BROADWAY’S WORDS OF THE YEAR BY PETER FILICHIA
Let’s hear it for demure!
It’s Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year.
Yes, in addition to Time’s Person of the Year and Sports Illustrated’’s Sportsperson of the Year, Dictionary.com annually chooses a word that, according to its recent press release, “isn’t just about popular usage”
So why demure? Turns out it “was chosen because TikTok user Jools Lebron returned it to the public’s consciousness by her frequent mentions of the word that’s come to mean ‘modest,’ ‘quiet’ and ‘reserved.’”
Although demure isn’t a word we’d necessarily attribute to a Broadway musical (especially SWEENEY TODD), the idea of a Word of the Year started me thinking of what Broadway would choose if it annually cited one.
The 2024 selection would obviously be outsiders, thanks to the Tony-winning Best Musical.
When the 2023-2024 season was heating up, many thought that HELL’S KITCHEN and SUFFS were Tony’s front-runners, what with their Public Theatre pedigree. WATER FOR ELEPHANTS had a great deal of buzz attached; ILLINOISE came out of nowhere, and, as dance-centric, stood out from the rest.
Thus, plenty of longtime Broadway observers gave THE OUTSIDERS just an outside chance.
But enough insiders voted for it.
Usually, a show has three rivals for the Best Musical prize, but THE OUTSIDERS had to contend with four. And in 1961, BYE BYE BIRDIE, only had to outduel two – IRMA LA DOUCE and DO RE MI – and did.
Perhaps that surprise hit would have also won Word of the Year with Uggabuggaboo. As any teen at the time could tell you, it was Conrad’s first hit.
No question that Broadway’s Word of the Year in 2003 would have been schadenfreude, thanks to the peppy song in AVENUE Q. Because the song spelled out the difficult foreign word, our listening to the cast album as many times as we have has allowed us to now correctly spell schadenfreude.
It is, of course, an actual word, but strong contenders for Word of the Year would have to be made-up words that lyricists have often invented. That brings us to E.Y. Harburg. No one has ever coined words with the frequency and felicity of the man chummily known as Yip.
In 1947, Harburg’s FINIAN’S RAINBOW’s “Something Sort of Grandish” had 24 words that he’d invented, all ending in “ish,” in a display of terrifish, magnifish, and delish wordplay. Which one would be Broadway’s Word of the Year?
Ah, but with so many to choose from, many would cancel each other out. Thus, the one that Harburg delivered in “When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich” might have won out. Yes, the last word might have had the last word: “When everyone’s poor relative becomes a Rockerfellative.”
Other Harburg contenders? Unbatched in 1957 (JAMAICA’S “Pretty to Walk With”), ambi-dex in 1961 (THE HAPPIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD’s “The Glory That Was Greece”) and succotashed in 1968 (DARLING OF THE DAY’S “Panache”). All these songs are well worth hearing, not just for these fanciful words, but also for the other lyrics in Harburg’s unique, comic-laden songs.
In 1949, Cole Porter might have won for his made-up Shuberty. KISS ME, KATE’s Fred Graham, when assessing his romantic history, noted that since he’d reached puberty, “like a show that’s typically Shuberty, I have always had a multitude of girls.”
And Broadway was particularly Shuberty that year, because the company then had 33 Broadway theaters, including the Majestic Theatre, where SOUTH PACIFIC opened that April.
(Yes, KISS ME, KATE opened in 1948, but on December 30th, too late to get enough traction to be named Word of that Year.)
In 1951, Porter might have had another winner with Essel. “What’s an Essel?” you ask? In OUT OF THIS WORLD’s “They Couldn’t Compare to You,” the god Mercury says he came to earth, attended CALL ME MADAM, “and shortly began to nestle Essel Merman.”
What also would have cemented it as Word of the Year is that Essel Merman – excuse me, Ethel Merman – received her first Tony for CALL ME MADAM.
Did Mercury’s unfamiliarity with Broadway make him mistake the 20th century’s first female superstar was named Essel? A better explanation is that Porter was desperate for a rhyme.
It’s also why, in his SILK STOCKINGS’ “Hail, Bibinski” – which celebrated to a Soviet Union bureaucrat – godka was his desperate rhyme for vodka.
Bibinski or godka might have been tabbed as Word of the Year, for 1955’s other musicals didn’t offer much competition. But 1956 would have seen a compelling race for the honor.
Through THE MOST HAPPY FELLA’s “Happy to Make Your Acquaintance,” we learned the word lookawise. Granted, it was Italian immigrant Tony Esposito’s attempt to say “likewise,” but when you come right down to it, lookawise is a word that could remind us that, as intelligent people, we should all lookawise before we leap.
However, just as THE MOST HAPPY FELLA couldn’t wrest even one Tony away from that season’s MY FAIR LADY, perhaps “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly’s” absobloominlutely would have absobloominlutely eclipsed lookawise.
Or maybe not. Julie Andrews and Stanley Holloway respectively lost Tonys to BELLS ARE RINGING’S Judy Holliday and Sydney Chaplin, so FAIR LADY might have also lost the Word of the Year race to Susanswerphone.
Although it was the name of a fictitious answering service, a new, real-life company soon adopted the name. Did wordsmiths Betty Comden and Adolph Green receive a royalty? A better question: COMPANY’s Marta tells her friends that if she doesn’t call them, “my service will explain.” Was that service Susanswerphone?
So, if FAIR LADY’s Alan Jay Lerner lost with absobloominlutely, he might have received the honors in 1965 for Rhodadandy (ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER’s “Hurry! It’s Lovely Up Here!”) or 1973 Mal-de-merable (GIGI’s “The Contract,” the last great piece that he would write).
Those, too, though, were created to rhyme respectively with “candy” and “unbearable.” But even the great Stephen Sondheim would have to say “Guilty as charged” for making up a word just for the rhyme: up-kee to match Krupke in WEST SIDE STORY.
Still, leave it to Sondheim, in the title song of DO I HEAR A WALTZ? to reference Strauss’ famous waltz via “Danubey” in order to match “can you be?” Now that’s a Word of the Year candidate!
In 1964, Sondheim’s hallelu, heard in ANYONE CAN WHISTLE’s delightful “Miracle Song,” also might have got some traction – until five months later, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF opened. Any doubt that “If I Were a Rich Man’s” digguh would have been selected as Word of the Year?
And Sondheim himself, via superb lyricist David Zippel, would be part of 1993’s Word of the Year. In THE GOODBYE GIRL’s “Paula,” Zippel invented Sondheimlich, followed by – what else? — maneuver.
In 1981, Broadway’s Word of the Year would come from WOMAN OF THE YEAR: wwonderful. That’s not a typo: wwonderful with two w’s is accurate. For in Kander and Ebb’s knockout eleven o’clock number, “The Grass Is Always Greener,” Marilyn Cooper made so much of the word wonderful that it did seem to get an extra “w.”
Care to make a prediction on 2025’s Word of the Year? The smart money would be on either SpongeBob or SquarePants.
True, those would have seemed a more likely victors in 2017 or 2018, when the Drama Desk-winning musical played Broadway. However, its afterlife has been most productive, and in 2025, many best days are ahead for the musical that celebrates the “Best Day Ever.”
All but 10 states have scheduled productions for next year. And while it won’t be seen next year in Jerusalem, but it will be playing next year in Haifa. Adding in several other foreign countries, and in 2025, SPONGEBOB SQUARE PANTS will see 142 productions of the entire show and 117 abridged editions.
Nothing demure about that achievement …
Peter Filichia can be heard most weeks of the year on www.broadwayradio.com. His new day-by-day wall calendar – A SHOW TUNE FOR TODAY – 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year – is now available for pre-order on Amazon.
