Dot Wordsworth

‘Loved ones’ are everywhere at this time of year

8 February 2025 9:00 am

‘My heart will melt in your mouth,’ said my husband gallantly, unwrapping some leeks from a copy of the Sun…

Is ‘legacy’ an insult?

25 January 2025 9:00 am

Does Keir Starmer know what a ‘drag anchor’ does?

18 January 2025 9:00 am

The language of sailing ships is as treacherous as a lee shore. Words seldom mean what they suggest or are…

The Twelve Hates of Christmas

14 December 2024 9:00 am

I have set my husband a Christmas game. He wins a small chocolate sprout each time he spots a word…

Is being ‘infamous’ a bad thing?

30 November 2024 9:00 am

John Prescott, so Dominic Sandbrook observed last week, ‘infamously exchanged punches with a protestor in full view of the cameras’.…

Is ‘Chinatown’ offensive?

23 November 2024 9:00 am

I’ve heard people using back-to-back housing to mean terraces separated by back yards. But strictly, back-to-back houses are built against…

Does ‘tummy’ turn your stomach?

2 November 2024 9:00 am

‘How old does he think you are?’ asked my husband when I told him my GP had asked me if…

Do you ‘cock a snook’ – or snoot?

26 October 2024 9:00 am

‘This is interesting, darling,’ my husband called out from beside his whisky while I was doing the washing-up. The interesting…

Is it ever ok to call women ‘birds’?

12 October 2024 9:00 am

Towards the end of the 1980s, Jeffrey Bernard, late of this magazine, sometimes used to wear grey shoes with jeans…

The meaning of ‘moot’? It’s debatable

21 September 2024 9:00 am

In Florence there was a stone on which Dante sat in the evenings, pondering and talking to acquaintances. One asked…

Are you ‘very demure’?

14 September 2024 9:00 am

What does ‘maidan’ have to do with cricket?

7 September 2024 9:00 am

Freddie Flintoff recently called the Maidan ‘the home of cricket’. For supporters of Ukraine’s independence, the Maidan saw continual demonstrations…

When did monkeypox become ‘mpox’?

31 August 2024 9:00 am

Writing about monkeypox in The Spectator in May 2022, Douglas Murray repeated a formula he had put forward in 2020,…

What’s the right way to voyage?

24 August 2024 9:00 am

My husband has ordered a copy of Craig Brown’s new book, out next week, a bit late for my birthday.…

Immateriality – or irrelevance?

17 August 2024 9:00 am

In The Importance of Being Earnest Jack Worthing was given his surname by Mr Thomas Cardew, who happened to have…

What is ‘thuggery’?

10 August 2024 9:00 am

The word that Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, chose to describe the action of rioters was more interesting than…