Mind your language
What two little words that combine virtue signalling and denunciation?
The inventor of the verse form known as the clerihew, Edmund Clerihew Bentley, had a way with this seemingly simple…
Is your conduct unacceptably inappropriate – or inappropriately unacceptable?
‘When is physical contact “unacceptable”?’ asked Charles Moore in the Daily Telegraph. He may well ask. Sir Michael Fallon said…
Medicine
John Farquhar of Salisbury writes to say he is irritated. He is not just irritated, he has long been long…
The
Veronica, who looks at Twitter, told me of an exchange she thought would interest me, about the use of the.…
Einstein vs Weinstein
Before I forget, I was cheered by the letter from Keith Aitken in last week’s issue noting another sense for…
Not so much
‘Kiss me mucho,’ sang my husband with a revolting leer, ‘and we’ll soar. And we’ll dance the dance of love…
Tube
When George Eliot wrote ‘The tube-journey can never lend much to picture and narrative,’ she was not making an observant…
Boo
In 1872, the 27-stone figure of the Tichborne Claimant was insisting he was Sir Roger Tichborne Bt, an heir thought…
Shocking bad hat
My husband complains that the disposition of teenagers in London is one of mocking hostility. I seem to suffer less…
Gorblimey trousers
Piles of black plastic rubbish sacks lie in the streets of Birmingham because, since the end of June, the dustmen…
Go ballistic
I had always thought that to go ballistic was the same as to go nuclear, metaphorically. But the ballistic figure…
Bacteria
It’s like whipping cream. All of a sudden it goes stiff and you can turn the bowl upside down without…
Sixteen-hundreds
I was puzzled by the caption to a picture in the Times Literary Supplement. The picture showed a model of…
Mechanistic insight
No, hang on, don’t turn to Dear Mary yet. This is not as dull as it sounds. It’s just that…
Wuthering
Haworth is in a constant simmer of Brontë anniversary fever. It is looking forward to Emily Brontë’s 200th birthday next…
Greenland and India
‘Remember what the fellow said — it’s not a bally bit of use every prospect pleasing if man is vile,’…
Epiphanic
‘I love the pumping station,’ said my husband, waving a copy of the Docklands and East London Advertiser which reported…
Support
The Foreword didn’t bode well. This was on the first page of The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices. It…
Pride of lions
‘Are they all gay too?’ asked my husband, waving the Sunday Telegraph with its headline ‘Pride of Lions’. He had…
Clichés
The most tired cliché in English, suggests Orin Hargraves, the American philologist, is at the end of the day. I’ve…
Romance liver
‘Ha, ha!’ said my husband, waving the Spectator letters page in the air. ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ He was overcome by…
Narrative
Laura Kuenssberg was right. Even my husband agreed, and he often throws soiled beermats from an unknown source (which he…
Trooping the Colour
Language is a weapon to do down others. ‘He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!’ said Estella disdainfully of Pip…
Not bloody likely
In My Fair Lady, which came out as a film in 1964, 50 years after Shaw’s Pygmalion, they decided to…
Reference
When Dickens wanted to buy a house in 1837, he wrote to Richard Bentley, who had started the magazine in…
