The Spectator

Barometer | 27 July 2017

Also in Barometer: beware the £256,000 ground rent and how many people change gender?

issue 29 July 2017

But me no butts

Boris Johnson, being taught a Maori head-to-head greeting, joked that it might be ‘misinterpreted in a pub in Glasgow’. But did he offend the wrong city? In 2007 the OED appealed for details on the origin of ‘Glasgow kiss’, meaning a headbutt. Then, its earliest known first use was in the Financial Times in 1987, whereas ‘Liverpool kiss’ (meaning the same thing) was traced back to 1944.

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