Reverse Knob

Try to explain this to me if you can.

In my prime I just did not bonk very often.

Now in my sixth decade I find that  I am bonking with great frequency.

This could happen at any time.

There are a few tell tale signs. Perhaps a bit of lightness of head, the first sense of a blurring of vision in the corner of the eye, the perception of my scalp tightening as the pre-cursor to a headache, muscle cramps and an overwhelming craving for a Mars chocolate bar. In extreme cases of bonking I have almost fallen off my bicycle.

That word....Bonk.

In context I am of course referring to the definition of Bonk to mean the experience of sudden and severe fatigue in an endurance sports event due to glycogen depletion.

For those who did not realise that it was first and foremost a sporting term my revelations in the first few sentences may have conjured up all sorts of horrible images, in themselves promoting feelings of nausea and contractions of bodily parts.

That is because the same word, bonk, is used to describe amongst many other things, an act of sexual intercourse.

I picked up on the many meanings of simple words from the arrival in my email inbox of a short piece from the crowd funding organisation, stateside, Kickstarter.

I came across them after pledging some cash towards restoring the Spacesuit of Neil Armstrong in the "Reboot the Suit" campaign by the Smithsonian Institute.

They (Kickstarter, not The Smithsonian)  are fronting Wordnik in saving a million words and phrases from obscurity by collecting them together and giving them a definition so that they can seek refuge in the dictionaries of the world.

It seems that it takes a lot of actual use in practical language for definitions to be written and in particular many new words that are emerging do not have, as yet, fully documented ones. For these there is a form of suspension in what has been referred to as a lexical "dark matter".

In much the same way as Wikipedia invites contributions and comments, the team at Wordnik hope that collecting a million undefined words in one place will help people find, annotate and discuss them.

If there is in fact a word -lookupability-then that  is the goal of the campaign.

Back to that four letter word Bonk.

I have been amazed to read about its many wider definitions and meanings. It is used to describe something striking something else or coming into contact-illustrated by the sentence "She bonked her head going through a low doorway".

For those knowledgeable of verbs I have just used the transitive. The intransitive verb bonk describes a blow to the head or a hollow thud.

In popular culture bonk has been hijacked by skateboarders and snowboarders. The senior of the two, skateboarding, adopts it to mean hitting an object with the front wheels whilst in the air whereas on the slopes and runs it usually refers to coming into painful contact with a fir tree.

I have not used it to my knowledge when having a random meeting or in the case of a minor collision.

Unfortunately bonk has become a staple word of the British tabloid press as in its tacky and downright grubby application to the lewd and dubious behaviour of celebrities and wannabees and has been cheapened significantly.

Those of sharp eye and skilful at cryptic crosswords and puzzles will have noticed that bonk is "knob" written backwards which may explain its liberal use in kiss and tell and other exposes in the press.

I actually like the word for its comical connotations ,innuendo use and sheer sound more than anything else.

Bonk, Bonked, Bonking. As part of the Wordnik initiative it is actually possible to adopt bonk through Kickstarter.

Quick, find me my bank card.............

(As an added bonus it is, incidentally ,worth ten points in Scrabble)