I haven’t been to see Avatar and I don’t suppose I shall, but I have just learnt how to say ‘Hello’ to a Na’vi in his own language. It is Kaltxì. The difficult bit is the consonant spelled tx, which is an ejective. I don’t want to go on about phonetics, because it is fearfully
A word nudging its way into the finals for the most pointless cliché of the year is granular. A word nudging its way into the finals for the most pointless cliché of the year is granular. It appeals to those who adopt the languages of public policy and business management. An article in the Daily
A triply annoying poster at Victoria Station shouts at passengers: ‘Need the toilet?’ A triply annoying poster at Victoria Station shouts at passengers: ‘Need the toilet?’ It then taunts them with the information that without a 20p piece and a 10p piece (an unlikely combination to find in one’s purse) they will not be able
For once, my husband has backed me up, if on dubious grounds. A friend, of previously good character, astonished us both by insisting that the ‘correct’ form of Welsh rabbit was Welsh rarebit. ‘No, it’s not,’ said my husband. ‘I had one at my club only last week.’ It is difficult to see why rarebit
Dot’s found a funny thing. Here’s a funny thing. The New Oxford American Dictionary (or Noad, for short) has nominated teabagger as the runner-up for ‘word of the year’. The winning word was unfriend, a piece of jargon used by people who drop so-called friends from popular networking sites such as Facebook. As for teabagger,
The man who brought us The Meaning of Tingo is at it again, closer to home. Adam Jacot de Boinod’s previous excursion among unlikely foreign words turned at times into a wild Boojum chase because the meanings claimed for some words softly and silently vanished away once confronted. That was the case with tingo itself,
Two rather odd pronunciations to have gathered ground this year are of the words women and lieutenant. I think I heard Evan Davies say lootenant the other morning, though it might have been a stumble. My husband does not like the pronunciation lootenant. He thinks it is an Americanism. It certainly is these days; the
Dot is very exercised by Shakespeare.. Every time I see a Shakespeare play, I wonder how many of the words the audience is picking up. It is all very well their getting the drift from the behaviour of the actors, but that makes it like a mime accompanied by unknown utterances. Matters are not helped
Why are Cheshire cats said to grin? The question was posed in 1850 in Notes and Queries, the Victorian periodical that operated on the same principle as Wikipedia, through readers’ contributions. Why are Cheshire cats said to grin? The question was posed in 1850 in Notes and Queries, the Victorian periodical that operated on the
Pity the poor undergraduate who falls into the clutches of Professor Bernard Lamb. The youths might be wizards at genetics but if their spelling is shaky Professor Lamb will provide strict correction. It’s for their own good. Some undergraduates can’t even spell Hardy-Weinberg! Either they forget the hyphen, he notes, or they make it Weinburg.
I’ve been reading a most interesting book. I’ve been reading a most interesting book. It’s all about the books Gladstone read, the way he read them and what he did with the 30,000 books he collected in his long life. Most of the book is written engagingly enough. ‘Until the late 19th century, most books
Jack pipped Mohammed as the most popular boy’s name for babies born last year. There were 8,007 Jacks and 7,576 Mohammeds, or similar spellings. To me Jack is a pet-name for John — a hypocorism, as the grammarians rejoice to call babyish versions of names. You wouldn’t baptise anyone Jack. There is no St Jack.
Much to my annoyance, and yours, I know, language changes. Thus Samuel Johnson, whose Dictionary we celebrate with its author’s 300th birthday this week, defined urinator as ‘a diver; one who searches under water’. Charles II had a urinator of his own, as a letter by Robert Boyle indicates: ‘His majesty’s urinator, Mr Curtis, published
Taxi-drivers tell you all sorts of myths about history. (‘Yes, Blackheath got its name from the plague pits they dug there in the Black Death). The internet, it strikes me, is like a taxi-drivers’ convention. I’ve just come across this: ‘The phrase “the die is cast” has nothing to do with gambling or dice; instead,
Errors stick like burrs. Forty years ago, Jimi Hendrix played ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock with a good deal of distortion on his guitar, mostly engendered by feedback. Some people, I learn, refer to this inaccurately as phase distortion. Phase distortion cannot of itself be heard, the physicists tell me. Phase, again, is identified in
My husband wanted to use the lavatory in London recently, as husbands begin to, and, since all the public conveniences have inconveniently been closed, he popped into the Strutton Arms. I was delighted to find that it had changed its name from Finnegan’s Wake. My objection was not the apostrophe, which, though absent in the
Forming part of my husband’s baggage-train en route for another medical ‘conference’, I read a novel by an American. It contained this sentence: ‘It requires that a very real dynamic and active union exists.’ It could have been worse: it might have employed the subjunctive. I have nothing but affection for the subjunctive. I sing
Mr Alan Moore asked my opinion from the Letters column last week on the mother who insisted that swearing meant ‘taking the Name of the Lord in vain’, but using the word f*** was just coarse language. I’m not sure this isn’t a question better directed to Dear Mary, since swearing is as much defined
David Cameron innocently said twat on the wireless last week. He pronounced it to rhyme with hat, when it should rhyme with what. He hadn’t realised it was rude. It’s funny which words one can say and which one can’t. Mr Cameron seems to have thought twat was like prat, which seems to be acceptable.
Outside a theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue that offers a dubiously amusing entertainment a poster proclaims: ‘Pant-wettingly funny.’ This is interesting, because what one might have the misfortune to wet is not a pant but pants. The grammar, though, is undoubtedly correct. Nouns used as adjectives generally remain in the singular. This rule makes honest nouns