Bedint (pronounced buh-dent (U) or bed-ent (non-U))
(1) Something which suggests
a bourgeois aspiration to the tastes or habits of the upper classes.
(2) A generalized
expression of disapproval of anyone or anything not in accord with the social
standards or expectation of the upper classes.
(3) Any behavior thought
inappropriate (ie something of which one for whatever reason disapproves).
1920s: A coining attributed to variously to (1)
English writer and diplomat Harold Nicolson (1886–1968), (2) his wife, the
writer Vita Sackville-West (1892–1962) or (3) speculatively, Vita
Sackville-West’s family. The word is of Germanic
origin and although there are variants, a common source is the Middle Dutch bedienen, the construct being be- + dienen. The
Middle Dutch be- was from the Old
Dutch bi- & be-, from the Middle High German be-, from the Old High German bi-,
from the Proto-Germanic bi-, from the
primitive Indo-European hepi and was
used to indicate a verb is acting on a direct object. Dienen
was from the Middle Dutch dienen,
from the Old Dutch thienon, from the
Proto-Germanic þewanōną and meant “to
be of assistance to, to serve; to serve (at a tavern or restaurant); to operate
(a device). In the rituals of the Roman
Catholic Church, it has the specific technical meaning of “to administer the
last sacraments (the last rites). A bedient (the second third-person
singular present indicative of bedienen)
was thus a servant, a waiter etc. The acceptable pronunciation is buh-dent, bed-int, be-dit or anything is the depth of bedintism.
The idea thus is exemplified
by a maître d'hôtel (the head waiter
in a good restaurant) who, well dressed and well mannered, appears
superficially not dissimilar to someone from the upper classes but of course is
someone from a lower class, adopting for professional reasons, some of their characteristics
(dress, manner, speech (and sometimes snobbery) etc). Whoever coined the word, it was certainly popularized
by Harold Nicholson and Vita Sackville-West.
It seems initially to have been their shared code for discussing such
things but soon became common currency amongst the smart set in which they
moved and from there, eventually entered the language although not all
dictionaries acknowledge its existence. It one of those words which need not be taken too seriously and is most fun to use if played with a bit (bedintish, bedintesque, bedintingly bedinded, bedintism, bedintology et al).
As a word, although
from day one weaponized, bedint was subject to some mission-creep to the point
where, as Lewis Carol’s Humpty Dumpty explained to Alice:
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said,
in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither
more nor less."
Humpty Dumpty to Alice
in Alice Through the Looking-Glass
(1871) by Lewis Carroll (1832–1898).
As originally used by Nicolson & Sackville-West, bedint, one the many linguistic tools of exclusion and snobbery (and these devices exist among all social classes, some of which are classified as “inverted snobbery” when part of “working-class consciousness” or similar constructs) was used to refer to anyone not from the upper class (royalty, the aristocracy, the gentry) in some way aping the behavior or manners of “their betters”; the behavior need not be gauche or inappropriate, just that of someone “not one of us”. Nicolson didn’t exclude himself from his own critique and, as one who “married up” into the socially superior Sackville family, was his whole life acutely aware of what behaviors of his might be thought bedint, self-labelling as he thought he deserved. His marriage he never thought at all bedint although many of those he condemned as bedint would have found it scandalously odd, however happy the diaries of both parties suggest that for almost fifty years it was.
Bedint as a word proved
so useful however that it came to be applied to members of the upper classes
(even royalty) were they thought guilty of some transgression (like dullness) or
hobbies thought insufficiently aristocratic.
The idea of some behavior not befitting one’s social status was thus still
a thread but by the post-war years, when bedint had entered vocabulary of the middle-class
(a bedint thing in itself one presumes Nicolson and Sackville-West would have
thought), it was sometimes little more than a synonym for bad behavior (poor
form as they might have said), just an expression of disapproval.
The biographical work on Nicolson reveals a not especially likable snob but, in common with many fine and sharp-eyed diarists, he seems to have been good company though perhaps best enjoyed in small doses. One of those figures (with which English political life is studded) remembered principally for having been almost a successful politician, almost a great writer or almost a viceroy, he even managed to be almost a lord but despite switching party allegiances to curry favor with the Labour government (1945-1951), the longed-for peerage was never offered and he was compelled to accept a knighthood. His KCVO (Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, an honor in the personal gift of the sovereign) was granted in 1953 in thanks for his generous (though well-reviewed and received) biography of King George V (1865-1936, King of England 1910-1936), although those who could read between the lines found it not hard to work out which of the rather dull monarch’s activities the author thought bedint. As it was, Nicolson took his KCMG, several steps down the ladder of the Order of Precedence, accepting it only "faute de mieux" (in the absence of anything better) and describing it “a bedint knighthood”, wondering if, given the shame, he should resign from his clubs.
