Mind your language

Grocery

Dot Wordsworth 18 May 2013

Was Margaret Thatcher brought up in a grocery? I wouldn’t say so. The Americans would. I’d call her father’s shop in Grantham a grocer’s. He sold grocery. Yet I saw… Read more

Game-changing

Dot Wordsworth 11 May 2013

In the days when we had bottles of milk delivered, some tits discovered how to peck through the foil tops and consume the cream beneath. Suddenly all the tits were… Read more

Just got easier

Dot Wordsworth 4 May 2013

‘A cab?’ said my husband. ‘Was the Underground out of order?’ I had been telling him about an interesting notice that I’d seen in a taxi, but he’d chosen to… Read more

Lady

Dot Wordsworth 27 April 2013

In the sobriquet Iron Lady, isn’t lady too deferential for a mocking nickname? Its author, Yuri Gavrilov, hardly knew that in current English, lady is a genteelism when used by… Read more

Machinations

Dot Wordsworth 20 April 2013

Ian Hislop mocked Stephen Mangan, when he put in a turn as the man asking the questions on Have I Got News For You last week, for saying ‘masination’ (for… Read more

‘French,’ cried my husband. ‘It’s bloody French.’ We were clicking on a computer screen in response to the dear old Telegraph’s invitation to ‘test out your etymological knowledge’. The little… Read more

Behalf

Dot Wordsworth 6 April 2013

Why has behalf so rapidly collapsed into misuse? Everyone says things like ‘On my behalf I don’t want money’, or ‘The car crashed through bad driving on your behalf’. Rather… Read more

Aspiration nation

Dot Wordsworth 30 March 2013

I still haven’t got over aspiration nation, the Chancellor’s watchword in this month’s Budget, which now seems a long time ago. Why is it so annoying? One aspect is the… Read more

Enthronisation

Dot Wordsworth 23 March 2013

They were worrying in Canterbury about a clash between the inauguration of the Pope and the enthronisation of the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was a near miss. You might think… Read more

Austerity

Dot Wordsworth 16 March 2013

‘Remember snoek?’ asked my husband, as if I were old enough to be his mother. In 1947, ten million tins of this distinctive-tasting fish, Thyrsites atun, were imported from South… Read more

Lurch

Dot Wordsworth 9 March 2013

My husband made a little joke. ‘There’s no such thing as a free lurch,’ he said, looking up from his Sunday Telegraph. In it, David Cameron had declared: ‘The battle… Read more

Contamination

Dot Wordsworth 2 March 2013

A shrouded skull flanked by serpents above a tureen inscribed with the words, ‘There is death in the pot’ (2 Kings 4:40), ornaments the title page of A Treatise on… Read more

Release

Dot Wordsworth 23 February 2013

The centenary of George Barker’s birth was mentioned in the Times Literary Supplement recently. His ‘first two books — one of verse, the other prose — were released in 1933’.… Read more

Electrification of the ring fence

Dot Wordsworth 16 February 2013

At the age of 55, Gervase Markham set off to walk from London to Berwick without using any bridge or boat, and without swimming, but relying only on a staff… Read more

Vulnerable

Dot Wordsworth 9 February 2013

‘I’m a vulnerable adult,’ said my husband when I asked him why he was shouting the other morning. He had spilt some water from the hot kettle on his slippered… Read more

Onesie

Dot Wordsworth 2 February 2013

The onesie has brought Britain one step nearer fainéant infantilism than the slanket. The slanket, a portmanteau of sleeved and blanket, reached a height of popularity in 2009. It looked… Read more

People walk past the Stormont Assembly b

Lang Syne

Dot Wordsworth 26 January 2013

Those of us who only pronounce the words auld lang syne on New Year’s Eve and have a vague grasp of their grammatical function may be cheered by a sign… Read more

Breaded cats

Dot Wordsworth 19 January 2013

I don’t know whether people know what belling the cat means now. In an allusive language like ours, some references sink out of sight. But the old tale is that… Read more

Coffee house

Dot Wordsworth 12 January 2013

In the series of radio programmes on culture, a guest of Melvyn Bragg’s declared that the distinction between high and low culture was never strict, as a Wagner opera was… Read more

Elven

Dot Wordsworth 5 January 2013

Like many, I have just read The Hobbit again, which I hadn’t done since reading it to Veronica as a girl. Even when solemn, Tolkien knows what he is doing… Read more

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