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Mind your language

When Kingsley Amis needed a new insult, he reached for the taboo

25 November 2017

9:00 AM

25 November 2017

9:00 AM

‘It’s up there on the shelf you can’t reach,’ said my husband in an unhelpfully helpful tone. The ‘it’ was a copy of The King’s English, Kingsley Amis’s book on usage. I quoted it the other week on the deployment of the.

On the same page is a Kingsleyish word I wanted to follow up — pissily.

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