Conjunctivitis, also known as pinkeye, or pink eye, is an “inflammation of the conjunctiva”. The conjunctiva is “the mucous membrane that lines the exposed portion of the eyeball and inner surface of the eyelids”. Dictionary.com just told me this, in the definitions here and here. I am currently recovering from conjunctivitis, the second time in… Continue reading Word of the week: conjunctivitis
The word exobrain has been playing on my mind for many years now. I wasn’t sure how many years until trying to work out where, exactly, I first came across it. I thought it was in this Oliver Burkeman piece in which he confesses that he is “obsessed with index cards”. He writes about many… Continue reading Word of the week: exobrain
Can you picture a guillotine? I’m talking here about the device used for executions, especially during the French Revolution: a tall wooden frame, a heavy block with a sharp, angled blade, dropped from a great height to behead the prisoner below, their neck secured in wooden stocks. On Saturday morning I caught about 20 minutes… Continue reading Word of the week: guillotine
A recent quiz question on “Fifteen to One” asked which fish has the taxonomic name Thymallus Thymallus and is known as the “Lady of the Stream”. I had never heard of it. The answer is grayling. This form of taxonomic name, where the same word is used twice, prompted thoughts of other such names, and… Continue reading Word of the week: tautonym
Happy Easter to you. We’re all back on the chocolate. As every native English speaker knows, the word “chocolate” has two syllables. It’s chock-lit, or chock-luht, or even chahk-lert, never choc-oh-late. My brother and I were discussing this last week when he was over for the 20th Anniversary of my mother’s death. He has lived… Continue reading Word of the week: chocolate
A short “Word of the Week” today: kakistocracy, which means rule by those who are worst, or least suitable. It came up last week in a question on ITV’s quiz show “The Chase”. This definition from dictionary.com tells us that it was first coined in 1829 as “government by the worst element of a society,”… Continue reading Word of the week: kakistocracy
Earlier this year my daughter and I were driving past a pub called The Plough. I asked if she knew how to pronounce it, and what the word meant. She guessed, quite understandably, that it’s pronounced “pluff”, to rhyme with rough. (In fact it rhymes with “cow” or “now”, as I’m sure you know.) She… Continue reading Word of the week: plough
The word “nutter” is never far from my mind. I used it last June in this piece (“Please don’t tell me the names of the murderers”); more about that later. I have been meaning to draft a Word of the Week piece about it for a while. Before last week’s events here in London my… Continue reading Word of the week: nutter
Recently, while I was hunched over a spreadsheet on my laptop at the kitchen table, my 10-year-old daughter asked, “Is that Excel?” It was. “Can I show you something?” she asked. In a blank cell, in a new blank workbook, she typed the following: =1+1 When she pressed Return the number 2 appeared in the… Continue reading Word of the week: BODMAS
A yad is a pointer used in a synagogue to trace the text in the Torah. A rabbi will not run his finger across the parchment, he uses a yad instead. We learnt this over the weekend as part of my 12-year-old son’s RE homework, which involved learning at least three of the things that… Continue reading Word of the week: yad
The Compartments 