It was early January 2001 and I was walking down to Bromsgrove for my regular Saturday afternoon drink with my mate Warren. We were discussing a program that had been on BBC2 with Jonathan Meades presenting it. It was called something along the lines, "Queen Victoria is Alive and Well and Living in the 21st Century".
Meades can be a pretentious git and his use of English is particularly arty-farty. I noted how he had a propensity to use '-ism' as a suffix for almost any word he liked. I commented that, "I wouldn't be surprised to hear him say jismism", and we laughed like schoolboys at the thought of it.
So the word had been formed but it had no meaning. Until Warren mentioned it at work the following week and he and his colleagues created a meaning for it! When someone used a sentence involving the word 'come' that could be misinterpreted as something rude - that was a jismism. A good example is, "Is he going to come tonight?". Or, "What time is he coming?". And what about the Dexy's Midnight Runners song, "Come on Eileen"? Admit it - you'll never sing along to that with a straight face again!
The new word and definition can now be stated:
jismism ['jizemizem] A double entendre involving the word 'come'.
