English language
Why must every ‘accident’ be an ‘incident’?
I had thought that the saying ‘Accidents will happen in the best regulated families’ was a vulgar reference to children…
Dear Mary: How can I stop my future son-in-law saying ‘must of’
Q. My future son-in-law has been successfully house-trained in the use of upper-middle-class English over the years that he has…
Should ‘suicide’ mean pig-killing?
There was a marvellous man in Shakespeare’s day known as John Smyth the Sebaptist. ‘In an act so deeply shocking…
Rod Liddle: The top 10 most fatuous phrases in the English language
An apology. A few weeks back, in my blog, I promised a regular series called ‘Fatuous Phrase of the Week’.…
Why you might not want corridors in your historical novel
I read C.J. Sansom’s novel Dissolution on the train recently with pleasure. For an historical novel narrated in the 1530s,…
How Ebola got its name
It should perhaps be called Yambuku fever, since that was the village in Zaire (as it was then, now the…
What’s good for the goose is bad for the proverb
‘Goosey, goosey gander,’ my husband shouted at the television, like someone from Gogglebox. It’s not so much that he thinks…
The fascinating history of dullness
At least I’ve got my husband’s Christmas present sorted out: the Dull Men of Great Britain calendar. It is no…
How did Mark Reckless get his surname?
When I first heard ‘Wonderwall’ being played in a public house, in 1995 I suppose, I thought it was some…
The rhetorical power of ‘never’, from Ian Paisley to King Lear
He won’t be remembered as Lord Bannside, but Ian Paisley will be remembered for shouting: ‘Never, never, never, never.’ The…
Knee-jerkers vs knee-tremblers
A little joke by Paddy, Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, turned upon something to be shunned. Conservative ministers, he said, had…
‘Escalate’: an exciting new way to say ‘pass the buck’
Shaun Wright, the police and crime commissioner for South Yorkshire, spoke to Sky television last week about how little he…
A bitter struggle with the dictionary
‘Don’t mind if I do,’ is one of husband’s stock phrases — jokes he would think them — in this…
What’s humanitarian about a humanitarian crisis?
‘Our first priority,’ David Cameron said this week, ‘has of course been to deal with the acute humanitarian crisis in…
Is Boris Johnson standing for Parliament — or running for it?
‘Boris Johnson broke cover yesterday to declare that he will run for parliament,’ the Times reported last week. The Mirror…
Should you be prejudiced against ‘pre-’?
‘Pre-diabetes is an artificial category with virtually zero clinical relevance,’ said an American professor in the Times. A friend of…
The sinister new meaning of ‘support’
When I asked my husband why paramedical professions were given to remaking the language in strange ways, he replied in…
‘Basta’ must be the Queen’s English — a Queen used it
My chickens do not usually come home to roost so rapidly. Only a fortnight ago I wrote that ‘some people use…
How DO you pronounce 'Marylebone'?
‘Take a trip to Marylebone station,’ chanted my husband. ‘Do not pass Go. Do not collect £200.’ I had been…
Why –y? The evolution of a suffix
Hitler was ‘dark, shouty, moustachioed’ in Churchill’s eyes, or rather, that was Jonathan Rose’s view of how Churchill saw Hitler,…
Why did we ever spell jail gaol?
‘Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect £200.’ said the Community Chest card…
Lumpen’s journey from Marxism to nonsense
A publisher, Kevin Mayhew, has written to The Tablet, which is not a computer journal but a weekly magazine of…
Big changes in little words
I managed to grab the TLS last week before my husband stuffed it in his overcoat pocket and lost it…
Where did ‘No justice, no peace’ come from?
The chant No justice, no peace by supporters of Mark Duggan, the drug gangster shot dead by police in 2011,…
#Onyourmarks! What is the formal name for the hashtag?
One day there simply won’t be any strange byways of the English language left to write quirky little books about.…
