English usage
How do we greet one another today?
Conversation is a fascinating subject, says Philip Hensher – but very few people get it right
The real reason people say ‘I text him’ instead of ‘I texted’ him
Martin Allen has written with a very interesting question. It follows on from his initial query, which is why people…
Collins dictionary has got ‘gammon’ all wrong
In the annual dictionary wars to nominate words of the year, in the hope of attracting publicity, Collins has made…
Thanks to Trump, the exclamation mark is having its best year! Ever!
‘The trade deal USMCA has received fantastic reviews. It will go down as one of the best ever made, and…
To avoid knowing the distasteful origin of ‘scumbag’, look away now
President Vladimir Putin of Russia remarked of Sergei Skripal, whom his agents tried to kill, ‘He’s simply a scumbag.’ Scumbag…
Why ‘embolden’ is a word in a million — and it’s currently in vogue
Embolden is a word in a million. In other words it is quite common. Using data from Google Books, the…
Unconscious bias: is Starbucks like the old Met Police?
Starbucks closed its 8,000 American coffee shops for half a day to give staff unconscious bias training. Training is to…
How did the same word come to describe the activities of stable lads and sexual predators?
Grooming is a horrible phenomenon of modern life when it happens to abused children. Yet a magazine such as GQ…
The phrase that is almost universally misused
Writing about Meghan Markle and the Duchess of Cambridge in the Sunday Times, India Knight wrote: ‘I can’t help but…
Does Brexit mean anything anymore?
Emma Bridgewater has, since 1985, produced pottery acceptable in tasteful middle-class kitchens. Some jars had Coffee on and some Biscuits.…
Can the beer-bike take on the Boris-bike?
In Amsterdam the courts have given leave to ban the bierfiets. Fiets is the Dutch for ‘bike’. (The plural is fietsen.)…
When Kingsley Amis needed a new insult, he reached for the taboo
‘It’s up there on the shelf you can’t reach,’ said my husband in an unhelpfully helpful tone. The ‘it’ was…
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…
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…
Go ballistic
I had always thought that to go ballistic was the same as to go nuclear, metaphorically. But the ballistic figure…
Mechanistic insight
No, hang on, don’t turn to Dear Mary yet. This is not as dull as it sounds. It’s just that…
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…
Include me out of this grammatical atrocity
Just as, in writing, many people use an exclamation mark to indicate that they have made a joke, so there…
Mind your language . . . on commit
My husband struck out with his stick at an advertisement in the street that said: ‘Commit to winter.’ He doesn’t…
