Mind your language
Tube
When George Eliot wrote ‘The tube-journey can never lend much to picture and narrative,’ she was not making an observant…
Boo
In 1872, the 27-stone figure of the Tichborne Claimant was insisting he was Sir Roger Tichborne Bt, an heir thought…
Shocking bad hat
My husband complains that the disposition of teenagers in London is one of mocking hostility. I seem to suffer less…
Gorblimey trousers
Piles of black plastic rubbish sacks lie in the streets of Birmingham because, since the end of June, the dustmen…
Go ballistic
I had always thought that to go ballistic was the same as to go nuclear, metaphorically. But the ballistic figure…
Bacteria
It’s like whipping cream. All of a sudden it goes stiff and you can turn the bowl upside down without…
Sixteen-hundreds
I was puzzled by the caption to a picture in the Times Literary Supplement. The picture showed a model of…
Mechanistic insight
No, hang on, don’t turn to Dear Mary yet. This is not as dull as it sounds. It’s just that…
Wuthering
Haworth is in a constant simmer of Brontë anniversary fever. It is looking forward to Emily Brontë’s 200th birthday next…
Greenland and India
‘Remember what the fellow said — it’s not a bally bit of use every prospect pleasing if man is vile,’…
Epiphanic
‘I love the pumping station,’ said my husband, waving a copy of the Docklands and East London Advertiser which reported…
Support
The Foreword didn’t bode well. This was on the first page of The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices. It…
Pride of lions
‘Are they all gay too?’ asked my husband, waving the Sunday Telegraph with its headline ‘Pride of Lions’. He had…
Clichés
The most tired cliché in English, suggests Orin Hargraves, the American philologist, is at the end of the day. I’ve…
Romance liver
‘Ha, ha!’ said my husband, waving the Spectator letters page in the air. ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ He was overcome by…
Narrative
Laura Kuenssberg was right. Even my husband agreed, and he often throws soiled beermats from an unknown source (which he…
Trooping the Colour
Language is a weapon to do down others. ‘He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!’ said Estella disdainfully of Pip…
Not bloody likely
In My Fair Lady, which came out as a film in 1964, 50 years after Shaw’s Pygmalion, they decided to…
Reference
When Dickens wanted to buy a house in 1837, he wrote to Richard Bentley, who had started the magazine in…
Goof
Susie Dent has been trying to make us love Americanisms on Radio 4. Now Miss Dent knows far more about…
Anniversary
‘It’s like Pin number,’ said my husband, drifting into lucidity. So it is, in a way. The construction under discussion…
Progressive
I laughed, in a sympathetic way I hope, when I read a letter in the Daily Telegraph pointing out that…
Compliance
Ralph Bathurst was accused shortly after his death in 1704 of being ‘suspected of Hypocrisy and of mean Complyance’. I…
Jane
‘What are you laughing at?’ asked my husband in an accusing tone on Monday morning last week as he unloaded…
Envelope
One can push many things — a pen, one’s luck or (up) daisies. But the MP Dominic Raab told the…
