Of all the presents I got for Christmas, one of my faves was a book called How to Sound Clever: Master the 600 English words you pretend to understand when you don’t by Hubert van deb Bergh and it's a dazzling collection of sumptuous words such as denouement, anthropomorphise and obfuscate. I recently chatted to a chap at a mulled wine...
There are some words which get even the most competent writers in a twist. I always struggle to spell the town Grimsby (luckily it’s not a word I have to type often). And I have to really think about the homonyms bear and bare. Is it ‘bare that in mind’ or ‘bear that in mind’? So this post is for me...
Where do you go when you want answers? The newspapers? The Encyclopaedia Britannica? Your mum? Nah. Our first port of call is the Internet. In fact, my little nephew could say “Google it” before he could say “Dog”. Ask Jeeves has compiled a list of the top ten questions asked by Brits in 2010. Do we want to know the meaning of...
Historically, these great British Isles, where I live, have a habit of being invaded. (Although, thankfully, not for some time.) The upside to this, of course, along with nice straight roads built by the Romans, is that the English language is a rich and colourful blend of Latin words, Anglo Saxon words and French words. But that’s not all. The Brits, of...
