Etymology
Can you ‘go gangbusters’?
‘Is it anything to do with cockle-picking?’ asked my husband, confident he was on the right track. Naturally he wasn’t.…
Do sparks really fly?
‘Sparks,’ said my husband, after a short pause. I had asked him what one could spark. His answer was true…
Can MPs really defect?
‘He did it years before William Donaldson did The Henry Root Letters,’ said my husband querulously, as though I had…
Where does ‘stuff’ come from?
Pelham, the hero of the novel of the same name (which came out in 1828, the first year of The…
Amol Rajan is right to change his ways on ‘aitch’
My husband thought it brave and manly of the BBC’s Amol Rajan to resolve publicly to change his pronunciation of…
We ought to banish more words
Why do people say: ‘You might very well think that; I couldn’t possibly comment’? Are they using it as they…
When is a Lord not a Lord?
The Financial Times seeks applicants for the Sir Samuel Brittan fellowship. Announcing this, the paper refers to him as Sir…
