Mind your language

‘Why doesn’t anyone do what you ask them to?’ enquired my husband, who is something of an expert on the subject, I should have thought. He was referring to a plea I made three years ago to people I’ve never met to stop sending emails that begin: ‘I am reaching out to you.’ But it

Everyone has been declaring which words are too rude to utter in public. Shortly after breakfast, Radio 4 happily discussed by name the book by Cory Doctorow called Enshittification. But on Radio 4’s Feedback it proved impossible to say the word that shocked some listeners when they heard it on a dramatisation of a work

‘After having thrown a sheep six times from the top of a tower,’ reported the Gloucester Journal in 1784, ‘Montgolfier prevailed upon a man to try the experiment, which was performed with the utmost safety.’ The trick was done thanks to ‘a machine called a parachute’. Within weeks, a kind of hat called the Parachute

‘Do you know what vibe coding is, darling?’ I asked my husband. ‘What do you take me for?’ he replied. ‘Or 67?’ ‘Ah, I do know that the Prime Minister had to apologise for leading a classroom of little children in a series of hand moves to that one. But I’ve no idea what it

The Alibi bar in Altrincham, Cheshire, caused a hoo-ha last week by banning single entrants after 9 p.m. The landlord, Carl Peters, explained: ‘Sometimes, if you let people in on their own, the reason why they’re on their own is that they’ve got no one to talk to, so they start mithering other groups.’ Mithering

I heard on the wireless a reference to the growing number of small political parties getting funds from short money. I’m afraid I let it slide past me as one of the many things about money that I don’t understand. Short is an extremely productive element in English vocabulary. Shorthaul journeys preceded by decades the

‘Pop goes the weasel!’ my husband exclaimed, expertly muddying the waters. We had just been listening to another news bulletin that referred to the Chancellor of the Exchequer being expected to ‘break her pledge’ in the Budget. It seemed to me that the ink on pledges were scarcely dry before they became aspirations that came

Are you a survivor? We are not, luckily, all Gloria Gaynors. She declared in 1979: ‘I’ve got all my life to live, and I’ve got all my love to give/ And I will survive.’ She has so far made good on her promise. Surviving afflictions unscathed is not always an unmixed virtue. ‘She would be

‘“I am not screwed,” replied the Caterpillar, solemnly. “Whisky and potass does not agree with everybody; but I am not screwed, not at all.” So speaking he sat down rather suddenly.’ By screwed he meant ‘drunk’ of course. The Caterpillar is not the one in Alice in Wonderland but the nickname of a fifth-former in

‘Oh, no!’ cried my husband from the other room in the tones of one who has upset the goldfish bowl on to a rare book. I rushed in, despite previous experience, and found the problem was that the BBC had just referred to ‘Princess Catherine’. To take his mind off it, I told him about

‘It’s got to be greenlighted,’ said my husband, as though saying so made it true. I had been complaining of the vogue for using greenlit in the sense of both gave the go-ahead and given the go-ahead. In an obituary, the Times noted a low moment in the career of the film executive Frank Price,

Harry Cole wrote in the Sun that ‘like the sweating hero trying to diffuse a bomb in a Hollywood movie, Sir Keir Starmer looked a little green around the gills’. For his part, the top cop Gavin Stephens said: ‘Anybody in a leadership position should think about how we can reduce and diffuse tensions.’ Or

‘We’re not throwing man overboard overboard,’ says the Royal Yachting Association. ‘It’s a universally recognised term that we want people to use in an emergency.’ It has little choice, since man overboard is incorporated in international treaties. So the association recommends its use only when following safety procedures, ‘until this is able to change’. Until

Dame Anna Wintour, with her rather marvellous bob hairdo, this month became chief content officer for Condé Nast. I had forgotten that a couple of years ago she was appointed a Companion of Honour – one of those interesting people the King likes to have for lunch. And I couldn’t remember whether I’d written here

Just before the earth opened up, Sir Keir Starmer said of his deputy: ‘Angela came from a very humble background, battled all sorts of challenges along the way, and there she is proudly.’ We all know what pride comes before. Humble seemed a genteel word to use. Deprived would have sounded harsh; poor too Victorian;

‘Do you know how many people Hallmark cards employs?’ asked my husband. I didn’t, and nor would he, had he not just looked it up on Wikipedia. ‘Seven?’ I replied. ‘No.’ ‘A million?’ ‘Now you’re just being silly.’ The reason that the birthday card people had come up was because James Heale began his column

‘That’s a boy cow,’ said a woman in the train to a little girl, adding in an aside to an adult companion: ‘I didn’t use the other word because it’s too much like…’ The other word must have been bullock and the word it too much resembled was bollock. Bollock used to be spelt ballock.

When this century began we were complaining (or I was) of the ubiquity of absolutely to signal agreement. The interjection has been around for 200 years. (It occurs in Jane Eyre, 1847.) It became objectionable by overuse. At least it was amenable to jokey tmesis by inserting a suitable expletive: abso-bloody-lutely. But now I reach

I spent some time looking for the connection between the ancient city of Canopus and the English canopy. Nelson won the Battle of the Nile in Aboukir Bay. The bay was named after the city of Abu Qir, which was named after a Christian martyr, St Cyrus. Abu Qir stands on the site of the