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 […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle considers the history and original meaning of a now ubiquitous word Here’s a pub quiz question for you: in which century were the words ‘computer’ and ‘electricity’ first used in English writing? The twentieth? ‘Computer’ may lead us to […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the eighteenth-century origins of nonsense literature When did the tradition of English nonsense literature arise? Who invented nonsense literature? Although Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear are the names that immediately spring to mind, several eighteenth-century writers should get […]