triffid

A lot of words have come to us from science fiction, such as robot, coined by Karel Čapek in his influential play “R.U.R.” (or Rossum’s Universal Robots) as well as now common scientific and popular terms like Zero-G and cyberspace.

But sometimes a word evolves to more literary uses, such as this episode’s word: triffid /TRIF-id/ noun. Generally speaking, a triffid is a vigorous, rapidly-developing, usually invasive plant. But in its original use, these plants were also mobile, malignant and carnivorous, with a sting demonstrably capable of killing humans. These were the plants John Wyndham was describing when he coined the term in his 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids. (Incidentally, Wyndham writes that the word evolved from the “etymological gymkhana” around the combination of “tri” (three) and “it…”

Examples in Use

“This time Oscar didn’t cry when they drove him back to the cane-fields. Zafra would be here soon, and the cane had grown well and thick and in places you could hear the stalks clackclack-clacking against each other like triffids…” (Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao)

“Through chinks in the fence Ian could see a tangle of stringy privet, lanky nettles, wild flowers and triffid weeds, all forming a fuzz of camouflage over the sunken foundations of the bombed-out building.” (Will Self, My Idea of Fun)

“The back garden of the first cottage was just a marsh of triffidy weeds.” (David Mitchell, Black Swan Green)

“The scrum of reporters in front of him swayed as they pushed in unison, hands thrust forward waving microphones, tape recorders, and assorted electronic tendrils like a harvest of triffids.” (Michael Dobbs, House of Cards)

“I remembered the Triffid jokes we used to make about Heavy Plant Crossing.” (Iain Banks, Crow Road)

“And in front of the church, this beautiful piece of architecture, is an unaccountably ugly garden—two large squares of reddish earth entirely planted with a treelike succulent, Echeveria (etch-VEER-ea)—bizarre, spooky plants which look like triffids—Echeveria, and nothing else.” (Oliver Sacks, Oaxaca Journal)

“…she couldn’t believe how fast that tree had grown. It was like a triffid.” (Cate Kennedy, The World Beneath)

“In the middle of it all was a cluster of giant sunflowers, ominous as triffids, nodding in the slight breeze.” (Stephen King, The Tommyknockers)

See Also

"Jeff and I and several of our other friends had jokingly started making a guttural falsetto sound with our voice as a way of mocking The Day of the Triffids – some “B” science fiction thriller only I seemed to have missed. We all seemed to outgrow this, with the exception of Jeff, and this later would develop into Jeff’s “flesh horn” voice that was used on Trout Mask Replica. (John “Drumbo” French, Beefheart: Through the Eyes of Magic)