Etymology

Wade in

2 September 2023 9:00 am

Values

26 August 2023 9:00 am

Black market

19 August 2023 9:00 am

Grifter

5 August 2023 9:00 am

Vape

22 July 2023 9:00 am

Last year, Oxford Languages’ word of the year was goblin mode. Apparently 300,000 voters decided upon it, but I haven’t…

Oracy

15 July 2023 9:00 am

Down the rabbit hole

8 July 2023 9:00 am

2S

1 July 2023 9:00 am

Terf

24 June 2023 9:00 am

Kangaroo court

17 June 2023 9:00 am

Toxic

10 June 2023 9:00 am

Thirlby

3 June 2023 9:00 am

Macabre

27 May 2023 9:00 am

The rub

20 May 2023 9:00 am

Hour

13 May 2023 9:00 am

Why ‘great’ should be used with great caution

29 October 2022 9:00 am

Sir Keir Starmer told his party conference last month that a Labour government would within a year set up a…

What makes a ‘crisis’?

22 October 2022 9:00 am

In his picture from 1932, ‘Derrière la gare Saint-Lazare’, Henri Cartier-Bresson caught the moment when a man in a hat…

Why ‘pop’ is popping up everywhere

8 October 2022 9:00 am

The Guardian kindly tells us that green is a colour whose time has come: ‘A blazer or a cotton shirt…

What ‘Budget’ and ‘bilge’ have in common

1 October 2022 9:00 am

The Budget (which the revolutionary fiscal act last week was technically not) is directly connected with bilge and with one…

The chronic misuse of ‘dire’

17 September 2022 9:00 am

‘Dire?’ said my husband. ‘It’s something chronic.’ He was putting on his idea of an Estuary accent, in a manner…

The cereal ambiguity of ‘corn’

10 September 2022 9:00 am

‘Wha, wha?’ said my husband in a slack-jawed way, throwing over a copy of the Guardian, as though it was…

The changing language of ‘mental health’

3 September 2022 9:00 am

It is easy to laugh at young people asking for sympathy because ‘I’ve got mental health’. I think I heard…

Why everyone is ‘struggling’

27 August 2022 9:00 am

‘Quicksand!’ yelled my husband, flailing his arms wildly. Since he was sitting in his armchair, his dramatic representation of a…

No, Boris Johnson isn’t ‘missing in action’

20 August 2022 9:00 am

Someone in the Guardian wrote that Boris Johnson had his ‘out of office’ on, and the Chancellor was ‘missing in…

Will ‘hosepipe ban’ make it into the dictionary?

13 August 2022 9:00 am

‘Got any ’ose?’ asked my husband, falling into his Two Ronnies ‘Four Candles’ routine, in which he likes to play…