Dot Wordsworth

I’ve been having as much fun as Citizen Kane must have had on his first outing with Rosebud, for the Oxford English Dictionary has this week fitted a powerful engine of analysis into its online version. I’ve been having as much fun as Citizen Kane must have had on his first outing with Rosebud, for the Oxford English Dictionary has this week fitted a powerful engine of analysis into its online version. One of the things it does is to tell you where in print the first citation of various words comes from. The Spectator boasts, if it ever boasts, 140 words first found in its pages, and another 3,469 quotations used by the OED to illustrate meanings. We already knew about agnostic, because R.H.

The big news screen at Victoria Station said, ‘Colin Farrell to play British bad boy.’ In 2004 the headlines were, ‘Colin Farrell to play bad boy in US TV drama.’ Earlier this year he was apparently ‘retiring his bad-boy ways’. The big news screen at Victoria Station said, ‘Colin Farrell to play British bad boy.’ In 2004 the headlines were, ‘Colin Farrell to play bad boy in US TV drama.’ Earlier this year he was apparently ‘retiring his bad-boy ways’. Why is a bad boy worth millions at the box office, when a bad father, a bad lover or a bad bet are as off-putting as cold burnt porridge? The image may have been much overdone in the past few years, but I discover it has been around longer than I suspected.

My husband’s temper noticeably improved when we had that BBC strike, when there were fewer irritants from nettle-beds such as Today. My husband’s temper noticeably improved when we had that BBC strike, when there were fewer irritants from nettle-beds such as Today. But he’s over it now, and cursing the smallest, most niggling annoyance yet broadcast: the word so. Instead of well, it is used as a mere preliminary utterance to interviewees, with perhaps a hint of challenge. This is what my husband finds more and more annoying as the cumulative count increases. ‘So and so,’ he shouts at the wireless, still surprised at the ineffectiveness of his intervention. It is not as though so is new as a conjunction.

Benjamin Blayney is no celebrity, but he was responsible for what the Americans call the King James Bible, and we the Authorised Version. His work appeared in 1769, and almost the whole edition was consumed by a fire at the warehouse in Paternoster Row, London. Yet his is the Bible we know today. I know that we are about to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the Authorised Version, but Dr Blayney made thousands of changes to the text of 1611. In vocabulary he incorporated amendments from another version from 1743, for example, fourscore changed to eightieth, neesed to sneezed, and the archaic crudled to curdled.

‘I can’t abide stigmata,’ said my husband, not through aversion to St Francis of Assisi, but by way of joining in this week’s craze, provoked by the BBC, of nominating a pet hatred among pronunciations. ‘I can’t abide stigmata,’ said my husband, not through aversion to St Francis of Assisi, but by way of joining in this week’s craze, provoked by the BBC, of nominating a pet hatred among pronunciations. My husband hates stigmata with the second syllable stressed, as in tomato. It’s STIGm’ta for him, just as stomata is STOm’ta and anathemata (like David Jones’s) is ana-THEE-mata. As for anathema maranatha, a phrase from the First Epistle to the Corinthians (16:22), who can say?

John Hutton, before he settled down to the blameless task of reporting on public-sector pensions, was accused of writing poetry. He did not deny the practice but did reject the authorship of a verse about Gordon Brown, when he was still prime minister: ‘At Downing Street/ Upon the stair/ I met a man who wasn’t Blair./ He wasn’t Blair again today./ Oh how I wish he’d go away.’ Mr Hutton said: ‘I would write better poetry.’ But I have not had the pleasure of seeing any of his since. One politician who has published poetry recently is Herman Van Rompuy, the Belgian who is President of the European Council. In Britain he is mocked on those grounds alone, but even more for having a funny name — something many foreigners have.

The squeeze that the middle classes are enjoying in this frenzy of cuts and taxation is not what the middle classes once liked to mean by the word. The squeeze that the middle classes are enjoying in this frenzy of cuts and taxation is not what the middle classes once liked to mean by the word. In mad King George’s golden reign, a squeeze was a thronged party. ‘The heads of all the Norwich people are in a whirl, occasioned by the routs which have been introduced amongst them this winter,’ wrote the bluestocking Anna Laetitia Barbauld in a letter to her brother in 1779. ‘Do you know the different terms? There is a squeeze, a fuss, a drum, a rout; and lastly, a hurricane, when the whole house is full from top to bottom.

I’ve just tried out a newly discovered term of abuse on my husband. ‘You’re nothing but a lol‑poop,’ I exclaimed as he sat, or almost lay, like a John Prescott, except with a glass of whisky resting on his stomach instead of a cup of tea. I’ve just tried out a newly discovered term of abuse on my husband. ‘You’re nothing but a lol‑poop,’ I exclaimed as he sat, or almost lay, like a John Prescott, except with a glass of whisky resting on his stomach instead of a cup of tea. He only laughed. But I think it might sting some of our ‘new generation’ of ‘front-line’ politicians more, since they prize activity so much.

Is there a new Labour language from the new Labour leader? It is not always easy to identify a politician’s dialect, because his speeches and articles may be written by others, but presumably Ed Miliband got as far as approving the first sentence of his first article, which appeared in the Sunday Telegraph hours after his election. Is there a new Labour language from the new Labour leader? It is not always easy to identify a politician’s dialect, because his speeches and articles may be written by others, but presumably Ed Miliband got as far as approving the first sentence of his first article, which appeared in the Sunday Telegraph hours after his election. ‘Yesterday,’ he wrote, ‘the Labour party committed to start the long journey back to power.

Sounding, in this respect alone, like a High Court judge, my husband asked: ‘What are HobNobs?’ Sounding, in this respect alone, like a High Court judge, my husband asked: ‘What are HobNobs?’ For once I felt like agreeing with the assumption behind the question: that there are names for foodstuffs that we cannot be expected to keep up with. Of course I knew what a HobNob was, though I admit to being vaguer on cheese string, or is it string cheese? Veronica is past the age for such things, and none of us ever saw a Turkey Twizzler. Only when leafing (or paging as some writers suddenly prefer to call it) through the new edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins (edited by Julia Cresswell, £9.

‘Quick, darling, you’re missing the last taboo,’ shouted my husband from the drawing-room with the television on, as I was working in the kitchen. ‘Quick, darling, you’re missing the last taboo,’ shouted my husband from the drawing-room with the television on, as I was working in the kitchen. He is a collector of last taboos. Once, it was death. Since there’s been geriatric sex (when he loudly complained of the misuse of geriatric), sex-change surgery live, The Vagina Monologues, Tourettism and Joan Bakewell. Yet linguistic taboos about race, sex (‘gender’) and disability have multiplied, despite the popularity of ever more ingeniously obscene slang. On the same principle as Wikipedia, these swell the online Urban Dictionary weekly.

Mr Peter Andrews writes to tell me that he was told by a lawyer with whom he used to be a school that a moot point is not one that is debatable, but one that has already been decided. This is not news that has reached the Oxford English Dictionary, which happens to have revised its entry on moot only a few weeks ago. Originally, a moot point was one proposed for discussion at a moot. A moot, in the legal sense, was either ‘a discussion of a hypothetical case by law students for practice’ or ‘a hypothetical doubtful case that may be used for discussion’.

Every time he hears the words Big Society on the television or radio, my husband shouts out ‘Pig society!’ I am unsure whether he is inspired by George Orwell or the Earl of Emsworth’s Empress of Blandings. Every time he hears the words Big Society on the television or radio, my husband shouts out ‘Pig society!’ I am unsure whether he is inspired by George Orwell or the Earl of Emsworth’s Empress of Blandings. But if the Big Society is a great idea and not just a big idea why should it not be the Great Society? After all, we live in Great Britain, not Big Britain. I know that people watch Big Brother, eat Big Macs and sell the Big Issue or apply for grants from the Big Lottery Fund.

I have never seen the point of quiche, so I noticed with equanimity a hole where the quiche should be on the shelves of my local Sainsbury’s. I have never seen the point of quiche, so I noticed with equanimity a hole where the quiche should be on the shelves of my local Sainsbury’s. ‘Due to production issues,’ said a sign, ‘availability across quiche has been affected.’ Issues was to be expected, since mass-amnesia has lost the word problems. But the sign represented a new high-point in the rise of across. I suppose here, in the world of quiche, it meant ‘of all kinds’.

Mr Nick Clegg attracted some mockery recently by using the words cuts and progressive in the same sentence. Mr George Osborne, in his Budget speech, said: ‘We are a progressive alliance governing in the national interest.’ Some accused them of using the word progressive because it meant nothing. In reality progressive means several things. Usage slides from one to another. Thus Mr Clegg had spoken in the same interview about reduced taxes for the poor (or, rather, ‘people on lower incomes’). Taxation which increases according to income is called progressive taxation. This appeals to progressive-minded people. The latter sense is the most slippery. Fortunately, the Oxford English Dictionary last month updated its entry for progressive.

A reader has written to complain that a contributor to The Spectator used the construction ‘I was sat’. A reader has written to complain that a contributor to The Spectator used the construction ‘I was sat’. Veronica has also shown me an article in the Daily Mail about sex tourists in Thailand, which says: ‘Sat at a crowded bar at 2 a.m. is Peter.’ This is a most unaccountable usage, rolling over us unstoppably. Yet when I turned to The Spectator (no relation) written by Joseph Addison for July 20, 1711, I found this: ‘The Court was sat before Sir Roger came; but notwithstanding all the Justices had taken their Places upon the Bench, they made room for the old Knight at the Head of them.