Language
Niche: an English word that turned into a French one
Jonathan Swift, in his satirical poem ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, says modestly: ‘If I can but fill my Nitch,/…
What do you say to someone who is killing you?
What do you say to someone who is killing you? It is seldom possible to decide in advance. We are…
Language learning: we’re more tongue-tied than ever
When most of the world knows English, does it matter that foreign language teaching is dying out in our schools? Rhiannon Williams takes a look
Aged 85, Tom Wolfe discovers the key to human progress
He might be 85 but Tom Wolfe is going strong with a new book and a dustjacket photo that still…
What the OED gets wrong about pelican pie
Revisers of OED have made a pig’s ear of pelican pie, I fear. I’ve been reading for pleasure Peter Gilliver’s…
Who’s afraid of Chrononhotonthologos?
When I ran out of space last week, I was about to mention the way in which some people relish…
Honorificabilitudinity: the very tall story of a very long word
My husband told me with glee that Nicholas Byfield had a great big stone ‘like flint’ in his bladder, weighing…
Whatever happened to dustcarts?
Bin lorries and garbage trucks have routed the old southern English term
Although its use goes back 500 years, we could do with less ‘wow!’ factor
Veronica has become quite an addict of Twitter, just as the rest of the young are forsaking it. ‘It’s easy…
Words the Oxford English Dictionary struggles to define
What is a bee? ‘A well-known insect,’ says the Oxford English Dictionary, passing the buck rather. Similarly, an ash is…
Do you know the meaning of Burchfield’s eight hard words?
I was humiliated in trying to make out the meaning of eight hard words. See how you do: claustration, edulcoration,…
Addlands: where the new nature writing meets the novel
There have been a number of attempts to graft the style of the so-called new nature writing onto the novel:…
The surprising history of ‘How’s your father’
‘Very funny, I don’t think,’ said my husband when I mentioned Harry Tate, although Tate died in 1940 and even…
Word of the week: 'concept'
‘It was nothing special, but it was a pub,’ said my husband, looking up from his copy of Bar magazine…
Are exclamation marks still vulgar? Yes!
‘Like eating in the street,’ said my husband. Astonishing! He’d said something not only coherent in itself but also connected…
The true meaning of Sadiq Khan’s claims to virtue
The new Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said he wanted ‘the most transparent, honest and accessible administration London has ever…
The dirty jokes that tell us how Shakespeare spoke
Sir John Harington told a story in 1596 about a lady at court asking her gentlewoman to inquire which Mr…
The Archbishop of Canterbury and the shifting meaning of ‘illegitimate’
‘The Archbishop of Canterbury has discovered he is the illegitimate son of Sir Winston Churchill’s last private secretary,’ Charles Moore…
Mind your language: From body fluids to ‘gender fluid’
Benjamin Franklin thought that an excess of electric fluid gave rise to positive electricity, and a deficiency of the fluid…
Britain to have ‘special status’ in the EU? Careful what you wish for…
‘Special status?’ said my husband. ‘You mean like executioners, butchers and undertakers in Japan?’ I hadn’t suggested that, but had…
Does creaky voice make you a female yuppie – or an updated Vicki Pollard?
My husband, not surprisingly, finds it extremely annoying. It, in this instance, is the use by women of creaky voice.…
Beware of misusing ‘be aware’
My husband pointed with his stick, which he carries not to steady himself but to cudgel pedestrians out of his…
How ‘Not even a thing’ became a thing
Last summer Kim Kardashian, who already had a daughter called North (surname West), announced that she was expecting a boy.…
Are we at peak ‘peak’ yet?
Near Victoria Station in London they began to build a tower-block advertised as ‘The Peak’. I expected it to resemble…
The words The Spectator gave the world
When the much missed Frank Johnson (1943–2006), once editor of The Spectator, wrote in 1980 that ‘the peculiar need for…
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