Mind your language
Aunt
Catching up with the excellent biography of the 3rd Marquess of Bute (the man who built Cardiff Castle among other…
Dot Wordsworth: Is M&S really 'Magic & Sparkle'?
‘Believe in Magic & Sparkle,’ says the Marks & Spencer television Christmas advertisement. The phrase is meant to suggest the…
Collagen
I saw an advertisement for Active Gold Collagen, and I realised I didn’t know what collagen means. My husband just…
The week in words: 'Pull & Bear' is all style, no substance
‘This’ll make you laugh,’ said my husband, sounding like George V commenting on an Impressionist painting. ‘Someone in the Telegraph…
The bare-brained youth of south London
‘Bare? Extra? What does it all mean?’ asked my husband, sounding like George Smiley in the middle of a particularly…
Word of the Week: Does it matter who uses the N-word?
The BBC is to broadcast what is now referred to as the ‘C-word’ in a drama about Dylan Thomas. ‘It…
The week in words: When politicians use 'hard-working'
In his New Year message for 1940, Joseph Goebbels complained that the ‘warmongering cliques in London’ hated the German people…
Dot Wordsworth's week in words: Did William Empson have the first clue what 'bare ruined choirs' meant?
I am shocked to find that William Empson, famous for his technique of close reading, was no good at reading…
Word of the Week: If your jacket isn't blazing, don't call it a 'blazer'
‘It’s not right, is it?’ said Veronica, pointing to a poster for H&M women’s blazers at £17.I agreed. But she…
Capital letters
One man’s grammatical nicety is another man’s grotesque solecism, I thought, as I perused a report in the Gulf News,…
Mind your language: the dark side of squee
Oxford Dictionaries have been adding some rather silly words to their online resources, such as phablet (‘a smartphone with a…
Dot Wordsworth: We've been self-whipping since 1672
Isabel Hardman of this parish explained after last week’s government defeat that a deluded theory among the party leadership had…
Vikings
‘What’s he saying now?’ asked my husband in a provoking manner when an actor read out a bit of the…
After ‘literally’, is it time to start a Neighbourhood Watch for the OED?
There was outrage last week when it was found that the Oxford English Dictionary had listed one sense of literally…
Bongo
Alexandra Shulman was on Desert Island Discs this summer and one choice was ‘Bongo Bong’. Its words tell a simple…
Mind your language: Frack vs frag
‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a frack,’ replied my husband unwittily when I asked how he’d feel if shale…
Mind your language: The springs before the Arab Spring
Two hundred and forty-years ago next Tuesday, Thomas Gray was buried in his mother’s grave in Stoke Poges churchyard. In…
Mind your language: Who says there's a 'correct name' for the penis?
In a very rum letter to the Daily Telegraph, the Mother’s Union of all people joined with some other bodies…
Mind your language: How the Dreamliner got its name
‘Planes don’t run off batteries,’ declared my husband, his finger unerringly on the pulse of technology as ever. I had…
Transparency
On 21 June 1785, James Woodforde was in Norwich and in the evening went to Bunns pleasure gardens, where ‘there…
Swathe
Swathe is a popular word at the moment, and ignorance of its meaning, spelling and pronunciation deters no one. It…
