English language
Barry Humphries’s diary: My war with ‘Wow!’
I’m counting ‘Wows!’ Suddenly everyone is using this irritating expletive expressing incredulity, amazement and nothing at all. I’ve heard it…
Should we just stop using ‘fulsome’?
It’s funny that two much misused words end in —some: fulsome and noisome. Noisome is the less often used at…
N.M. Gwynne’s diary: Old names worth dropping
As I get older (and my 74th birthday is now close), I get deeper and deeper into nostalgia. I do…
Can politicians say ‘crusade’ again? David Cameron thinks so
One thing grabbed my attention from David Cameron’s speech, long ago in the middle of last week. ‘We need a…
I invented ‘virtue signalling’. Now it’s taking over the world
I invented the term ‘virtue signalling’ in The Spectator. Now it seems to be taking over the world
The weird truth about the word ‘normal’
‘Is Nicky Morgan too “normal” to be the next prime minister?’ asked someone in the Daily Telegraph. That would make…
I was wrong to criticise using ‘critique’ as a verb
I lost my husband on the way from Malabar. He is easily lost. We had been talking about the verb…
The remarkable discovery of Roger Fuckebythenavele
A great discovery has been made by Dr Paul Booth, a fellow of Keele University. It is a 14th-century example…
A lesson in graceful Twitter style – from a resigning shadow minister
‘Tweeting’s like text messaging, isn’t it?’ said my husband confidently, though not, as usual, from any knowledge of the matter.…
Why would Jeremy Corbyn want to be credible when he can be incredible?
In a wonderfully dry manual of theology on my husband’s bookshelves, written in Latin and printed in Naples in the…
Think ‘migrant’ is an insult? ‘Refugee’ can be too
Al Jazeera, the Qatari broadcaster, is going to use refugee instead of migrant in its English output. ‘The umbrella term…
Saints still beat Game of Thrones for baby-naming – but maybe not Mohammed
We reached peak Charlie in 2012, when 5,571 baby boys were given the name. There were only 4,642 last year.…
‘Asexual’ used to mean something even creepier than ‘Edward Heath’
There was a time when my husband, who often addresses the television, would habitually react to Edward Heath’s appearance on…
I’m 43. Why am I still so reluctant to call myself a man?
I'm 43. Why do I still not refer to myself as a man?
Where ‘big ask’ came from, and why it still sounds barbaric
‘That’s unnecessarily crude,’ said my husband, turning momentarily from the television and improving the shining minute by setting the whisky…
Why I hate ‘I love that…’
I had never heard the Country (Red Dirt) singer Wade Bowen before, although his latest album Hold my Beer (Vol 1)…
Pluto’s moon Charon is secretly a Charlene
‘What about the moon Tracey?’ asked my husband facetiously when an astronomer on the wireless, talking of Pluto’s moon Charon,…
How a prayer became business speak
No doubt you, too, have had the feeling, upon glancing at an article in a paper picked up in a…
In defence of Michael Gove’s grammar guide
Few things are more likely to provoke the disapproval of the bien-pensant left than criticising someone’s grammar. The very idea…
On the cusp: a cliche with a hidden astrological side
‘A stalker who dressed a pillow “mannequin” in his ex’s nurse’s uniform, then sent her a picture, has been told…
A political history of The Clangers
Dropping the Clangers The Clangers made a comeback on BBC television. Some Clanger facts: — The actors doing the voices…
What kind of life-form boasts that it can ‘speak human’?
The next Labour leader will have to be able to speak human, said a piece in the Observer. This, it…
Trigger warning: this is an article about the word ‘trigger’
A notion is going about that, just as readers of film reviews receive spoiler alerts, so readers of anything should…
The rise and rise of the brain fade
‘Aa-aah,’ groaned my husband, ‘we fade to grey.’ He had never been much of a Young Romantic, even when Visage…
The real contest at Eurovision: worst lyric
Like a reluctantly remembered nightmare, last week’s Eurovision Song Contest already seems very distant. But, in the manner of the…
