Kel Richards

Language

20 August 2022 9:00 am

British journalist Richard Godwin has alerted me to what may be the trendiest word of the moment: ‘namecore’. This is…

Language

13 August 2022 9:00 am

As the contest to replace Boris Johnson draws towards its protracted close, we should remember that many of the original…

Language

6 August 2022 9:00 am

A Speccie reader has alerted me to the use of an odd word ‘alum’ to refer to the graduates of…

Language

30 July 2022 9:00 am

It was Will Self (writing in The Speccie) who drew my attention to the new word ‘uberise.’ He says he…

Language

23 July 2022 9:00 am

No sooner had the words ‘blue murder’ appeared on the cover of this august journal than a Speccie reader was…

Language

16 July 2022 9:00 am

Here is a delightful phrase which may well become a familiar idiom in English language: ‘weather dependent economy’. I encountered…

Language

9 July 2022 9:00 am

No language column can ignore Professor Brendan Murphy’s extraordinary 78-word definition of ‘woman’. As you know, when he was questioned…

Language

2 July 2022 9:00 am

Is it time to revisit how we define the word ‘racism’? Early in the 20th century the settled definition became…

Language

25 June 2022 9:00 am

We live in a world that seems to have largely abandoned punctuation – those small marks between words that help…

Language

18 June 2022 9:00 am

The word ‘emergency’ has been part of the English language since around 1630. Its most common political use today is…

Language

4 June 2022 9:00 am

‘Bike shedding’ was coined by British historian and author C. Northcote Parkinson, famous for his book Parkinson’s Law (1957), but…

Language

28 May 2022 9:00 am

News reports tell us there has been a small furore over a list of ‘derogatory and offensive terms’ included in…

Language

21 May 2022 9:00 am

We all know ‘adult’ the noun, and we know what an ‘adult’ is (‘because,’ as a friend said to me,…

Language

7 May 2022 9:00 am

Now a new and (I think) much needed expression: ‘disagreement consent’. It’s a play on a more familiar expression I…

Language

30 April 2022 9:00 am

The current prominence of the word ‘gaffe’ is due to the Gaffe Meister himself – Joe Biden. But on investigation…

Language

23 April 2022 9:00 am

Here it is! I have finally found one word that will describe the Liberal party in its present state— ‘agathokakological’.…

Language

16 April 2022 9:00 am

The word ‘fatigue’ has been part of the English language since at least 1693. It comes from a French source…

Language

9 April 2022 9:00 am

The expression ‘to walk back’ has exploded over the news recently. We have been told by the news media that…

Language

2 April 2022 9:00 am

A reader (Rosie) has drawn my attention to a new(ish) word: ‘coddiwomple’. Rosie wrote to say that she has been…

Language

26 March 2022 9:00 am

Have you noticed the trend to refer to some Australians as ‘First Nations’ people? Those Australians were once called ‘Aboriginal’…

Language

19 March 2022 9:00 am

According to news reports Vladimir Putin expected his invasion and conquest of Ukraine to be a ‘cakewalk’. This is originally…

Aussie Language

5 March 2022 9:00 am

We are used to words being banned – but now it seems the word police are coming for the word…

Aussie Language

26 February 2022 9:00 am

A small award should be presented to the Australian’s Alice Workman for her new coinage. She has given us a…

Aussie Language

19 February 2022 9:00 am

Writing in the Daily Telegraph James Morrow referred to something called a preference cascade which he said was a term…

Aussie Language

12 February 2022 9:00 am

I have coined a potentially useful new expression: comatose bias. We are told that one of the great problems in…