English language
Incident
I had thought that the saying ‘Accidents will happen in the best regulated families’ was a vulgar reference to children…
Dear Mary
Q. My future son-in-law has been successfully house-trained in the use of upper-middle-class English over the years that he has…
Suicide
There was a marvellous man in Shakespeare’s day known as John Smyth the Sebaptist. ‘In an act so deeply shocking…
My top ten most fatuous phrases
An apology. A few weeks back, in my blog, I promised a regular series called ‘Fatuous Phrase of the Week’.…
Anachronisms
I read C.J. Sansom’s novel Dissolution on the train recently with pleasure. For an historical novel narrated in the 1530s,…
Ebola
It should perhaps be called Yambuku fever, since that was the village in Zaire (as it was then, now the…
What’s sauce for the goose…
‘Goosey, goosey gander,’ my husband shouted at the television, like someone from Gogglebox. It’s not so much that he thinks…
Dull
At least I’ve got my husband’s Christmas present sorted out: the Dull Men of Great Britain calendar. It is no…
Mark Reckless
When I first heard ‘Wonderwall’ being played in a public house, in 1995 I suppose, I thought it was some…
Never
He won’t be remembered as Lord Bannside, but Ian Paisley will be remembered for shouting: ‘Never, never, never, never.’ The…
Knee-jerk
A little joke by Paddy, Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, turned upon something to be shunned. Conservative ministers, he said, had…
Escalated
Shaun Wright, the police and crime commissioner for South Yorkshire, spoke to Sky television last week about how little he…
Bitter
‘Don’t mind if I do,’ is one of husband’s stock phrases — jokes he would think them — in this…
Humanitarian
‘Our first priority,’ David Cameron said this week, ‘has of course been to deal with the acute humanitarian crisis in…
Stand
‘Boris Johnson broke cover yesterday to declare that he will run for parliament,’ the Times reported last week. The Mirror…
Pre-diabetes
‘Pre-diabetes is an artificial category with virtually zero clinical relevance,’ said an American professor in the Times. A friend of…
Support
When I asked my husband why paramedical professions were given to remaking the language in strange ways, he replied in…
Basta
My chickens do not usually come home to roost so rapidly. Only a fortnight ago I wrote that ‘some people use…
Marylebone
‘Take a trip to Marylebone station,’ chanted my husband. ‘Do not pass Go. Do not collect £200.’ I had been…
Shouty
Hitler was ‘dark, shouty, moustachioed’ in Churchill’s eyes, or rather, that was Jonathan Rose’s view of how Churchill saw Hitler,…
Jail
‘Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect £200.’ said the Community Chest card…
Lumpen
A publisher, Kevin Mayhew, has written to The Tablet, which is not a computer journal but a weekly magazine of…
Out
I managed to grab the TLS last week before my husband stuffed it in his overcoat pocket and lost it…
No justice, no peace
The chant No justice, no peace by supporters of Mark Duggan, the drug gangster shot dead by police in 2011,…
On your marks…
One day there simply won’t be any strange byways of the English language left to write quirky little books about.…
