Etymology
Why everyone is ‘struggling’
‘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’
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?
‘Got any ’ose?’ asked my husband, falling into his Two Ronnies ‘Four Candles’ routine, in which he likes to play…
What do ‘catcalls’ have to do with cats?
‘A law against catcalls?’ asked my husband sceptically. ‘What next, criminalising booing and hissing?’ He often gets the wrong end…
The etymological ingredients of ‘flageons’
‘Don’t you know the answer?’ asked my husband with mock surprise, throwing over to me from his armchair a copy…
The ever-shifting language of ‘culture wars’
‘Come on, old girl,’ said my husband as though encouraging a cow stuck in a ditch, ‘you must know.’ It…
‘Our’ by ‘our’, Boris’s resignation speech
There was a word I didn’t understand in Boris Johnson’s resignation speech (in which he did not resign). He spoke…
‘Pinch’ has long packed a punch
Before pinch as a verb appears in any written sources, it already formed part of surnames. Hugo Pinch was walking,…
Dominic Raab and the problem of ‘distraction’
Dominic Raab blamed distraction forBoris Johnson’s woes when the Tories failed in two by-elections last week. ‘Hehas track records as…
Lord Geidt’s ‘odious’ remark
Lord Geidt said in his resignationletter that he had been put in an odious position. He meant it was hateful,though…
The not-so-sweet roots of ‘nice’
‘That’s nice,’ said my husband, taking a Nice biscuit with his coffee. It was his little joke. The biscuit is…
The strangeness of station names
In Kyiv they have voted to changethe names of some metro stations. Heroes of the Dnieper is to become Heroes…
Why nothing ever comes ‘for free’
‘It’s not as nice as it looks,’ said my husband, not leaving time to look it in the mouth before…
Why disgraced MPs head for the Chiltern Hundreds
I saw in last week’s Spectatorthat the tractor MP had applied for the stewardship of the Manor of Northstead. After…
The wonder of the Metaphor Map
‘What’s that?’ asked my husband, looking at my laptop. ‘Fibonacci fossilised?’ His question made no sense, but I saw what…
The linguistic ingredients of ‘salmagundi’
‘It makes me hungry,’ said my husband when I mentioned the word salmagundi. That is his reaction to many words.…
The Aesopian language of algospeak
To evade algorithms that hunt down forbidden words, users of platforms like TikTok employ cryptic synonyms. So deadbecomes unalive, and…
What’s the right way to pronounce ‘gif’?
The man who invented gifs, Stephen Wilhite, has died, aged 74. Controversy survives him – over how to pronounce the…
When did brothers and sisters become ‘siblings’?
I never cared much for the word sibling, though I hardly knew why. The reason must be that it was…
How do you pronounce ‘Cirencester’ and ‘Marylebone’?
‘Half! Half! Half!’ exclaimed my husband like a performing sea lion. Not that sea lions perform any more, but you…
Why does everything ‘embolden’ Putin?
The most emboldened man on earth must be Vladimir Putin. Everything seems to embolden him. Treating Russia as a pariah…
How 'like' lost its way
A strange crisis has befallen like. It had long been an object of obloquy and vilification in two functions. The…
Where’s the ‘mystery’ in mystery plays?
In The Archers, Ambridge put on its own set of mystery plays dramatising the Nativity and Passion. BBC Radio 4…
When did ‘pikey’ become offensive?
A policeman sent a colleague who was house-sitting for him a WhatsApp message: ‘Keep the pikeys out.’ He was sacked…
What does ice cream have to do with ‘late capitalism’?
‘More to my taste is Trockenbeerenkapitalismus,’ said my husband with an intonation that indicated a joke. The joke was a…
