Please note this is an extract from my book ‘The Alternative Wordbook’ which features my original attempts at new words, tied together within a weird and subtle meta-narrative amongst the definitions (not very important). I’ll be sharing the chapters of the book, including essays on every letter in the alphabet, in consumable chunks or ‘chapters’ throughout the months and weeks that follow this, while I busy myself working on the next book which I definitely won’t be giving away for free eventually one day
The letter “b” is one of the most interesting of all the letters. Without a doubt – or perhaps rather, completely within doubt – “b” is the letter of existentialism. For any children harvested within the British education system, any discussion of this letter cannot begin without returning to a well-worn quotation fond in the memory, and still warm in the brain. Famously, it was of course Hamlet that wrote in his play “Shakespeare”:
Shakespeare: To “B” or not to “B”; that is the question. Whether to leave my word, un b’ed at all should this “b” my final suggestion? or do I let the “Dum” be raw? Un-end like a sentence pixie ore… Shall I compare “B” to a summer’s “A”, and hope in spring that “Duma” will be okay? Or shall I, like beaks with bristling balls be birdied into thoughts, and gall: When is a ding, not a ding? When it’s a dong, when the ladle hits the bell, and sings its sorrowful song…”
This curious passage comes at the climax of the play, in which the unruly protagonist, Reginald R. Shakespeare, must contemplate a letter to be sent to his b’trothed: Ariadne. In this letter, which is traditionally performed with an Allen key in hand, he must feign ignorance that he and Ariadne ever met, or else her father, Geoffrey Archer, will “strike his head from b’tween [shoulders]”, and the same fate be received by her. And so Shakespeare plots to remove Ariadne from his life, in the hope that she can be spared, and live as if they met in a dream. To live in love, in this case, is to die – but to live without death is to love the greater. Many will have learn’d this passage by heart, and few will forget its echoes in their lifetime, nor indeed the hilarious climax to the play, which made Hamlet his name, back when it was written in 1975.
Thus, the existentialist question is explored through life, love and “beauty”. It is only right that “b” is the dominant consonant in the short but complicated word “be” – barely even requiring the additional letter “e” at all, so implicit is the notion within the first letter. Even the word beauty holds within it the very “b” (and additional “e”) of that curious verb of essence – asking us to consider what life is if not to find what is beautiful (and beauty here not simply meaning visually attractive, but essentially vital, worthwhile and wonderful)? Precisely the question that the letter “b” signifies.
One of the most agreeable – and British – of all the insects was named after “b” as its life was never understood. Why bees were so violently yellow and black – colours so often ignored by the animal kingdom – and why they would spend their days hovering in parks left scientists and insect enthusiasts (insecticides) puzzled. This was until, sometime in the nineteenth century, when someone followed some and found where they slept at night: in complex honey making factories. Until this time bees were considered useless, their occupation understood to be aligned with bourgeois pursuits – fluttering around in gardens, sniffing flowers, and occasionally hanging out near alcohol – and so bees became associated with the celebration of many of the virtues held dear to the existentialists, looking for something more relaxing in life. Thus, what were formerly known as “stingwits” became what we know today as “bees”, and this is where the ironic phrase “busy as a bee” emerged from.
Also, “B” on its side looks like a pair of breasts, so yeah.
Thanks for reading!
