The meaning of doodah

'There are still things which have no name. Like the bits left in a crisp packet. Or those bits of the Moon that don't look like a human face'

My old friend and one-time neighbour Philip Howard was saying in The Times the other day that although English had the largest vocabulary of any language in the world, there were still plenty of gaps. It didn't, he pointed out, have words for "spaghetti" or "intifada", so it had to steal the corresponding foreign words, ie "spaghetti" and "intifada". And some words remained unstolen. There is in Hebrew a word for "your son's mother-in-law", he wrote. We have left it in Hebrew, he added.

Philip is not the only one to notice these gaps. The late Douglas Adams noticed them too. Indeed, he and John Lloyd wrote a book or two together called The Meaning Of Liff, which listed great screeds of meanings which had no corresponding words.

Douglas and John chose to pretend that place names should be used as the missing words, so that, for instance, they would say that the word for "newspaper cuttings pinned up on office walls because they are about people who have the same name as someone working in the office" were called Chorleys.

I have mislaid my copy, so I am not certain if that is a bona fide quote, but you get the idea. To be frank, I thought the place-name element was rather feeble, but the unnamed objects and activities were wonderfully observed and very funny.

And yet there are still things which have no name.

And there are more and more activities which have no name.

We never talk about these things and these activities, no doubt because they have no name.

But until they are talked about they will never be noticed, and christened, so today I would like to present my own very brief list of anonymous activities and artefacts which are crying out for a descriptive name. Here we go...

1) The way all available surfaces in a stationery shop are covered with coloured scribbles where people have tested pens and pencils, because the management is too mean to put out a test pad for the purpose.

2) The line of mud and dirt which builds up down the middle of a country lane, where the wheels of vehicles don't go.

3) The act of going into a bookshop and consulting books, guides, travel handbooks, dictionaries etc, and even making notes out of them, without the slightest intention of buying any of them.

4) The scrumpled-up paper and card which is stuffed into bags and suitcases in shops which sell bags and suitcases to make them look full and not deflated.

5) The act of picking up an electronic device which has been designed so that you really don't have to raise your voice, such as a microphone or a mobile phone, and then talking very loudly or even shouting into it. (Many politicians do this. Most American female singers do it at the end of every song.

6) The strange way in which, if you enter the premises of any broadcasting organisation, the TV monitor in the reception area will be showing a mute programme but the speakers are pushing out the local radio station, so that you get pictures of rhinos walking through Africa and a voice saying, "So, Brian, why don't you agree with Esme of Weston-super-Mare about Stephen Byers?"

7) The act of pushing down a tap in a washroom so that the water pours out of it, and then trying to pull the tap back up again to stop it pouring even though you know perfectly well that it won't work, and that the tap will stop pouring all by itself just after you go out of the room...

8) A Catholic priest who is mature enough to have no other sexual partners but mature women.

9) The irrational urge to keep your boarding card long after you have got off the plane at the other end.

10) The grim search to find another use for computer mouse mats now that new-generation computer mice no longer need mouse mats.

11) The smell made by water in vases after the flowers have died.

12) The act of being called by your first name, uninvited, by a person you have just met and already detest.

13) The marks left on your body by the removal of sticky plaster.

14) The act of telling God that you will believe in Him if he just gets you through this crisis, and then getting through the crisis, and then not believing in Him.

15) Objects stored up just in case they are useful for a school project, eg empty yoghurt pots, insides of lavatory rolls...

16) The insides of lavatory rolls.

17) The bits left in a crisp packet after all the crisps have been eaten.

18) All the bits on the full moon which don't look like a human face.