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Here’s the first ever podictionary movie review.

It’s for a film from Quebec with English subtitles. The French title is La Grande Seduction and the English title is Seducing Dr. Lewis.

The scene is a remote Quebec fishing village where the villagers are trying to lure a doctor to come live in their community. One of the many tricks they use is to play on Dr. Lewis’ love of the game of cricket.

Of course most of the villagers have never heard of cricket.

“That’s disgusting. I mean, sushi is bad enough”

says one. When told cricket is a sport he asks

“They race them?”

Here’s a link to a YouTube trailer for the movie where the villagers are making a mess of a game of cricket.

There seems to be only a little confusion in the dictionaries over the word cricket. Or should I say words cricket. There are three, the sport, the bug and a more obscure name for a stool.

The Oxford English Dictionary makes no connection between the bug and the game. The etymology of the bug’s name is imitative of its chirping, creaking call.

The game has been said by some to be named after some stool-ball game but the OED dismisses this saying that stools were never called crickets until much later than the name of the game showed up.

There seems to have been a French game called cricket and so it’s possible that this quintessentially British sport might be named from French 500 or 600 years ago.

The English pride in the game was such that about 100 years ago the word cricket went from meaning playing the game, to meaning playing the game properly and fairly to doing anything properly and fairly.

The game itself is said to have changed substantially over the years but I can’t explain how since I’ve never understood it. And confusion seems to crowd around this word, from the confused villagers to the confused etymology to a confused first citation for cricket the insect.

The OED points to a 1325 glossary which defines cricket as a salamander. Clearly the compiler of the glossary had either never seen a cricket or never seen a salamander.

Back in 2006 I did an episode on the word salamander. It ultimately goes back to Greek and implies that these little damp lizards can survive fire.

I also see that the African leader Robert Mugabe is confused about cricket. He is quoted as saying:

“Cricket civilizes people and creates good gentlemen. I want everyone to play cricket in Zimbabwe; I want ours to be a nation of gentlemen.”

Hey Robert, gentlemen don’t usually keep election results secret. It makes you look like you might have lost but just don’t want to admit it, and that’s not cricket.