‘Outering’ road or Outer Ring; here is the correct name of this city highway

A section of the Outer Ring road in Nairobi under expansion. It is spelt "Outer Ring" not "Outering". PHOTO | COURTESY

What you need to know:

  • I know the word outer only as the comparative form of the adverb out whenever — as happens — this is used as an adjective.
  • Please note, then, that these are two separate words. “Outering”, the single word by which so many Nairobians know one of their thoroughfares, is an expression of ignorance.

On page 9 of its December 18 number, The Star daily carried the following headline: “Outering Road traders thrown out”.

The question is: Where does a road have to run to merit the appellation “outering”? My straightforward answer is that I don’t know this word “Outering”.

The way The Star has used it, it appears to be the continuous present tense form of the verb “to outer”.

But what on earth is that? What is it “to outer”? Does it perhaps mean to dismiss, to expel, to fire, to sack, to show a hapless employee the permanent one-way door to the outer world?

I reiterate that, as a verb, the word “outer” is beyond my ken.

I know the word outer only as the comparative form of the adverb out whenever — as happens — this is used as an adjective.

The independent country of Outer Mongolia was called so as opposed to Inner Mongolia, which is quite another country.

“Outer space” is called so because it lies beyond the inner space in which our planet lies — although, of course, these are totally subjective terms because, as the great English scientist Stephen Hawking assures us (in one of his science fact blockbusters), our universe has neither a centre nor an edge.

What I know is that — like the moat around many a Spaniard’s redoubt — a road surrounds Nairobi as if to guard it from unwanted elements from both kinds of space, a road reminiscent of the deep moat around the castle in the classic English novel Ivanhoe.

For the self-evident reason that it is circular, it would, from the bird’s-eye view, look very like Chicago’s railroad Loop (in which lies Roosevelt University, where John Charles Kang’ethe and I received our university education).

Circular — that is why such a road is called a ring. Moreover, it is because it runs along the city’s entire perimeter that one describes it by the adjective outer.

Outer means external, on the outside, further from the centre. However, be careful.

IGNORANCE
The superlative form of the comparative outer is not outest but outermost. So far as astronomy now knows, Pluto is the outermost member of our solar system.

A ring on the outside — that, in short, is why such a road is called Outer Ring.

Please note, then, that these are two separate words. “Outering”, the single word by which so many Nairobians know one of their thoroughfares, is an expression of ignorance.

The word “outering” does not appear to exist in the English language. What exists is the word outing, which refers to a trip or excursion and, very informally, is used in court by homosexuals — usually against their will — to name other prominent homosexuals.

In the context of city planning, the adjective outer serves to contrast that road with such inner thoroughfares as Kenyatta, Mboya, Moi and Ngala, which — because these lie squarely inside the outer loop — the Rev Andrew Hake and Nairobi’s other erstwhile planners used to describe as the “central business district” (CBD).