Niche

Jonathan Swift, in his satirical poem ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, says modestly: ‘If I can but fill my Nitch,/ I attempt no higher Pitch.’ This notion of a social alcove was identical 300 years later when a character in Bill the Conqueror by P.G. Wodehouse finds she has grown used to ‘his undynamic acceptance of his niche in the world’.

But how would Wodehouse have pronounced the word? Certainly like Swift, to rhyme with itch. Yet today, when speaking of a niche market, we say it to rhyme with some French word like fiche.

Most popular

Matthew Lynn

Spain will regret its 100 per cent expat property tax

This is a case brought up by the brilliant John Simpson, not our man in the burka, but the former chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, in his new book The Word Detective. He admits to pronouncing niche as neesh now: ‘But I wouldn’t have 50 years ago’.