Etymology

Are you ready for the ‘Genny Lex’?

1 June 2024 9:00 am

‘It sounds like Polari to me,’ said my husband, who can remember Julian and Sandy (Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams)…

The myth of the global majority

25 May 2024 9:00 am

‘You make the cotton easy to pick, Mame,’ sang my husband with execrable delivery. ‘No,’ I said, ‘You can’t sing…

Can you ‘go gangbusters’?

18 May 2024 9:00 am

‘Is it anything to do with cockle-picking?’ asked my husband, confident he was on the right track. Naturally he wasn’t.…

Do sparks really fly?

11 May 2024 9:00 am

‘Sparks,’ said my husband, after a short pause. I had asked him what one could spark. His answer was true…

Can MPs really defect?

4 May 2024 9:00 am

‘He did it years before William Donaldson did The Henry Root Letters,’ said my husband querulously, as though I had…

Where does ‘stuff’ come from?

27 April 2024 9:00 am

Pelham, the hero of the novel of the same name (which came out in 1828, the first year of The…

Amol Rajan is right to change his ways on ‘aitch’

20 April 2024 9:00 am

My husband thought it brave and manly of the BBC’s Amol Rajan to resolve publicly to change his pronunciation of…

We ought to banish more words

13 April 2024 9:00 am

Why do people say: ‘You might very well think that; I couldn’t possibly comment’? Are they using it as they…

When is a Lord not a Lord?

6 April 2024 9:00 am

The Financial Times seeks applicants for the Sir Samuel Brittan fellowship. Announcing this, the paper refers to him as Sir…

How do you say Southwell?

24 February 2024 9:00 am

What’s in a place name?

27 January 2024 9:00 am

The appeal of apricity

25 November 2023 9:00 am

Is orthogonal nonsensical?

18 November 2023 9:00 am

How useful is precarity?

11 November 2023 9:00 am