AS the birthplace of the railways, Darlington is renowned for its ingenuity. In fact, it is celebrating its ingenuity with a Festival of Ingenuity next weekend.

This year's festival is also commemorating the jubilee of Darlington council – Wednesday was the 150th anniversary of Queen Victoria giving Royal Assent to the Charter of Incorporation which created this august, democratic institution.

Back in 1867, the charter was championed by those who saw it as a way of freeing the town from the deadhand of the Quakers who ruled the place.

Therefore, “jubilee” and “ingenuity” are surprisingly appropriate words.

A “jubilee” is a ram’s horn, from an ancient Hebrew word “yobhel”. A jubilee was to be held every 50 years to celebrate the emancipation of slaves – the 1867 campaigners would have liked this connection. The jubilee was proclaimed by blowing trumpets which were made of rams’ horns, and so the name stuck.

“Ingenuity” is far more complex – so complex, in truth, that even Shakespeare was confused by it.

You would think that “ingenuity” comes from the word “ingenious”, which means “clever, talented”. "Ingenious" gives us an engineer, who uses his talents to create a clever tool, known as an engine.

But really the word “ingenuity” comes from “ingenuous”, which means “native, free-born”. The campaigners in 1867 actually used the word in this way because they believed they believed the democracy of the new council would return to the people of Darlington freedoms that they had been born with but which had been stolen away by the domineering Quakers.

However, over the centuries, “ingenious” and “ingenuous” have so regularly been confused – even by Shakespeare in Love’s Labour’s Lost – that the real meaning of “ingenuity” has been lost.

Nevertheless, if Darlington were to be absolutely correct, it would be holding a Festival of Ingeniosty, but as you’d have to be a genius to understand such an unpronounceable word, a Festival of Ingenuity, celebrating the town’s native freedoms, is a much better title.

IT is not just the meaning of words that changes over time. Even the meaning of people can change. This week, my 19-year-old daughter informed me that “Thomas the Tank Engine has a new album out”.

It took me some seconds to work out what she was talking about. The new album is by Ringo Starr, who to a 50-something like me is the drummer in the world’s most famous and ingenious pop group, but to a 19-year-old is the laidback voice of the really useful engine in the cartoons of her childhood.

PERHAPS everything is only meaningful in the context of its day. In an Echo published 25 years ago this week, I noticed a report that an AA man on Teesside had cracked a very contemporary gag.

Attending a breakdown, he informed the driver of the seriousness of the situation by saying: “It’s got to be a Duchess of York, I’m afraid, mate.”

When the driver looked confused, the AA man explained: “I mean it’s a tow job.”

I wouldn’t know how to begin to explain that to a 19-year-old who hadn’t lived through that extraordinary episode in royal history.