Without Shakespeare, there would be no managers, no swagger, no addiction, nothing bedazzling, new-fangled or gloomy. And these are just a few of the words he invented. There’s nothing new about neologisms. We’re always coming up with a word for something we need to talk about. Freakshakes, fat-bergs, manspaining, covfefe, floordrobes and hygge, for example. […]
Periods. Period. What should we call it?
It’s a terrible cringe of a word – period. If a word ever wore a tight bun and kept its books in alphabetical order, it’s a period. This is the word that goes with the twee trickles of dyed blue water poured in gleaming ad-land laboratories. Period. Flow, stop. Period. We need something better. Humanity […]
Don’t put a g in my sandwich
OK, I listen to a lot of radio and if the radio’s not on, I’m probably eavesdropping. So I hear a lot of words. Perhaps that qualifies me to make the following observations. You don’t need to say ‘impact upon’ when you really mean ‘affect’. Changing tack means you are trying a different direction. Changing […]
What’s on my mind this week (the really not very exciting version)
Pulling together to move forward with transparency…
And other equally irritating phrases. I was directed, the other day, to John Rentoul’s round up of banned expressions. A splendid celebration of the cliche, the slackardly sayings and the downright nasty newspeak – the kind of phrases that induce indigestion. His streaming heap includes “scalable”, “baby steps” and “scientifically proven”. To his linguistic gravy […]