- guardian.co.uk, Monday May 19 2008 10.01 BST
- The Guardian, Monday May 19 2008
"It is our word for 'fantastic'," confirms Wendy Anderson, an expert in Scottish English at Glasgow University. "I suspect the Krankies came first. It's quite a nice-sounding word, but it's certainly not the general Scottish word for it - there are so many dialects and words to express such a common sentiment." She directs me to the online Dictionary of the Scottish Language, which reveals that the Scottish for "fantastic" is in fact "fantastik".
The word "fantastic" has been in English since the 1300s, adapted from the French "fantastique". However, there are many regional variations - Lancashire has "gradely", while "purely belter" is originally a Mackem (Sunderland) phrase, now used by Geordies. "Bostin" is the equivalent Black Country expression, while in the West Country "gurt" means "great", and "reeming" is "very good, or superior" in Kent.
"There are a lot of near-synonyms, but all carry slightly different meanings," says Clive Upton, Professor of Modern English Language at Leeds University, famous for its Survey of English Dialects. He points out that many variations on "fantastic" would have more of a "social or generational distribution" rather than a regional. "My parents might have said 'top-hole'. And then you think of the words we used in the 60s, such as 'fab'.
A lot of it comes down to who people are watching on TV at that time." So, if we have learned nothing else, it is probably a safe bet that in the 1980s, Gary McAllister was watching the Krankies.
