Whatever spick and span reminds us of, it is as an idiom with a cheery meaning of its own
By Dot Wordsworth
I was put in mind of lounging by video conferencing, which allows conferees to attend to their visible top half while wearing lounge pants below
By Dot Wordsworth
In 1920s American slang ‘wash up’ meant to finish something or somebody
By Dot Wordsworth
I started at the word gifting like a horse shying at a plastic bag caught in the hedge. Why didn’t I like it?
By Dot Wordsworth
Association football became soccer in the 1880s, at first sometimes written socker
By Dot Wordsworth
Once upon a time, the art of criticism had the name critick in Englis
By Dot Wordsworth
Scots has been used as a spoken and a literary language
By Dot Wordsworth
Ictus can as easily be applied to the stress on a syllable in poetry
By Dot Wordsworth
But how is it pronounced?
By Dot Wordsworth
As a label of approval, it dates only from the 1950s
By Dot Wordsworth
In graffiti form it is sometimes rendered 1312, from the place of the letters in the alphabet
By Dot Wordsworth
Only in 1993 did the Oxford English Dictionary catch up with a newer meaning of vibrant that suggested ‘vitality or the exotic’
By Dot Wordsworth
Artichoke came into English in the 16th century from words already obscure in their derivation
By Dot Wordsworth
Mica was an electrical insulator — the original purpose of Formica
By Dot Wordsworth
Ovid and Lucan used decumanus, he found, of a wave, but not absolutely, as a noun
By Dot Wordsworth
