Etymology
Getting on – and falling off – the wagon
Radio 3 tries to distract listeners from music by posing little quizzes and hearing quirky details of history from a…
The polite origins of the police
My husband, who fancies himself as something of a classicist, was delighted to see the Turkish investigators of the Khashoggi…
Mind your language: Woman, women, womxn
When I say that it has given comfort to my husband, you can judge how foolish the Wellcome Institute was…
Was everyone a psychopath before 1909?
My husband is enjoying Do No Harm, the arresting memoir of the brain surgeon Henry Marsh who was on Desert…
Optics: stingy pub measures and politicians’ images
If you’d like to buy a copy of Newton’s Opticks: or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours…
Petrichor: an awkward word for a pleasant phenomenon
I’m not too sure about the word petrichor, invented in 1964 as a label for the pleasant smell frequently accompanying…
Mind your language: County lines
We are suddenly all expected to know that county lines are to do with the selling of illegal drugs in…
Similar to (as opposed to like, as with, such as)
I’m often annoyed by like being misused in different ways. (In place of as, for example: ‘Like I expected, he was…
Paranoia and The Woman in White
I sat up with a jerk, after contemplating the wallpaper in the television dramatisation of The Woman in White, when…
We’ve been saying ‘wrap up warm’ for a thousand years
In June 1873, Oswald Cockayne shot himself. He was in a state of melancholy, having been dismissed by King’s College…
‘Sorted’ has always had connotations of menace
My heart leapt up on Newport station, an unusual place for that to happen, when I heard a recorded announcement:…
Why do so many academics write so badly?
Why do so many academics write so badly? Those who make the study of language their life’s work are as…
The
Veronica, who looks at Twitter, told me of an exchange she thought would interest me, about the use of the.…
Einstein vs Weinstein
Before I forget, I was cheered by the letter from Keith Aitken in last week’s issue noting another sense for…
Boo
In 1872, the 27-stone figure of the Tichborne Claimant was insisting he was Sir Roger Tichborne Bt, an heir thought…
Bacteria
It’s like whipping cream. All of a sudden it goes stiff and you can turn the bowl upside down without…
Why 'safe' is Dot Wordsworth's word of the year
‘Makes me feel sick,’ said my husband, referring not to the third mince pie of the morning (in Advent, supposedly…
The Spanish village that thought it was called ‘Kill Jews’
A village has changed its name because it seemed offensive. But I think the villagers were under a misapprehension. The…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Origins of the toe-rag
‘I am glad to say that I have never seen a toe-rag,’ said my husband, assuming, as unconvincingly as one…
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…
