In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle enjoys a new lexicon of useful words for troubled times We live in strange and worrying times. If hindsight, as Billy Wilder once said, is always 20:20, then our own hindsight on 2020 will surely be dominated by widespread […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle examines the origins of an oft-misused phrase ‘Good in parts.’ ‘A mixed bag.’ This is what people generally mean when they use the phrase ‘curate’s egg’ to describe something. For instance, in book reviews: ‘A real curate’s egg, this. […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle examines a famous phrase derived from Shakespeare The old line about Hamlet, that it’s ‘too full of quotations’, wittily sums up the play’s influence on not just English literature but on the everyday language we use. Many of us […]
What is a portmanteau word, or a portmanteau? A one-sentence definition is easy enough: a portmanteau word is, in summary, a word that has been formed by blending two existing words together. So, for instance, a motel is from motor + hotel, brunch is from breakfast + lunch, and smog […]
What is an acronym? Well, let’s begin with a different question. What do the following have in common: DVD, UN, CND, BBC, GSOH, and TV? If you answered ‘they’re all acronyms’, then read on. For it’s necessary to make a fine but important distinction between bona fide acronyms and other […]