English language

Why must every ‘accident’ be an ‘incident’?

15 November 2014 9:00 am

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’

8 November 2014 9:00 am

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?

8 November 2014 9:00 am

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

1 November 2014 9:00 am

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

1 November 2014 9:00 am

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

25 October 2014 9:00 am

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

18 October 2014 9:00 am

‘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

11 October 2014 9:00 am

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?

4 October 2014 9:00 am

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

20 September 2014 9:00 am

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

13 September 2014 9:00 am

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’

6 September 2014 9:00 am

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

30 August 2014 9:00 am

‘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?

23 August 2014 9:00 am

‘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?

16 August 2014 9:00 am

‘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-’?

9 August 2014 9:00 am

‘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’

31 May 2014 9:00 am

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

24 May 2014 9:00 am

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'? 

17 May 2014 9:00 am

‘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

3 May 2014 9:00 am

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?

5 April 2014 9:00 am

‘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

8 February 2014 9:00 am

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

1 February 2014 9:00 am

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?

18 January 2014 9:00 am

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? 

26 October 2013 9:00 am

One day there simply won’t be any strange byways of the English language left to write quirky little books about.…