Mind your language
Fantasticks, calash, noctivagation – the wonderful words of Anthony Wood
When the King visited Oxford in September 1687, there was a bit of a shambles in the Bodleian, where they…
What makes an ‘old boys’ club’?
In 1969, The Spectator’s leading article appeared on the cover. The first of that year was headed ‘The Old Boys’…
The muddle over vanishingly unlikely
When my husband asked me whether I knew any mathematics at all, I replied by telling him that I had…
Who’s the real King of the North?
Andy Burnham must feel the burden of the sobriquet with which he has been saddled: King of the North. It…
Grab bags are up for grabs
My husband’s task was a simple one: to buy a couple of bottles of water from the Morrisons opposite the…
Know your facepalm from your headslap
‘That’s not a facepalm,’ said my husband. ‘It’s a headslap.’ He proved the point by making contact between the flat…
Italy’s doomed war on English
‘Italians are not inventing any new words,’ the head of the Italian language academy told the Telegraph. ‘They’re not creating…
Why does everything now pivot?
‘As the door turneth upon his hinges,’ says the Book of Proverbs, ‘so doth the slothful upon his bed.’ But…
Is a ‘link-up’ a modern ‘flash mob’?
The public disturbances in Clapham, achieved by social media link-ups, have their precedents. ‘You can imagine what an exhilarating week…
What makes a politician a ‘grandee’?
To me, grandee goes together with Tory. So it was a surprise to find Lord Mandelson called a Labour grandee…
‘Both things can be true’: The creep of an annoying cliché
‘It’s lunchtime and it’s raining. Both things can be true at the same time,’ said my husband, putting on the…
Me, myself and the i
Misuse of myself ‘should be a capital offence’, suggests Oliver Duff, the editor of the i Paper. ‘As reflexive pronouns,…
