Brave new words

‘Omnishambles’ was declared the Oxford English Dictionary’s ‘word of the year’, but will not for the moment be added to the dictionary itself. Here is a selection of the 498 words which were added to the OED in September alone, a month which concentrated on words beginning ‘a’:

— Affogato, n, coffee-based beverage
— Agometer, n, a device for measuring electrical resistance
— Allowability, n, the state of being allowed
— Allusionist, n, Someone who draws allusions
— Ealdormanry, n, a legal district in Anglo-Saxon England
— Egerdouce, n, an onion-based sauce

Entwistle’s pay-off

The BBC licence fee is £145.50; using that sum, how many households would it take to pay off:

—The BBC Director-General George Entwistle’s full-year salary of £450,000……3092 households
—His year’s salary plus £877,000 pension……9120 households (equivalent to the entire historic borough of Darwen, Lancashire, in which the hamlet of Entwistle is situated)

Amazon exploration

Pippa Middleton’s book Celebrate, on how to throw a party, was languishing at 177 in the Amazon bestsellers chart, in spite of a £400,000 advance.

Which of this year’s celebrity books are selling and which are not?

This article first appeared in the print edition of The Spectator magazine, dated 17 November 2012