Etymology
Crisis
In his picture from 1932, ‘Derrière la gare Saint-Lazare’, Henri Cartier-Bresson caught the moment when a man in a hat…
Pop
The Guardian kindly tells us that green is a colour whose time has come: ‘A blazer or a cotton shirt…
Budget
The Budget (which the revolutionary fiscal act last week was technically not) is directly connected with bilge and with one…
Dire
‘Dire?’ said my husband. ‘It’s something chronic.’ He was putting on his idea of an Estuary accent, in a manner…
Corn
‘Wha, wha?’ said my husband in a slack-jawed way, throwing over a copy of the Guardian, as though it was…
Mental health
It is easy to laugh at young people asking for sympathy because ‘I’ve got mental health’. I think I heard…
Struggling
‘Quicksand!’ yelled my husband, flailing his arms wildly. Since he was sitting in his armchair, his dramatic representation of a…
Missing in action
Someone in the Guardian wrote that Boris Johnson had his ‘out of office’ on, and the Chancellor was ‘missing in…
Hosepipe ban
‘Got any ’ose?’ asked my husband, falling into his Two Ronnies ‘Four Candles’ routine, in which he likes to play…
Catcalls
‘A law against catcalls?’ asked my husband sceptically. ‘What next, criminalising booing and hissing?’ He often gets the wrong end…
Flageons
‘Don’t you know the answer?’ asked my husband with mock surprise, throwing over to me from his armchair a copy…
Culture wars
‘Come on, old girl,’ said my husband as though encouraging a cow stuck in a ditch, ‘you must know.’ It…
Our
There was a word I didn’t understand in Boris Johnson’s resignation speech (in which he did not resign). He spoke…
Pinch
Before pinch as a verb appears in any written sources, it already formed part of surnames. Hugo Pinch was walking,…
Distraction
Dominic Raab blamed distraction forBoris Johnson’s woes when the Tories failed in two by-elections last week. ‘Hehas track records as…
Odious
Lord Geidt said in his resignationletter that he had been put in an odious position. He meant it was hateful,though…
Nice
‘That’s nice,’ said my husband, taking a Nice biscuit with his coffee. It was his little joke. The biscuit is…
Mind your language: Stations
In Kyiv they have voted to changethe names of some metro stations. Heroes of the Dnieper is to become Heroes…
Sparks
‘It’s not as nice as it looks,’ said my husband, not leaving time to look it in the mouth before…
Chiltern Hundreds
I saw in last week’s Spectatorthat the tractor MP had applied for the stewardship of the Manor of Northstead. After…
The Metaphor Map
‘What’s that?’ asked my husband, looking at my laptop. ‘Fibonacci fossilised?’ His question made no sense, but I saw what…
Salmagundi
‘It makes me hungry,’ said my husband when I mentioned the word salmagundi. That is his reaction to many words.…
Aesopian
To evade algorithms that hunt down forbidden words, users of platforms like TikTok employ cryptic synonyms. So deadbecomes unalive, and…
Gif
The man who invented gifs, Stephen Wilhite, has died, aged 74. Controversy survives him – over how to pronounce the…
Sib
I never cared much for the word sibling, though I hardly knew why. The reason must be that it was…
