Dot Wordsworth

Brain fade

It’s part of a fairly long tradition (although the OED still doesn’t have ‘brain fart’)

issue 06 June 2015

‘Aa-aah,’ groaned my husband, ‘we fade to grey.’ He had never been much of a Young Romantic, even when Visage was vigorous. I had merely told him that Oxford Dictionaries have added to their online collection the phrase brain fade.

In April, when David Cameron said that he supported West Ham, having previously assured the world he followed Aston Villa, he excused himself by saying: ‘I had what Natalie Bennett described as a brain fade.’ What Ms Bennett had said, after a grim radio interview in which she could not explain Green party policies, was: ‘One can have a mental brain fade on these things.’ I suppose it may be possible to have a brain fade that is not ‘mental’ — if the grey matter becomes a physically lighter shade — but the mental aspect is generally the focus.

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