drunken moments I used to offer the following example

"Carry on like that and I'll kebab you!"

as a perfectly valid sentence. I'd follow the sentence stating that upon threatening someone in such manner surely they would not dare question the validity of your phrase, nor would they be far off its meaning.

kebab photo by pdiveris CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The point was that one can say anything in English and no one would question this or that word, no word-Nazis would attack you or your word or try to have it banished, nor would the House of Commons legislate against it. Furthermore, by allowing any word to enter its vocabulary, English, far from surrendering, is actually assimilating it, appropriating it. That, I'd say, lies at the heart of British colonialism, it all started with the language! At that point some people would cry that I'd gone a step too far and either offer me another drink or find a way to leave without making a scene. Anyway, you can imagine my surprise today when browsing the magazines at a WH Smith I came across "the Critic," a new magazine with MY verb featuring on its cover! I am not sure if I feel vindicated or cheated to be honest.