Mind your language
Missing in action
Someone in the Guardian wrote that Boris Johnson had his ‘out of office’ on, and the Chancellor was ‘missing in…
Hosepipe ban
‘Got any ’ose?’ asked my husband, falling into his Two Ronnies ‘Four Candles’ routine, in which he likes to play…
Catcalls
‘A law against catcalls?’ asked my husband sceptically. ‘What next, criminalising booing and hissing?’ He often gets the wrong end…
Flageons
‘Don’t you know the answer?’ asked my husband with mock surprise, throwing over to me from his armchair a copy…
Culture wars
‘Come on, old girl,’ said my husband as though encouraging a cow stuck in a ditch, ‘you must know.’ It…
Our
There was a word I didn’t understand in Boris Johnson’s resignation speech (in which he did not resign). He spoke…
Pinch
Before pinch as a verb appears in any written sources, it already formed part of surnames. Hugo Pinch was walking,…
Distraction
Dominic Raab blamed distraction forBoris Johnson’s woes when the Tories failed in two by-elections last week. ‘Hehas track records as…
Odious
Lord Geidt said in his resignationletter that he had been put in an odious position. He meant it was hateful,though…
Rehash
My husband put one foot forward atan angle to the other and grasped his left hand with his right. ‘Occiditmiseros…
Turkey
Turkey has told the UN it wants tobe called Türkiye. Even when it is written in capitals, it would still…
Nice
‘That’s nice,’ said my husband, taking a Nice biscuit with his coffee. It was his little joke. The biscuit is…
Mind your language: Stations
In Kyiv they have voted to changethe names of some metro stations. Heroes of the Dnieper is to become Heroes…
Sparks
‘It’s not as nice as it looks,’ said my husband, not leaving time to look it in the mouth before…
Chiltern Hundreds
I saw in last week’s Spectatorthat the tractor MP had applied for the stewardship of the Manor of Northstead. After…
Porn
Are we living in a new pornocracy? The first one spanned six decades of the 10th century, during which there…
The Metaphor Map
‘What’s that?’ asked my husband, looking at my laptop. ‘Fibonacci fossilised?’ His question made no sense, but I saw what…
Salmagundi
‘It makes me hungry,’ said my husband when I mentioned the word salmagundi. That is his reaction to many words.…
Aesopian
To evade algorithms that hunt down forbidden words, users of platforms like TikTok employ cryptic synonyms. So deadbecomes unalive, and…
Gif
The man who invented gifs, Stephen Wilhite, has died, aged 74. Controversy survives him – over how to pronounce the…
Sib
I never cared much for the word sibling, though I hardly knew why. The reason must be that it was…
Cirencester
‘Half! Half! Half!’ exclaimed my husband like a performing sea lion. Not that sea lions perform any more, but you…
Doomscrolling
In 2019, Boris Johnson hit out at ‘the doomsters and the gloomsters’. I was surprised then to find that the…
Embolden
The most emboldened man on earth must be Vladimir Putin. Everything seems to embolden him. Treating Russia as a pariah…
Idi na khuy
‘This will interest you,’ said my husband, looking up from the smeared screen of his telephone. For once he was…
