“What with
all this daylight-saving stuff, we had hit the great open spaces at a moment
when twilight had not yet begun to cheese it in favour of the shades of night.
There was a fag-end of sunset still functioning. Stars were beginning to peep
out, bats were fooling round, the garden was full of the aroma of those niffy
white flowers which only start to put in their heavy work at the end of the
day--in short, the glimmering landscape was fading on the sight and all the air
held a solemn stillness . . .”
That tone is
unmatchable and unmistakable. Trying to imitate Wodehouse is fatal. Back to niffy: Do any readers in England know
the word or casually use it? The OED
also gives niff as a verb – “To emit
an odour or smell, esp. an unpleasant one; to stink” -- and a noun – “a smell,
esp. a disagreeable one.” The word’s origin is “uncertain,” though the Dictionary suggests it may be related to
sniff or whiff. And here’s a bonus: Wodehouse used a variant of niffy in another novel, one I haven’t read,
titled Money in the Bank (1942): “Anyway, Stinker, putting aside for the moment
the question of your niffiness, wasn’t it notorious that you couldn’t tell the
truth?”
4 comments:
Are you reading this in the lovely Everyman Wodehouse edition? I've sought to add all the Jeeves and Wooster titles and a select group of best in show titles to my own shelves over the years, in particular the Mulliner volumes and the odd Emsworth.
A bit of Wodehouse shelfPr0n for those who like that sort of thing - excuse the Tintin figurines; I have a weakness for ligne Claire - https://twitter.com/midnightcourt/status/1108708376857509897
When I was a (British) schoolboy in the 50s-60s we used the word niff alternately with "pong"; niffy, pongy, stinky...
I can never remember PGW's usage of niffy, for a pleasant smell being current.
Of course Wodehouse did use American turns of phrase. The OED defines nifty as:colloquial (chiefly U.S.) A joke; a witty remark or story.
and gives the following example of its use from 1925.
P. G. Wodehouse Carry on, Jeeves vi.145 Every time I started to pull a nifty, Sir Roderick swung round on me with such a piercing stare that it stopped me in my tracks.
I wonder what the niffy white flowers were. Hawthorn blossoms can smell like carrion, but they bloom in May before daylight saving (and they don't save their best efforts for nightfall, but go right at stinking up a sunny afternoon).
Most of the summer-night-scented white flowers smell sweetly -- and in massy plantings their sweetness may cloy, so maybe that's the key. Nicotiana, stocks, lilies, yucca: not the stocks so much I think*, but the others draw vespertilian moths which draw the bats.
*I'd be glad of confirmation or correction on this point.
"Niffy" can also be used in the sense that something is not quite right - a statement or a report or an anecdote - a bit niffy or "off-colour", or an unsuitable way to behave. You would use it to describe a suspected scam, for example. E. Berris
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