Mind your language
Word of the week: ‘cakeism’
Latest despatches from the Dictionary Wars bring news of Oxford’s words of the year, a counterblast to last week’s words…
Collins dictionary has got ‘gammon’ all wrong
In the annual dictionary wars to nominate words of the year, in the hope of attracting publicity, Collins has made…
At sixes and sevens about seven and six
Someone on the wireless was talking about marrying in the Liberty of Newgate before the Marriage Act of 1753, and…
Getting on – and falling off – the wagon
Radio 3 tries to distract listeners from music by posing little quizzes and hearing quirky details of history from a…
The polite origins of the police
My husband, who fancies himself as something of a classicist, was delighted to see the Turkish investigators of the Khashoggi…
Mind your language: Woman, women, womxn
When I say that it has given comfort to my husband, you can judge how foolish the Wellcome Institute was…
To avoid knowing the distasteful origin of ‘scumbag’, look away now
President Vladimir Putin of Russia remarked of Sergei Skripal, whom his agents tried to kill, ‘He’s simply a scumbag.’ Scumbag…
Was everyone a psychopath before 1909?
My husband is enjoying Do No Harm, the arresting memoir of the brain surgeon Henry Marsh who was on Desert…
Why ‘embolden’ is a word in a million — and it’s currently in vogue
Embolden is a word in a million. In other words it is quite common. Using data from Google Books, the…
Why ‘whiter than white’shouldn’t get you suspended
A detective superintendent has been placed on ‘restricted duties’ while the Independent Office for Police Conduct investigates a complaint that…
The origin and nature of teacakes
The Sunday Telegraph has been running a correspondence on the origin and nature of teacakes. One reader averred that in…
Optics: stingy pub measures and politicians’ images
If you’d like to buy a copy of Newton’s Opticks: or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours…
1880s slang: How to fig a nag and pitch a snide
‘I want my money back,’ said my husband. ‘This is from the 1880s, not the 1980s.’ He looked up from…
Why would you relish an opportunity?
The Sun gave a sad picture of British loneliness recently in a report about the national yearning to play a…
Petrichor: an awkward word for a pleasant phenomenon
I’m not too sure about the word petrichor, invented in 1964 as a label for the pleasant smell frequently accompanying…
‘Crest’ and the absurd language of heraldry
A friend of my husband’s, yet a well-educated man, said in conversation as we walked to Tate Modern: ‘Is that…
Signage
My husband, in company with a similarly superannuated medic on the unfamiliar London Underground, was bidden at Baker Street to…
Mind your language: County lines
We are suddenly all expected to know that county lines are to do with the selling of illegal drugs in…
‘Living with’ is now a thing – usually followed by something nasty like Alzheimer’s
I’m not at all sure about the formula a person living with, followed by something unwelcome, such as Alzheimer’s disease,…
Has Boris brought ‘turd’ back into polite society?
I have never lost my admiration for Boris Johnson’s summary of British ambitions over Brexit as ‘having our cake and…
Ideation, from suicide to management speak
‘Suicide!’ yelled my husband, while performing an inappropriate mime of a hangman’s noose. That was his reply when I asked…
The origins of the famous blue tiles of Portugal’s buildings have been misunderstood
A friend sent a nice postcard from Portugal showing the outside of a church covered with old blue tiles. She…
‘Iteration’ has escaped from the computer shops
‘They should say, irritation, not iteration,’ exclaimed my husband as a voice on the wireless spoke about men’s fashion and…
When ‘activist’ used to mean ‘Nazi supporter’
Rudolf Eucken had a beard and a way of tucking the ends of his bow tie under his collar that…
Unconscious bias: is Starbucks like the old Met Police?
Starbucks closed its 8,000 American coffee shops for half a day to give staff unconscious bias training. Training is to…
