Language
Very bad poems on the Underground
My husband was surprised by quite a bit when we travelled by Underground in London the other day. Although he has a Nelson Mandela Memorial Freedom Pass, he seldom chooses… Read more
When Scotland goes, will England return?
Who, my husband asked, expects every man will do his duty? He was responding to the interesting and important question that Charles Moore raised last week about the name of… Read more
Warning: upspeak can wreck your career
A few weeks ago, I accompanied my daughter to an Open Day at Roehampton College, where she is hoping to start a teacher training course in September. I enjoyed it… Read more
A learned poet's mystifying mistakes
I enjoy Poetry Please, but was shouting mildly at the wireless the other day when a northern woman poet was using the whining intonation that some seem to think the… Read more
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 interest to Catholics, complaining that the newly revised translation of… Read more
Big changes in little words
I managed to grab the TLS last week before my husband stuffed it in his overcoat pocket and lost it at his club. It had a very enjoyable review by… Read more
Where did ‘No justice, no peace’ come from?
The chant No justice, no peace by supporters of Mark Duggan, the drug gangster shot dead by police in 2011, sounded more like a threat than a prediction. No one… Read more
Dot Wordsworth: How online shopping is changing English
How do you play the lottery? The National Lottery website has a handy guide. Step No. 1 is: ‘Go into a store.’ But in my experience, lottery tickets are sold… Read more
Dot Wordsworth: Is M&S really 'Magic & Sparkle'?
‘Believe in Magic & Sparkle,’ says the Marks & Spencer television Christmas advertisement. The phrase is meant to suggest the shop, but it seems rather distant to me, either verbally… Read more
Dot Wordsworth's week in words: Did William Empson have the first clue what 'bare ruined choirs' meant?
I am shocked to find that William Empson, famous for his technique of close reading, was no good at reading at all. A paragraph of his in Seven Types of… Read more
Dot Wordsworth: We've been self-whipping since 1672
Isabel Hardman of this parish explained after last week’s government defeat that a deluded theory among the party leadership had held that Tory backbenchers were now self-whipping. When she aired… Read more
24 August 2013
Some doctors write Sir: Professor Meirion Thomas (‘Dangerous medicine’, 17 August) may be an excellent surgeon but he is uninformed about the nature of GPs’ work. For many older consultants… Read more
After ‘literally’, is it time to start a Neighbourhood Watch for the OED?
There was outrage last week when it was found that the Oxford English Dictionary had listed one sense of literally as ‘virtually, as good as’ — in other words, the… Read more
Mind your language: Frack vs frag
‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a frack,’ replied my husband unwittily when I asked how he’d feel if shale gas was discovered at the bottom of our garden. But… Read more
Mind your language: The springs before the Arab Spring
Two hundred and forty-years ago next Tuesday, Thomas Gray was buried in his mother’s grave in Stoke Poges churchyard. In his ‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College’ (published… Read more
Mind your language: Who says there's a 'correct name' for the penis?
In a very rum letter to the Daily Telegraph, the Mother’s Union of all people joined with some other bodies to demand that ‘primary schools should teach the correct names… Read more
Mind your language: How the Dreamliner got its name
‘Planes don’t run off batteries,’ declared my husband, his finger unerringly on the pulse of technology as ever. I had merely mentioned that two Dreamliner aircraft had earlier this year… Read more
It’s vital that children translate English to Latin at GCSE
One of the most rewarding exercises a Latinist can attempt is to turn a piece of English prose into Latin. The reason is quite simple: it means getting under the… Read more
Mind your language: Hobson’s choice
An Iranian on the wireless was complaining that disqualification of presidential candidates had left voters with ‘Hobson’s choice’. No doubt this idiom was learnt from a careful teacher, but I… Read more
Check my privilege? I have, thanks. You’re still wrong
This week, I bring you a dispatch from the frontline of pseudo-intellectual, metropolitan navel-gazing. This is, after all, what you pay me for. So right now the big thing for… Read more
Climate wars: I’m being attacked by my own side. Why?
There’s nothing more irritating then being asked to apologise for something you haven’t done. No, wait, there is: when the person demanding the apology is one of the friends you… Read more
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Cartoons
‘These acceptance speeches go on far too long.’
‘...it’s just that some away games can be so time-consuming.’
‘You have abandonment issues.’
