BBC Learning English
Keep Your English Up To Date
1st December 2009
Meanderthal
It s probably true that people from big cities tend to be much more impatient than people from
small towns. Getting from A to B is just so much more difficult with all the traffic and crowds,
so people are in much more of a hurry. Also, large towns tend to have a lot of tourists, or
people who are a bit lost. So if you re an impatient city person, desperately trying to get to
that important meeting, you might get really angry with the meanderthal in front who is
slowing you down by those crucial seconds! You turn left to get past him, and he turns left,
you turn right, and he does the same. It s like a strange dance, in slow motion. You re going
to be late and it s all that meanderthal s fault!
To meander means to walk slowly, without any clear direction and a Neanderthal, spelt with
N for November, was a kind of primitive person who lived in Europe a hundred thousand
years ago  something like a caveman perhaps. So when we call someone a meanderthal,
we re combining these two words, meander and Neanderthal. And we re actually being very
rude. We re saying that the person in front who is slowing us down is stupid, they haven t
evolved, that they don t know what they re doing or where they re going.
But then, if you ve ever walked down Oxford street in London at five in the afternoon, rush
hour  you might well wonder if some of those shoppers, moving so slowly with a glazed
look in their eye, are actually 21st century human beings like you or me. Perhaps they really
are meanderthals& .
Mark Shea has been a teacher and teacher trainer for eighteen years. He has taught English
and trained teachers extensively in Asia and South America, and is a qualified examiner for
the University of Cambridge oral examinations. He is currently working with journalists at
the World Service and is the author of the BBC College of Journalism's online English tutor.
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