Jeremy Butterfield Editorial

Every week on the BBC Radio 4 programme Unspeakable, lexicographer extraordinaire and novelist Susie Dent delights the audience with her favourite word or phrase from around the world for her ‘word of the week’.

Last week I wrote about the several situations and emotions for which dogs stand as our go-to metaphors, from happiness to dejection, and from aggression to pliability.

An organisation with unlimited funds, it seems, wishes to fly me to California to create a style guide.

In a previous post I did a sort of mini Bluffer’s Guide to conceptual metaphor.

For me, the OED is one vast variety chocolate box: dip my mitts in, and I’m sure to haul out something lexically delicious.

More on ablaut reduplication.

My old man said follow the van… What do a 1933 film featuring a giant gorilla, a children’s word for pyjamas, and an informal group of British notables and aristos in the early eighteenth century have in common?

Or, A rose by any other nym would smell as sweet.

Loanwords are like buses: you don’t see one for ages and then three show up in quick succession, as I explain later.

What’s the issue?

Sometimes a word is only ever a metaphor, like tipping point: there is no literal meaning describing something or someone physically tipping.

St David and St David’s Day Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus!