ARTICLES SECTION INDEX
This is a collection of longer pieces, not much added to these days, on some development or aspect of the language that has taken my fancy.
A rose by any other name: Losing something in translation?
A test question gets grammarians arguing: On pronouns and possessive antecedents.
A Word for All: The odd history of omnibus
A Zillion Troubles: That's about the size of it
Action at a distance: The evolving tele- prefix
Activate the balls!: The vocabulary of British lotteries
Alas Poor Nell: A name traduced
Aluminium versus aluminum: Why two spellings?
ASYE: Acronyms Selected for Your Enjoyment
Balderdash and flummery: A few words from Welsh
Beam me up, Scotty!: The linguistic legacy of Star Trek
Between the Lines: Some railway words
Bissextile, Intercalary, Embolistic: Some leap year words
Chosen words: The language of elections
Cider Insight: The jargon of an ancient craft
Citing Online Sources: Advice on online citations formats
Cyberplague: Help! A prefix out of control!
Decadal Dismay: What shall we call the forthcoming decade?
Drink it, it’ll do you good: Possets, caudles and cordials
Easy pickings: Don't play fast and loose with me
Eating crow: And other indigestibles
Ee: An ambiguous suffix explored
Elementary, my dear IUPAC: Naming the rarest of atoms
Engine and Motor: Two closely-related words investigated
Fears and dreads: Words for irrational feelings
Fibres from the Earth: Names for some natural materials
Former wines are passed away: Some almost forgotten liquors
Fudge: A favourite sweet confection has an obscure history.
Gender-neutral pronouns: Can one avoid sexist writing?
Ghoulies and Ghosties: Things that go bump in the night
Gordon Bennett: A puzzling British exclamation.
Gutta-percha, Ketchup, Sago: Words from Malay
How bona to vada your eek!: A gay way of speaking
How Many Words?: How many in the language and how many
does any one person know?
How words enter the language: Is there a formal process?
I Spy Gry!: Riddle Me No Riddles
Impactful Ignorals: New terms that blush unseen.
Inkhorn terms: Invented words that didn't make it
Is This a Word?: The language stork keeps lexicographers busy
Meeting room jargon: Just fuel for buzzword bingo?
Mind the greens!: Creative mishearings of lyrics
Mind Your Ps and Qs: A puzzling and quirky idiom
Misplaced Modifiers: Sloppy writing that evokes odd images.
Money matters: How much is that, then?
My fellow Merkins: An Internet bad joke
New Words in the News: Can you really link a word to a year?
Newspapergate: Knee-jerk journo neologisms
No trees in the forest?: Chasing a changing sense
Only joking?: Should the smiley be outlawed?
People Versus Persons: When should we use which?
Plain English Campaign Awards 2002: Textual confusion.
Plain English Campaign Awards 2003: One man's gobbledegook is another's plain speaking.
Possessive Apostrophes: The greengrocer's speciality
Precision of Lexicographers: On the history of collective nouns.
Pro bono publico: English legal language is changing
Programming, Hungarian style: Gobbledegook in C
Putting the Kibosh on it: An unEnglish expression?
Robodroid: An unhuman confusion
Rules, Britannia: When it's OK to use GB or UK
Sapristi Nadgers!: Where did that word come from?
Shades of Meaning: Colour, hue, tint and shade
Signs for Sums: Where our arithmetic symbols come from
Talking Turkey: Names for a much-travelled bird
The Colour of Words: The fugitive names of hues
The Full Monty: Where that film title came from
The Great Element Chase: Naming the unrare earths
The Lure of the Red Herring: Do I smell a rat?
The mighty burger: A tasty and prolific word ending
The Miller’s Tale: Beware of plausible etymologies
The Whole Nine Yards: But nine yards of what?
Through the Blender: New words, portmanteau style
Town of Trades: Ross-on-Wye 150 years ago
Travellers to Antique Lands: Tourism's lexical legacy
Unpaired words: Accentuating the negative
Ways of eating: Musings on combination cutlery
Where it’s at: Names for a common symbol
Which versus that: When to use each in subordinate clauses.
Words of 1997: Some new words from the Oxford Archives
Words of 1998: Some lists of new words discussed
Words of 2001: Two lists of new words are discussed
Words of 2002: Two lists of new words are discussed
Words of 2003: Winning new words and phrases
Words of the Year 2007: Winning words and phrases