Language change outdoes nonsense, just as misbehaviour outdoes satire. In Through the Looking-Glass Alice mentions to the Gnat that, where she comes from, they have butterflies. ‘“Crawling at your feet,” the Gnat said, “you may observe a Bread-and-Butterfly. Its wings are thin slices of bread-and-butter, its body is a crust, and its head is a lump of sugar. It lives on weak tea with cream in it.” “Supposing it couldn’t find any?” Alice asked. “Then it would die, of course,” the Gnat replied. “But that must happen very often,” Alice remarked thoughtfully. “It always happens,” said the Gnat.’
In April last year, I wrote, with regard to vaccination, about ramping up, a phrase that had been applied to industrial production in the 1980s, but ultimately derived from medieval heraldic fauna rearing up — lions rampant and so on.
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