Mind your language
That Beano word ‘scoff’ was first coined in the mid-19th century
Scarcely a sober breath has been drawn in my house all week for celebrating the 90th anniversary of the completion…
Around v about: British English v American – not to mention across
Crooning is I think the word to describe what my husband was doing to the lyrics of a Beach Boys…
He, they, fae, fer or ze? Check your pronouns
Jay Bernard won the Ted Hughes Award last week. I managed to hear a snippet of the winning poem on Today…
Word of the week: dot
With the sensation produced by hearing one’s name, I jumped when I saw mine on a poster advertising an Amazon…
Why should the body be immune from being hacked about?
A 72-year-old Australian called Stelarc, the BBC reported, has an ear growing from one arm. He hopes to connect a…
We’ve been saying ‘wrap up warm’ for a thousand years
In June 1873, Oswald Cockayne shot himself. He was in a state of melancholy, having been dismissed by King’s College…
Trahison des clercs — a phrase that dates back all the way to 1927
I had long associated the phrase trahison des clercs with the writer Geoffrey Wheatcroft, though I can’t put my finger…
From Jeeves to Johnson: language and literary references in Boris’s speech
In Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, Bertie is moved to reward his inestimable valet for solving the unsolvable. Before requesting the…
‘Sorted’ has always had connotations of menace
My heart leapt up on Newport station, an unusual place for that to happen, when I heard a recorded announcement:…
Jejune
A range of book reviewers’ clichés was held up to mockery 60 years ago, in a letter by Jocelyn Brooke…
How did the same word come to describe the activities of stable lads and sexual predators?
Grooming is a horrible phenomenon of modern life when it happens to abused children. Yet a magazine such as GQ…
How can MPs live up to a code of conduct that makes no sense?
Ministers must observe the rather curious ‘Seven Principles of Public Life’ in the new Ministerial Code published this month by…
Where does Donald Trump’s new favourite word come from?
In Polite Conversation, Jonathan Swift presents dialogues made up of clichés, banalities and catchphrases. When Miss Notable makes a remark…
Why do so many academics write so badly?
Why do so many academics write so badly? Those who make the study of language their life’s work are as…
The phrase that is almost universally misused
Writing about Meghan Markle and the Duchess of Cambridge in the Sunday Times, India Knight wrote: ‘I can’t help but…
After many centuries, the triumph of ‘hi’ is complete
A book that changed my way of looking at the world was The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren. It showed…
Syndromes: they have made their escape from the medical world
‘You must have Tired Old Woman Syndrome,’ said my husband as I fell back into an armchair with a sigh…
Can the beer-bike take on the Boris-bike?
In Amsterdam the courts have given leave to ban the bierfiets. Fiets is the Dutch for ‘bike’. (The plural is fietsen.)…
When Kingsley Amis needed a new insult, he reached for the taboo
‘It’s up there on the shelf you can’t reach,’ said my husband in an unhelpfully helpful tone. The ‘it’ was…
What two little words that combine virtue signalling and denunciation?
The inventor of the verse form known as the clerihew, Edmund Clerihew Bentley, had a way with this seemingly simple…
Is your conduct unacceptably inappropriate – or inappropriately unacceptable?
‘When is physical contact “unacceptable”?’ asked Charles Moore in the Daily Telegraph. He may well ask. Sir Michael Fallon said…
Medicine
John Farquhar of Salisbury writes to say he is irritated. He is not just irritated, he has long been long…
The
Veronica, who looks at Twitter, told me of an exchange she thought would interest me, about the use of the.…
Einstein vs Weinstein
Before I forget, I was cheered by the letter from Keith Aitken in last week’s issue noting another sense for…
Not so much
‘Kiss me mucho,’ sang my husband with a revolting leer, ‘and we’ll soar. And we’ll dance the dance of love…
