Mind your language
Based
My grown-up friends don’t use based in its new slangy sense, so I asked Veronica (whom I still think of…
Omicron
‘There once was a curate of Kew, / Who kept a young cat in a pew,’ began my husband when…
Ramp down
Language change outdoes nonsense, just as misbehaviour outdoes satire. In Through the Looking-Glass Alice mentions to the Gnat that, where…
Uranus
I had thought there were two pronunciations of Uranus. My husband, still capable of distinguishing the anatomical from the planetary,…
Trash
‘When they posted the closing-night notice for his first Broadway play, Comes a Day, he went into a drunken rage,…
Scallop
‘You say scallops and I say scallops,’ sang my husband in his best Ginger Rogers accents. Since we both pronounce…
Witch
‘No, darling, I certainly wouldn’t call you a witch,’ said my husband. ‘You’re not thin enough.’ The Oxford English Dictionary…
Prolific
The BBC made a documentary about a man sent to prison for being the ‘most prolific rapist in British legal…
Mind your language
There’s a rude gesture in Pickwick that I don’t quite understand. Mr Jackson, a young lawyer’s clerk in conversation with…
Festive season
‘Here you are, darling,’ I said to my husband. ‘These lines might have been written for you: “Drinke, quaffe, be…
Perfect storm
When my husband’s whisky glass fell off the little table next to his chair on to next door’s cat, which…
Bame
In its coverage of the shuffled cabinet, the BBC added a note: ‘BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) is a…
Roll out
I was rolling out some pastry that had been cooling its pudgy heels in the fridge when voices on the…
Quenelles
When Peter Quennell was sent down from Oxford for consorting with a woman called Cara (by Evelyn Waugh’s account), he…
Problematic
‘This crossword is problematic!’ exclaimed my husband, tossing aside the folded newspaper marked with a ring where his whisky glass…
Ownership
Language is used in a weird way in the victimhood war, where those who see themselves without agency bravely speak…
Aleatory
‘What do they mean, “Guess”?’ asked my husband, staring suspiciously at a page of the Daily Mail that had been…
Actor
‘That chap in Line of Duty. That’s what I’d call a bad actor,’ said my husband with vague certainty. He…
Wash-up
‘They asked me if I wanted to wash up before we even went in to dinner,’ my husband recalled with…
Holland
The title of the keenly awaited volume of memoirs by John Martin Robinson sounds like a crossword clue: Holland Blind…
Leather and prunella
‘Oh, yes,’ said my husband, enthusiastically, ‘a loathsome disease. The tongue goes black and dry.’ He was referring to an…
Pinged
‘Ping, ping, ping went the bell,’ sang my husband, making his eyes wide and jigging in his best imitation of…
Soccer
I have never been a soccer mom, described in the Washington Post as ‘the overburdened, middle-income working mother who ferries…
Huntin’, shootin’, fishin’
In 1923 in Whose Body? we were introduced to Lord Peter Wimsey on his way to an auction where he…
Critique
Six years ago I wrote here about critique, as a noun or verb, and things have gone from bad to…
