Language
How whimsy took over
An intelligent reader is annoyed by whimsy. ‘Clothes, interiors, children’s birthdays… it’s everywhere!’ she exclaims. ‘What is whimsy anyway?’ It…
The dialect Spain forgot
‘It made me sick to think of the work that must go into the making of such a thing,’ George…
The internet is wrong about taxis
Error sticks to the word taxi like ants to an echidna’s tongue. Ten years ago I wrote here that I’d…
Does Yogi Bear have a connection to yoga?
‘Well, we all have areas of ignorance,’ said my husband with a little too much relish, I thought. He was…
Who decides if a word is racist?
I swear Rod Liddle was smiling down on me last week, as I found myself tussling with an editor. I’d…
Should you give a toss about ‘toss’?
Modern Toss was invented in 2004 as the label for a series of cartoons by Jon Link and Mick Bunnage.…
Fantasticks, calash, noctivagation – the wonderful words of Anthony Wood
When the King visited Oxford in September 1687, there was a bit of a shambles in the Bodleian, where they…
Grab bags are up for grabs
My husband’s task was a simple one: to buy a couple of bottles of water from the Morrisons opposite the…
Know your facepalm from your headslap
‘That’s not a facepalm,’ said my husband. ‘It’s a headslap.’ He proved the point by making contact between the flat…
Italy’s doomed war on English
‘Italians are not inventing any new words,’ the head of the Italian language academy told the Telegraph. ‘They’re not creating…
Why does everything now pivot?
‘As the door turneth upon his hinges,’ says the Book of Proverbs, ‘so doth the slothful upon his bed.’ But…
Is a ‘link-up’ a modern ‘flash mob’?
The public disturbances in Clapham, achieved by social media link-ups, have their precedents. ‘You can imagine what an exhilarating week…
What makes a politician a ‘grandee’?
To me, grandee goes together with Tory. So it was a surprise to find Lord Mandelson called a Labour grandee…
‘Both things can be true’: The creep of an annoying cliché
‘It’s lunchtime and it’s raining. Both things can be true at the same time,’ said my husband, putting on the…
