Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 12 February 2005

A Lexicographer writes

issue 12 February 2005

Wednesday was the first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday, and it was also the Chinese New Year, the first day of the ‘Year of the Cockerel — Year 4702 in the Chinese calendar’ as a site on the Internet had it.

The cockerel? What’s wrong with the cock? The answer is obvious, and so obvious, it seems, that the word can no longer be used.

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