Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 8 May 2010

I’ve just been laughing at a television advertisement for ‘snail polish’.

issue 08 May 2010

I’ve just been laughing at a television advertisement for ‘snail polish’.

I’ve just been laughing at a television advertisement for ‘snail polish’. It turns out to be ‘Sixty Seconds Nail Polish’. Normally when we use ‘sixty second’ adjectivally, it remains in the singular form. BBC 3 television has an item called ‘Sixty Second News’. Perhaps what has happened is that a make-up company, Rimmel, has named a product ‘Sixty Seconds’, and has then been reluctant to adjust the valuable brand-name according to the laws of grammar. Hence the polished snails.

It has not all been laughter in my sheltered life of kitchen, church and children, and I shall not even mention the election. I have been much irritated in recent days by the phrase ‘to pay down’. To me, this has always meant ‘to hand over cash’, promptly.

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