Sublime

two firm favourites in the Arsenal manager’s own lexicon: the adverb footballistically (‘footballistically, he’s ready for the first team’), and the adjective handbrakeish (‘I felt we were a little handbrakish today’).

Then there are the eggcorns – a term that sprang from an exchange between the linguists Mark Liberman and Geoffrey Pullum about the mishearing of the word ‘acorn’. An eggcorn is a word that is mistakenly substituted for the standard one, but that still sounds logical. We all know about damp squids, but Oxford’s databases now show that trending towa

Richard Whiteley (‘Did the inventor of the door knocker win the no-bell prize?’)

as Saki once put it, ‘a little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation’,

the proprietor of a mug house or shicker shop, the pub landlord or -lady, is not without his or her own monikers. Among the earliest labels, in the 1500s, were the lick-spigot, ale-draper, and cove-of–the-ken. Today you’re more likely to hear the governor or mine host. In the years in-between, and if you were fond of a tipple, you might have encoun

But for those who believe the market to be unfairly flooded by migrant workers – a fear expressed by many – there are more women in the trade than builders from Eastern Europe.