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For me, the OED is one vast variety chocolate box: dip my mitts in, and I’m sure to haul out something lexically delicious. For no obvious reason, I decided to look at the suffix –arian , as in the antidisestablismentarian of the unforgettable and legendary antidisestablismentarianism. I wasn’t disappointed. And it turns out that antidisestablishmentarians are far from alone. I don’t mean…

More on ablaut reduplication. Knick-knack paddywhack give a dog a bone, this old man… Previously on this topic I mentioned how onomatopoeia can play a key role, as does the idea of movement: splish-splash-splosh for the first and flip-flop for the second, which also is originally onomatopoeic. But there are other ‘commonalities’ as HR departments would say, or, what we humans tend to say,…

My old man said follow the van… What do a 1933 film featuring a giant gorilla, a children’s word for pyjamas, and an informal group of British notables and aristos in the early eighteenth century have in common?   Semantically, very little. In terms of sound, a lot. King Kong, jim-jams and the Kit Cat Club all three illustrate a mostly unwritten rule of English about the order in which we put…

Or, A rose by any other nym would smell as sweet. How many –nyms was I able to think of off the top of my head? What about you? Well, for me, they were the obvious ones, and some linguistic ones, which I left for later: acronym – those Marmite abbreviations that can really get on your nerves, especially when they’re obscure and used by specialists who assume everyone else should know and…

Loanwords are like buses: you don’t see one for ages and then three show up in quick succession, as I explain later. A few weeks ago the copy editor working on my forthcoming book queried how to show schadenfreude, the German word long since adopted into English. I had written it exactly as just shown, lower case and roman. She wondered if it should be capitalised. Fair enough: German nouns…

Sometimes a word is only ever a metaphor, like tipping point: there is no literal meaning describing something or someone physically tipping. Many other words have absolutely no conventional metaphorical meaning, like arctic tern or Polyfilla – though no doubt someone somewhere sometime could use them to create a novel metaphor. In between these extremes, sometimes a word’s metaphorical uses far…

St David and St David’s Day Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus! In stark contrast to St George, who was born in modern-day Turkey, died in what is now Israel and never set foot in England, Saint David, or Dewi Sant, the patron saint of Wales, was a Welshman from his tonsure to the calloused soles of his feet (Dark Ages footwear, you know). He was probably born in Ceredigion* (Cardiganshire) sometime around…

Sometimes a word is only ever a metaphor, like tipping point: there is no literal meaning describing something or someone physically tipping. Many other words have absolutely no conventional metaphorical meaning, like arctic tern or Polyfilla – though no doubt someone somewhere sometime could use them to create a novel metaphor. In between these extremes sometimes a word’s metaphorical uses far…

Useful idiots There are lots of them about these days. When not clogging up the streets with their protests, they must be busy breeding. Like rabbits, only very much less endearing. Useful idiots. People who so hate the West that they’ll parade with placards featuring the fizzog of ‘Supreme Killer’ Khameini and the arrogant yet meaningless wording ‘The right side of history’. Useful idiots…

When was The Age of Dictatorship? Why, the mid-twentieth century, of course. It’s normally taken to be the period between the two world wars, with the rise to power of Mussolini, Franco, Hitler, Stalin – and a few subsidiary despots or despotic governments in Portugal, Poland, Romania and Lithuania. (** BTW, which famous American singer was the first person to announce the death of Joseph…

It’s still only a matter of days since Nicolás Maduro was – and here I’m not sure which neutral verb to use, so let’s hedge our bets and say ‘spirited’ out of Caracas in Operation Absolute Resolve, which played out like the thrillingest Hollywood blockbuster. In a delightful US American verbing which was new to me (and should have a hyphen, but I’m giving the BBC’s report verbatim), el…

Do you get hot under the collar if you see disinterested used to mean ‘not interested’? If so, you might be fighting a losing, even already lost, battle. The canon of peevery What I will call the canon of peevery has its own sacred masterpieces of peeving. High on that list sits the uninterested vs. disinterested debate; as long ago as 1889 a US dictionary tut-tutted over the ‘incorrect’ use…

Overview: The airtight distinction between these two words may not be as neat as usage gurus have suggested. Sometimes people use complacent instead of complaisant, and vice versa. Sometimes it’s impossible to tell whether complaisant is a misstep. They make an interesting pair etymologically, both coming from Latin, one directly, the other via French. That old chestnut: In the swashbuckling…

Overview: The airtight distinction between these two words may not be as neat as usage gurus have suggested. Sometimes people use complacent instead of complaisant, and vice versa. Sometimes it’s impossible to tell whether complaisant is a misstep. They make an interesting pair etymologically, both coming from Latin, one directly, the other via French. That old chestnut: In the swashbuckling…