Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 11 June 2005

A Lexicographer writes

issue 11 June 2005

‘Have you noticed,’ asked Kim Fletcher, a man, at a party to launch his brilliant new Journalist’s Handbook, ‘how people say testament when they mean testimony?’ I couldn’t quite say I had, yet a nagging feeling in my brain suggested he was on to something, so I looked through the newspapers to examine their testimony.

Testimony is straightforwardly used in the ordinary courtroom way for ‘giving evidence’. This can be extended to a solemn statement such as a ‘series of miracle “testimonies”’ mentioned by the Scottish Daily Record recently. Testimonial usually refers to football matches that raise money for superannuated players and the like, as benefit nights once did for the stagebound thespian.

The meaning we are interested in for the moment is the metaphorical one, such as Donald Macintyre used in the Independent the other day: ‘Simon’s scrawl is also testimony to the fraughtness of the detailed negotiations.

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