It appears that nobody knows where the dan in dandruff comes from, but the second syllable probably derives from the Old English hreofla meaning leper. So perhaps back in the mists of time there was a particular flaky chap called Dan. Apropos nothing at all, I feel duty bound to …
There are precisely a million and one little differences between American and British English. I once had to go into hiding after stubbing out a fag butt in San Francisco. Here for the sake of mutual comprehension and edification are two rather strange and wayward usages from that wonderfully odd …
It now appears the reason why T.S. Eliot insisted on his middle initial was because he was painfully aware of what his name would have spelled backwards without it. His great friend W.H Auden (whose H was idiopathic) wrote a palindrome on the subject: T. Eliot, top bard, notes putrid …
The Holy Land, the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul in Rome, those of St James at Santiago de Compostela in Spain and St Thomas a Becket in Canterbury were great centres of medieval pilgrimage. A pilgrim was easily identified by the way he dressed. He wore a rough grey …
Despite the fact that every other shop in most cities seems to be a bloody Starbucks (or something similar), this is not a modern day occurrence.In the 17th century, London had over one thousand establishments catering to a strange new craze imported from Arabia in the early months of 1615. …
I was about to write a witty post about that really irritating phrase “pushing the envelope” when my eyes drifted up the column in the dictionary to entrepreneur. It was in italics because it was foreign, exactly the same as its gallic neighbour entre nous. So I flicked back through …
According to a popular legend, the word crap comes from Thomas Crapper, the supposed inventor of the flush toilet. The story goes that Crapper’s name was stamped on all his lavatorial devices, and when servicemen in World War I went to the latrine they would say, “I’m goin’ to the …
Computer fanatics seem to attract pejorative words to describe them. (Now why should that be?). More often than not, they are words previously known in other contexts, but given new strength and life in the computer age. Geek and nerd both come into this category. The online New Hacker’s Dictionary …
In Roman times an as was the name given to a small copper coin, possibly of Etruscan origin. The same word was also used to denote a ‘unit’ of weight, measure or coin. When as was borrowed into Old French in the twelfth century, it most commonly referred to ‘the …
In the 1970’s I was at school with a fellow who whenever a crowd was gathered at a rugby or cricket match, would shout ‘Give us a G!’ And the crowd would chorus ‘G’. Then ‘Give us an I!’ ‘I.’ ‘Give us an R!’ It was usually halfway through that …
