Little lists for word lovers

In his Modern English Usage, Henry Fowler used the term Wardour Street for ‘a selection of oddments calculated to establish (in the eyes of some readers) their claim to be persons of taste and writers of beautiful English’.

In his Modern English Usage, Henry Fowler used the term Wardour Street for ‘a selection of oddments calculated to establish (in the eyes of some readers) their claim to be persons of taste and writers of beautiful English’. The metaphor was taken from the street in Soho, later occupied by the film industry, once the place for dealers in antique, or imitation-antique furniture. Among Fowler’s examples of Wardour Street English were anent, aplenty, forebears, perchance and well-nigh.

‘As always,’ boasts the preface to the new edition of The Chambers Dictionary, ‘we have resisted the temptation to discard rare, literary and historical words; in fact we have gone out of our way to celebrate these and other intriguing or charming words by highlighting them on the page.’