50 words for snow

It's said the Inuit people have 50 words for snow, because it is something they contend with daily. Demolition has almost as many expressions for non-payment, presumably for the same reason.

It is a long-standing piece of folklore that the Inuit people have fifty words for snow. While Kate Bush found the idea evocative enough to title an album after it, modern linguists are rather more sceptical, arguing that the structure of the Inuit language simply allows for endless descriptions of frozen water rather than fifty distinct nouns.

Yet, the myth persists because it feels instinctively true. If you are quite literally surrounded by something every waking hour of your life, you would naturally seek out new and interesting ways to categorise it.

This might explain why the British demolition and construction industry has developed such a rich, colourful vocabulary for the things that define its landscape.

Consider the excavator. To the person on the street, it is a digger or a JCB. To the operator, it is a 360 or a hydraulic excavator. Should it happen to be mounted on tyres rather than tracks, it becomes, rather affectionately, a “rubber duck”.

When a machine develops a fault, it has “broke down”, “conked out”, “blown up”, “gone phut”, “given up the ghost”, “packed up”, “gone on the blink”, “gone kaput”, “died”, or my dad’s personal favourite: “it’s gone up the pictures”.

However, the true depth of the industry’s dictionary is revealed when things go even more wrong. It is a truly telling reflection of the job that we have so many ways to describe the less positive events.

Falls from height remain the industry’s most lethal hazard, yet the language used to describe them is often strangely softened, perhaps as a way of managing the underlying dread. A fall is referred to as “a spill”, “a tumble”, or “a plunge”. On the darker side of site humour, it is simply “taking the quick way down.” Similarly, those unfortunate enough to be struck by falling debris or moving plant haven’t just suffered a medical emergency; they’ve “caught a stray” “been clobbered”, or “got a whack.”

Companies “slide into liquidation”, “call in the administrators”, “shut up shop”, “go bust”, “go under”, “go down”, “go pop”, “go to the wall”, “go belly-up”, “go tits up”, “close the gates”, “pull down the shutters”, “fold”, “collapse”, “shut down”, “close down”, and “go broke”.

But, in the world of synonyms, there is one experience that reigns supreme in the demolition and construction sector: the unpaid debt. Perhaps because it is the most common grievance, the list of expressions for being financially left high and dry is exhaustive.

In this industry, you don’t just fail to get paid or lose money. You have: been “taken for a ride”, “taken to the cleaners”, “taken a hit”, been “knocked”, “mugged off”, shafted”, “tucked up”, or “had your leg lifted”. You’ve been “stitched up”, “turned over”, “taken for a mug”, “taken for a lemon”. You’ve been “taken in”, “duped”, “hosed”, “suckered”, “stiffed”, “stung”, “fooled”, “fleeced”, “cheated”, “swindled”, “milked”, “diddled”, “screwed” “strung along”, “finagled”, “hoodwinked” and “bamboozled”.

It’s not, perhaps, as prosaic as “50 words for snow”, and Kate Bush is unlikely to write a song about it. But it speaks volumes for the frequency with which the industry faces unpaid bills that it has so many expressions to describe it.