[Chris O'Carroll]

No 4292
Set by Leonora Casement
Words change their meaning over time. We asked you to define what the term “bohemian” means today.

This week’s winners
Well done. Hon menshes to Basil Ransome-Davies (“A term much degraded and diluted since Henri Murger’s popular tales of Czech student life in mid-19th century Paris”), Bill Greenwell (“People who wear their grandparents’ clothes and are familiar with poets as recent as Walter de la Mare”), Adrian Fry (“To himself he’s utterly free. Except Tuesdays when he signs on”), and John O’Byrne (“Refers to a casual inhabitant of a region below Hemel Hempstead”). The winners get £25 each, with the Tesco vouchers going, in addition, to Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead.

Falling-down drunk
Bohemian: 1) (n) In the 21st century, a fashion victim; one who parades their “boho-chic” (qv) without knowing what that might be; 2) One who goes on weekend breaks to Prague and gets falling-down drunk in the cobbled streets; 3) A person who employs cod French to impress women; 4) A failed artist’s self-description, usu. a wannabe (qv) formaldehyde shark stuffer, public bedmesser, post-impressionist dumpling thrower etc; 5) Ironically applied to one who wears a tie or a suit in an ironic manner in unexpected contexts, eg, a greasy spoon (qv) or a slaughterhouse; 6) adj often used to describe unusual sexual activities freq. related to the exchange of faecal matter in the pursuit of pleasure; 7) adj used to describe a sportsman given to visiting nightclubs and getting drunk and hitting another sportsman and causing press interest in the generally ignored game of eg, cricket (qv).
Josh Ekroy

Attitude is all
Are you bohemian? If you ask yourself that question, you’re surely not. If you regard it with amused detachment, or dismiss it as a trivial distraction, perhaps you are, although you may be merely a hipster with boho pretensions. (The same is true if you use the colloquialism “boho”.)
No mode of dress, no tattoo or piercing, no hairstyle – from shaved heads on women to dreadlocks on white people – is a foolproof marker of bohemianism today. Attitude is all. For example, how do you respond when armed officers apprehend a member of the royal family on the grounds of Buckingham Palace? Is that a good first step toward rounding up all aristocratic drones and leeches? Is it appalling evidence of police incompetence and brutality? Is it, like anything relating to the royals, irrelevant tabloid fodder? If you are truly bohemian, you know your analysis and what it signifies.
Chris O’Carroll

Limited acting ability
The word no longer refers to an Irish footballer, a resident of eastern Europe or a person living a life of relative squalor while pretending to be an artist. It now encompasses the lifestyle of someone who has a non-orthodox sex life, the ability to earn money while doing nothing of particular value and an intellect apparently covering every subject likely to arise in University Challenge. Your average bohemian may be clever, relatively talented and reasonably wealthy, but the true bohemian should aim higher, preferably culminating in the well-paid chairmanship of a quasi-intellectual TV quiz show.
A limited acting ability is essential, both for public and private purposes but a wide range of roles is unnecessary.
The supreme bohemian will be a flâneur and a très bon viveur; indeed, he will probably closely resemble myself.
Brian D Allingham

Fleet of cars
A Bohemian (n) today is likely to be one of the more privileged citizens of the European Union. Communism protected his rich cultural background from western corruption during the first half of the 20th century and the collapse of the Berlin Wall – and of communism – resulted in significant investments of hard currency in the new Czech Republic. Canny citizens – typified by the modern Bohemian – acquired former state-owned industrial assets for minimal outlay, becoming very, very rich. Today’s young Bohemian owns the family castle – now a luxury spa resort – has a fleet of cars and launders his money on the Côte d’Azur, where he will often contravene local by-laws and agreements, taking his dogs on to beaches and allowing them to foul communal grounds. His children attend minor UK public schools and his young, most recent, wife is blonde.
Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead