Month: March 2024

The only reason T.S. Eliot insisted on his middle initial was that he was morbidly aware of what his name would have spelled backwards without it. Auden (whose H was idiopathic) wrote a palindrome on the subject: T. Eliot, top bard, notes putrid tang emanating, is sad. I’d assign it …

The word elaphine means of or pertaining to a stag. Therefore, stag nights, stag parties, stag dos, stag drinks, stag weekends and all such hideousnesses could be rebranded elaphine nights, elaphine parties, elaphine dos, elaphine drinks and elaphine weekends. I feel this would somehow make them better. At least it …

Ah, the perils of being a precocious child. At the tender age of seven, armed with what I clearly believed was an air of intellectual maturity (or maybe just a growth spurt?), I tackled Jane Austen’s Emma. Let’s just say it wasn’t exactly a happily ever after. The helpful librarian, …

Almost everybody knows that it is wrong to use apostrophes before an ‘s’ which denotes a plural rather than a possessive. So it is “breakfasts” and “tomatoes”, not “breakfast’s” (which I saw on a sign yesterday) or “tomato’s”. But what about plurals of words made up of initial letters, like …

The name “Bluetooth” might conjure up images of glowing blue lights, but its true origin story takes us back to a Viking king with a rather unusual nickname. Harald I of Denmark, who reigned in the 10th century, earned the moniker “Bluetooth” for his role in uniting the warring provinces …

Years ago, , a friend of mine asked me what the pejorative of a Greek was. I asked him what he meant and he said that the French were Frogs, the Italians Wops, the Germans Krauts, the Spanish Dagos and he wanted to know what the Greeks were. We couldn’t …