Rebecca Long-Bailey is right: hyphens come and go
When Francis Hurt inherited the Renishaw estate in 1777, he changed his surname to Sitwell. His eight-year-old son and heir…
Pansexuality has been around longer than you think
When an MP announced she was pansexual I didn’t know what she meant. Indeed I didn’t know what she could…
What is a ‘tergiversation’?
Last year, someone at US dictionary Merriam-Webster noticed that lots of people were looking up the word tergiversation online. It…
What were the words that defined 2019?
‘Come off it,’ said my husband when I told him that upcycling was the word of the year. His response…
Where did ‘aconite’ spring from?
‘What,’ asked my husband teasingly, by way of an early Christmas game, ‘connects wolf’s-bane with Woolwich Arsenal?’ It took me…
What exactly is a narwhal?
A point that many people mentioned amid the horror and heroism of the attack at London Bridge was the enterprising…
Where did ‘decuman’ come from?
‘What made you chase that hare?’ asked my husband with rare geniality. John Ruskin was to blame. He asked James…
From Pliny to poetry: the history of ‘ictus’ and ‘ductus’
‘I know the difference between ictal and icteric,’ said my husband proudly, reminding me of Tweedledum in Through the Looking-Glass.…
Why is a ladybird called a ‘bishy barnabee’?
People in different regions like to think their dialects incomprehensible to outsiders, yet they can usually come up with quite…
What’s the different between ‘while’ and ‘whilst’?
‘Why is whilst only ever used in letters?’ asked my husband, casting aside an argumentative letter from his sister written…
Why are artlessly ambiguous headlines called ‘crash blossoms’?
‘Hospitals named after sandwiches kill five,’ ran a headline in the Times in June. When it was tweeted by the…
Surd
Lewis Carroll, in his Phantasmagoria, and Other Poems (1869), constructed a poem that yielded a double acrostic, with the first…
How the language of blackjack crept into Brexit
In the Times, Janice Turner wrote that she had been watching Remainers and Leavers ‘like degenerate gamblers, double down, bet…
What’s the word for a word that’s been used only once?
It is easy to speak a sentence never spoken before since the world came fresh from its mould. It’s not…
Sweaty Betty, Acne: the fashion for nasty brand names
On my way to a party in Ealing I saw a shop called Pan Rings. A mental image popped up…
How did BBC’s Late Night Line-Up get its name?
The title of the television review and discussion programme Late Night Line-Up is a curious one. I’d be interested if…
The link between politics, moisturiser and your air conditioning unit
I asked my husband if I should spend £59 on 20 millilitres of Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair Intense Reset…
When did ‘big girl’s blouse’ become an insult?
Fotherington-Thomas was introduced by Nigel Molesworth, the narrator of Down with Skool!, in 1953: ‘As you see he is skipping…
Word of the week: ‘prorogue’
It was most unlooked-for that a king should ally with Whig politicians to seek parliamentary reform, but that was what…
Is a cow always a cow?
I’ve noticed a tendency among townies like me to call all cattle cows (which they feel they must mention in…
Are our feelings towards politics apathy or inertia?
My husband, with a dependable appetite for chestnuts, says he would be the ideal person to start an Apathy party.…
What to call an inferior politician?
‘What about poetaster, then?’ asked my husband accusingly, looking up from his whisky and the Spectator, in which I’d ruminated…
Where did Boris Johnson’s ‘gloomsters’ come from?
When Boris Johnson hit out at ‘the doomsters and the gloomsters’, I was willing to believe that the word gloomster…
Is the term ‘Esquire’ U or non-U?
‘I’m a learned doctor,’ cried my husband, pulling at the hems of his tweed coat and doing a little jig.…
From moustache to extremist – the journey of ‘bigot’
How might an oath lend its name in England to a religious extremist and in Spain to a moustache? That…
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