As their website notes, “parkrun organise free, weekly, 5km timed runs around the world. They are open to everyone, free, and are safe and easy to take part in”. This month they celebrate their 13th birthday. Since July my daughter and I have been attending local parkruns, both the 5km runs on a Saturday and… Continue reading Word of the week: parkrun
Fatberg is rather like chairdrobe, self-explanatory when you break it down. A chairdrobe is a chair that acts like a wardrobe, and a fatberg is like an iceberg, but made of fat. In fact, as we have learnt through various recent news stories it’s more than that; it’s a mass of fat combined with wet… Continue reading Word of the week: fatberg
“O’er” is defined simply enough on this page from Macmillan Dictionaries as “a word meaning over, used in poetry” (adverb, preposition, literary). It came to mind at a funeral mass I attended earlier today. Some of the hymns contained words with apostrophes to make them fit in with the melody, words like spread’st, Heav’n and… Continue reading Word of the week: o’er
It’s a while since I linked to an Oliver Burkeman article, so here’s one that’s particularly relevant for me this week. It mentions “phenomenal knowledge”, or “the knowledge of what it feels like to experience something”, in the context of tasting Vegemite for the first time. As he notes: “you can obtain such knowledge only… Continue reading Word of the week: Vegemite
Is “prancer” a word? It sounds like a word, meaning “one who prances”, but it’s not recognized by any of the three word processing Apps I use most days: Word 2011 for the Mac, Word 2010 for Windows on my netbook or Word 2016 on my Windows Phone. The first two Apps automatically correct the… Continue reading Word of the week: prancer
The derivation of the word “quiz” is uncertain. The Oxford Dictionaries definition notes that it is “sometimes said to have been invented by a Dublin theatre proprietor who, having made a bet that a nonsense word could be made known within 48 hours throughout the city, and that the public would give it a meaning,… Continue reading Word of the week: quiz
The literal meaning of therapeutic, according to this definition on Dictionary.com, is “of or relating to the treating or curing of disease; curative”. Many of us use it in the more vague sense of something that makes you feel good, something that improves your peace of mind. I used it earlier this month when a… Continue reading Word of the week: therapeutic
Earlier this month, in preparation for this piece, I wrote about words ending in “-ize” and “-ization” and my preference for spelling them with a “z” rather than an “s”. All the quotes in this piece follow this preference rather than the house style of the publications that I have quoted from. One of the… Continue reading Word of the week: compartmentalization
Liam Gallagher is back. His new single, “Wall of Glass” (check out the official video here), has been all over the radio, or at least the radio stations I listen to, and he gave a compelling performance at Glastonbury. I watched it from the comfort of my living-room early one Sunday morning after a later-than-planned… Continue reading Word of the week: paraphernalia
The word “mole” has been on my mind for a while. I have a large, dark mole on my back, about 4” (10cm) above my beltline. It gets very itchy. I first showed it to my GP in 1997 and every few years since then have had it checked out. Four different general practitioners have… Continue reading Word of the week: mole
The Compartments 