‘Not really,’ replied my husband when I asked if he thought it would be nice for us to have the Gibsons over for supper. If you knew the Gibsons (not their real name), you’d see the force of his answer. Real is a slippery word. I laughed when reading, in Timothy Brittain-Catlin’s new book on
My husband’s club was closed in August, which meant, paradoxically, that I saw less of him, because he enjoyed the chance to exercise reciprocal rights at other clubs, which I suspect might not have welcomed him as a member in the first place. Sitting in some smokeless smoking-room he took to reading the Financial Times,
The Earl of Cottenham’s surname is Pepys. He doesn’t pronounce it peeps, like the diarist, but peppiss, stressed on the first syllable. It’s almost impossible to know how to pronounce English family names. The former deputy editor of this magazine, Andrew Gimson, pronounces his with a soft g. Jeffrey Bernard stressed the second syllable of
‘What are all these letters?’ asked my husband, unhelpfully stirring the pile on the doormat with his foot, looking without success for any addressed to him. They were about the BBC recommendations to announcers, published in 1928, that I wrote about last week. To entertain you further, I’ve been rummaging in a successor booklet, from
Dot Wordsworth compares the pronounciation of words in 1928 and in the present day Do you pronounce the ‘l’ in falcon? That civilised Kentish man Mr Eric Brown has sent me an entertaining newspaper cutting kept for 18 years. It is from the Times’s ‘On this day’ column, with news from 27 July 1928, of
Those Miliband boys are clever. I was trying to discover what they stood for, and I thought I’d found something interesting in a speech by Ed Miliband. Then I realised I was mistaken. ‘I want a society where there is intergenerational equity,’ he said in a speech to Compass (not the investor and analyst group
After Padraig Harrington gave an interview to the Today programme the other day, Evan Davis, the presenter, commented that he had never heard the phrase ‘amn’t I’ before. Perhaps he has not been to Ireland. The Oxford English Dictionary does not seem to comment on the Irish character of the abbreviation. This interrogative form is
Although I do not smoke, I find my sympathies drawn more and more to persecuted smokers. Outside Victoria station an aggressive notice says: ‘It is against the law to smoke in these premises including under this canopy.’ Never mind that the canopy, really a porte-cochère, is open to the elements, with a broken roof-pane that
Dot Wordsworth on the word ‘sticky’. Longfellow, in the middle of writing ‘Hiawatha’, complained to his diary one hot day of ‘Chamber-maids chattering about — children crying — and everything sticky except postage stamps, which having stuck all together like a swarm of bees, refuse further duty.’ It’s funny how Longfellow wrote better informally than
It was either Kung Fu Panda or Prince Caspian, so I took my nephew and niece to the latter. Aunts are only flesh and blood. A trailer for the Panda film featured him exclaiming ‘Awesome!’ Strangely enough this word is used in C.S. Lewis’s novel, about Aslan’s How, though not in the film. Awesome does
During my rather dry investigation last week of apostrophes on the London Underground map, I found something far more interesting. It is the anagram Underground map invented two years ago by the pseudonymous Barry Heck (after the great Underground mapper Harry Beck). Transport for London, as they call themselves at the moment, asserted, no doubt
How funny to find the apostrophe described as a ‘notoriously difficult punctuation mark’ in last week’s Letters. It’s simple. So, the simple reason that St Thomas’s Hospital should be spelt with the final s is that it is pronounced by everybody as tom-ass-is, and the spelling must reflect that. I agree that Earl’s Court is,
Does it matter when we lose battles as language changes? In Oxford the other day, I saw another piece of evidence that in the High Street has changed to on the High Street. A newsagent’s near Teddy Hall has for some time been called Honey’s of the High. It is now usually called Honey’s on
Dot Wordswoth on pens and puns ‘Why,’ asked my husband, looking up from his book, ‘is Joseph Gillott a very bad man?’ ‘What?’ I said. ‘Because,’ he replied, as if I had acknowledged defeat, ‘he wishes to accustom the public to steel pens and then tries to persuade them that they do write.’ By the
Queens’ College, Cambridge or Queens’ College, Cambridge I was interested by a note on the website of Queens’ College, Cambridge, because the use of the apostrophe in English is governed by such simple rules that it is hard to see how there can be much dispute about it. The college says that everyone is told
Dot Wordsworth gives it her best shot I hardly wish to interpose my body between Anthony Horowitz and Simon Hoggart, even though the former invoked me. He declared (Letters, 10 May) that he is puzzled by Mr Hoggart’s remark in his television column that ‘in 1945 nobody ever said, “I’ll give it my best shot”,’ as
‘What’s so super about these superdelegates?’ asked my husband from the other room, while I was washing the Jersey Royals. I do not intend trying to explain the American political system here. These delegates are not necessarily super at all. I wonder what connections superdelegates suggests in the American mind. If it suggests superman, the
The events of 1 May seem a long time ago, and so does their sequel, a so-called fightback by the Labour party. A press briefing last Sunday declared in a fine froth of mixed metaphors: ‘Gordon Brown will seek to kick-start Labour’s fightback today after its mauling at the polls.’ Fightback is a handy word
‘Twenty-five years ago,’ writes Mr Peter Gasson from Aylesbury, ‘policies were implemented; services were provided; changes were made or brought about; promises were fulfilled. Now they are uniformly delivered. I suppose the word has become so popular because it sounds emphatic.’ I know just what you mean, Mr Gasson, and so must we all, which
The last two words of my column last week were ‘in future’. The new annoying equivalent to this phrase is going forward. The last two words of my column last week were ‘in future’. The new annoying equivalent to this phrase is going forward. It is much used by management-brains and media-types. I told my