A Retrospective Guide To The Lingo Of Love Island 2018
Language is constantly changing, it is defined by use. Separate a group of people for enough time and eventually, the language they use will become particular to them. New phrases, idioms and idiosyncratic will soon litter their vocabulary; given enough time, their own particular manner of speaking will have divorced itself from their original mother tongue and will come to be seen as a language that is new and unique to itself. This is the process that we have witnessed on Love Island.
Cast adrift from the outside world, with nothing beyond the horizons of their own lust and the compound that contains them, those islanders that remained to the finale have now been cast back into the unforgiving glare of reality. While the hot frenzy of adrenaline induced by the final begins to ebb from their veins, and their time on the island begins to coalesce into the recesses of memory, they will find themselves in a world that has remained the same while they have changed beyond recognition.
We can perhaps imagine Wes, dear, cheeky Wes, bemusedly wandering around the departures lounge of the Mallorcan airport. Wes, dear Wes, is pushing a vast trolley laden with suitcases, whose zips are struggling to contain the thousands of luridly coloured pairs of swimming trunks and flatteringly tight floral shirts that constitute his cargo. Wes, dear Wes, is muttering to himself as he distractedly ambles from one WHS Smiths to the next, chattel in tow. A concerned and slightly wary member of airport staff approaches this bronzed mumbling man. "Can I help you with anything sir?" Wes, pauses. He looks up. He raises one of those sort of weird water bottles that they were all forced to drink out of on the island to his lips and starts saying, "Are you in the Do Bits society? I'm in the Do Bits society. I'm here to do Do Bits". The airport staffer - confusing this as an allusion to some kind of extreme, hitherto unknown, terrorist cell - immediately has Wes, dear sweet Wes, tasered and interned in a holding cell.
Their time on the island has changed them, it has sculpted their bodies into glistening bronze effigies of beauty - or, if you're Dr Alex, into a rich unhealthy puce; his entire complexion and texture now reminiscent of a marshmallow that's been left out in the rain. Their bodies and minds are warped beyond the confines of what society expects of them.
Their language has changed and it is up to us - as much as it is up to them - to try to understand one another; to try acquaint ourselves with the vocabulary that now litters their speech. As such, here's a handy glossary of some of the more popular bizarre turns of phrase that sprung up in the villa:
1) I'd Be Lyin' If I Said I Wasn't - :
We will start with perhaps the most linguistically complex of all the verbal perversions that evolved on the island. Pioneered by Adam - the sentient poster-boy of a regional mega-gym - it is as needlessly contrived a substitution for the well-known, and perfectly acceptable, phrase 'honestly' that could be imagined. Yet it is far more expansive, both materially and in what it makes visible. While it may imply the same, it cunningly surfaces the fact that Adam, in any particular situation, could lie, but he has deigned not to. He has consciously decreed that you are worthy of hearing the truth. It is a power-play.
Example of use: "I'd be lyin' if I said I wasn't considering trying to make love to every warm-blooded female mammal on this island."
2) Mint:
Used to signify that something is top-notch, or of very good quality, often as an adjective when describing a fellow islander. It is also, albeit less frequently, used as a descriptor of the flavour of various bathroom, and some chocolate, products, its meaning in this context spans both Love Island and the wider world.
Examples of use: "I talked to Megan on the sort of rooftop balcony, I think she's mint."
"Has anybody seen my toothpaste?"
"What flavour is it?"
"Mint."
3) Crack On:
A phrase, seemingly, pioneered by Wes. To 'crack on' with someone is to attempt to woo them by bringing the object of your affection to a nearby bit of poolside furniture before laying your feelings bare and then punctuating the increasingly fraught silences that develop between the two of you with declarations about how much 'bantah' you're having.
Example of use: "Could you remove all the pool noodles off of this sun lounger please, I'm looking to crack on with Jack on it. "
4) Loyal:
Perhaps the most infamous linguistic gift from the show has been Georgia's notorious misunderstanding of the phrase 'Loyal'. She appears to have attended the Judas Iscariot school of 'loyalty' to have developed her relationship with the word. While denying that she had kissed Jack, contrary to all clear evidence to the fact, she went on a propaganda blitz in attempting to absolve her name by repeatedly barking about how loyal she was, at any given opportunity. This machine-gun repetition seemed to cause a sort of neurological short-circuiting amongst the other candidates - an approach similarly deployed as a torture technique in Guantanamo Bay, through the use of repetitive music - and they soon came to believe her.
Example of use: "Georgia, why have you been using my phone to send salacious pictures to my boyfriend as well as make a staggering amount of online purchases on my credit card?"
"Because I'm loyal. I'm just so loyal."
5) Head Turned:
A phrase used by one person in a relationship to let the other know that they are looking to escape that relationship as soon as another remotely attractive single person enters the villa.
Example of use: "I do love you, yes, with all my heart, but am I beyond having my head turned if someone else walked in? Who's to say?"
6) See Us Working On The Outside:
Perhaps the piece of language that most truly reveals the institutionalised, quasi-prison mentality that eventually consumes the islanders. It is typically used whenever one person in a relationship is essentially letting it be known that they have no intention of carrying on the relationship once they leave the villa.
Example of use: "Yes, I know that you we may be in a relatively functioning relationship in here, but can I see us working on the outside? Frankly, I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't worried that most of our chemistry solely comes from how proximus we are here to so much garden furniture and vaguely tropical plants in here." - This was Adam, obviously.
7) 'Do Bits':
A way of alluding to, and bragging about, performing sexual acts on national television.
Example of use: "Oh yes. I joined the Do Bits Society last night. May I borrow a loofa and some industrial strength cleaning products, I need to use the shower."
Perhaps through this guide, we may foster a degree of understanding necessary to help the ex-islanders re-assimilate into society.