Etymology
Helpmeet
‘What’s so funny?’ asked my husband, accusingly, as I made an amused noise while relaxing with a copy of the…
Untenable
‘Nurse! The tenaculum!’ exclaimed my husband in the manner of James Robertson Justice playing the surgeon Sir Lancelot Spratt. I’m…
Alumni
My husband is forever being sent magazines from his Oxford college inviting him to give it money. I suggest he…
Witch
‘No, darling, I certainly wouldn’t call you a witch,’ said my husband. ‘You’re not thin enough.’ The Oxford English Dictionary…
Prolific
The BBC made a documentary about a man sent to prison for being the ‘most prolific rapist in British legal…
Festive season
‘Here you are, darling,’ I said to my husband. ‘These lines might have been written for you: “Drinke, quaffe, be…
Perfect storm
When my husband’s whisky glass fell off the little table next to his chair on to next door’s cat, which…
Bame
In its coverage of the shuffled cabinet, the BBC added a note: ‘BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) is a…
Quenelles
When Peter Quennell was sent down from Oxford for consorting with a woman called Cara (by Evelyn Waugh’s account), he…
Problematic
‘This crossword is problematic!’ exclaimed my husband, tossing aside the folded newspaper marked with a ring where his whisky glass…
Barking up the right tree
The government’s promise to fund a pilot scheme promoting the teaching of Latin in secondary schools is music to the…
Actor
‘That chap in Line of Duty. That’s what I’d call a bad actor,’ said my husband with vague certainty. He…
Wash-up
‘They asked me if I wanted to wash up before we even went in to dinner,’ my husband recalled with…
Holland
The title of the keenly awaited volume of memoirs by John Martin Robinson sounds like a crossword clue: Holland Blind…
Leather and prunella
‘Oh, yes,’ said my husband, enthusiastically, ‘a loathsome disease. The tongue goes black and dry.’ He was referring to an…
Pinged
‘Ping, ping, ping went the bell,’ sang my husband, making his eyes wide and jigging in his best imitation of…
Huntin’, shootin’, fishin’
In 1923 in Whose Body? we were introduced to Lord Peter Wimsey on his way to an auction where he…
Critique
Six years ago I wrote here about critique, as a noun or verb, and things have gone from bad to…
Gender critical
Seeing my husband in his armchair snoozing, as his unacknowledged habit is, head back, mouth open, stertorous and blotchy, it…
Sliver
When people say a slither of cake, do they not remember that snakes slither? ‘Slither slide; sliver small piece,’ says…
Overhaul
Last week, John Lewis and Marks & Spencer were overhauling their stores. Football clubs were madly overhauling teams and we…
Great
‘Why didn’t they call it Very British Railways?’ asked my husband. Unwittingly (as in most of his remarks), he had…
Level
‘I must level with you, level with the British public, many more families are going to lose loved ones.’ That…
Sleaze
‘Sleaze, sleaze, sleaze!’ exclaimed Sir Keir Starmer in Prime Minister’s Questions last week, hoping that a triple serving might stick.…
Supermajority
‘Wizard,’ said William. ‘Super,’ said Ginger, in William and the Moon Rocket (1954). More recently we have had Alex Salmond,…
