How to write a book about blackmail . . . without calling it blackmail

One of the interesting challenges for JAFF writers is the ever-evolving nature of the English language. All languages change over time, leaving modern French speakers trying to read Old French, like the Eulalia text:

Buona pulcella fut eulalia./ Bel auret corps bellezour anima/ Voldrent la veintre li deo Inimi.

almost as lost as your average English speaker would be at trying to read Beowulf:

Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,/ þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,/ hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

Jane Austen’s language, of course, is much closer to modern day English than Beowulf or even Shakespeare. It’s close enough, in fact, that we can often be lulled into forgetting just how much it has changed between her day and ours.

You may already know that the word “okay/OK” didn’t exist in Jane Austen’s day. But did you know that Jane wouldn’t have used the words “sabotage,” “hallway,” “pretentious,” “befuddlement,” or “deadpan” in her writing, because those words hadn’t been created yet? And she wouldn’t use phrases like “get his goat,” “called his bluff,” or “stick in the mud,” either.

She wouldn’t have used “fantastic” to mean “great,” as it would exclusively refer to things that exist only in the imagination. There are various other words as well that did exist, but wouldn’t have been used the way we use them in our day.

Jane is even the first writer known to have used a few words in writing! She may not have invented them herself, but she was the first author to write them down (at least the earliest we can find!). This includes words like “door bell,” “sympathiser,” and “irrepressible.”

Some JAFF writers might simply try to avoid obvious anachronistic words and phrases like “okay,” “deer in the headlights,” and “hit like a freight train,” but are otherwise flexible with their language choices. But other JAFF writers do their best to include only words that were used in the same way in 1811 in order to be consistent with Jane’s writing.

This creates all sorts of complications when writing in JAFF. It may be a little cumbersome to talk about “passageways” instead of “hallways,” but there are some words that don’t even have a synonym that holds quite the same connotation. For example, can you think of a word that means “sabotage” exactly? Sure, your average thesaurus will give words like disruption, interference, subversion, undermining, treachery, and destruction. But do any of them carry the full meaning of sabotage?

An interesting challenge I ran into when writing my book, The Olive Branch, was that the word “blackmail” was not used as a verb in the Regency Era. Furthermore, even as a noun, it had been used for hundreds of years before Jane’s time to mean something along the lines of “protection money,” but it was not used in the same way as our current usage of the word. The general meaning of blackmail as a form of extortion, especially with the threat of exposure of secrets or private matters, is listed as evolving around 1826.

Could a word that showed up in print in 1826 have been used in her day? Possibly! Words are often used orally for some time before they make it into print, and even longer before they appear in dictionaries. Merriam-Webster just added 200 words in 2024, including the phrase “beach read.” But you can find lists of “beach reads” from the early 2000s, so the word existed for at least that long, if not longer. Before the Internet era, there was likely even a longer gap between a newly spoken word or phrase and its appearance in writing. For that reason, a JAFF writer might choose to use “blackmail” as a noun, since it’s possible it was starting to change its meaning by that time, although they should probably avoid using it as a verb, as that change did not happen until much later. In The Olive Branch, however, I made the choice—after much debate!—not to use the word at all.

How does one write a story about a blackmailing villain without using the word “blackmail?” Very carefully! I generally used the word “extort” or talked about “extortion,” but since our use of the word “extortion” today does not carry the exact meaning of blackmail, I often had to rephrase a sentence entirely to work around it. My current JAFF WIP, Threatened by Turns, also uses the blackmail concept and will provide me a new challenge in avoiding the word! Yes, in repeatedly writing about blackmail without saying “blackmail” I am a glutton for punishment (another phrase that probably didn’t exist in Jane’s time, at least outside of the boxing world).

As a reader, do you prefer writers who try to stick with words and phrases Jane might have used? Or do you not mind it when the language is more modern? Does it depend on the nature of the story itself, whether it’s a more serious story or something outlandish and comic? I will confess that, while I try to be as careful with word choice in my own writing as I can, and I like to think I’ve improved over time, it doesn’t really bother me when other writers use words that weren’t around in Jane’s time unless they are really shockingly anachronistic. I do love how language is just one of the many fascinating topics of research that JAFF writers delve into in order to delight our readers!

My favorite source for looking up the history of a word: etymonline.com

My favorite source for finding good synonyms for “forbidden” words (that are too new to exist in 1811): wordhippo.com