Kel's previous Ozwords of the day...

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Winnie-the-Pooh I missed it! I missed the 100thbirthday of Winnie-the-Pooh! A. A. Milne’s first Winnie-the-Pooh book was published on September 12th, 1926—making the 100thbirthday just three days ago. For we wordies the interesting question is where the name of Christopher Robin’s teddy bear comes from. The ‘Pooh’ part is fairly straight forward. Christopher Robin had a soft toy swan that he called ‘pooh.’ This was (apparently) because there was a tradition in the Milne family that if you called a swan and it didn’t come you said ‘pooh’ to pretend that you never really wanted it to come at all. As for the ‘Winnie’ part—that is an abbreviation of the Canadian city of Winipeg. In 1914 a contingent from the Canadian Army arrived in Britain to support the British war effort in the First World War (which had just begun). Among them was Lieutenant Harry Coleman who brought with him a small black bear from his hometown of Winipeg. The bear became a popular attraction at London Zoo where it was named ‘Winipeg’—and called ‘Winnie’ for short. Milne and Christopher visited the zoo, were delighted by the bear, and gave the name to the small boy’s teddy bear. And that was how ‘Edward Bear’ became ‘Winnie-the-Pooh.’ Happy 100thbirthday to the bear of very small brain! (By the way, in case you’d forgotten, Teddy Bears go their name from President Theodore Roosevelt. After a bear hunting trip in 1902 a popular political cartoon showed the president with a black bear. Thereafter Roosevelt’s nickname of ‘Teddy’ was transferred to all bear-like soft toys.)

Roger that We’ve all seen (and heard) the use of ‘roger’ to acknowledge a communication—in movies and on TV the radio operator signs off a two-way radio call with the word ‘roger’, or indicates agreement by saying ‘roger that.’ So, where does it come from? Who was this Roger anyway? Was he a famous early radio operator? And if not, why use the name ‘roger’ in this way? The explanation turns out to be simplicity itself. In the early days of radio communication (at sea or between aircraft) there was always the risk of mishearing, or a misunderstanding between sender and receiver (because of crackling and poor signal strength). To avoid that a method of spelling out key words or initials was invented. This consisted of giving each letter an agreed (and unmistakable) key word as its indicator. The code that we know now (Alpha, Baker, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf… and all the way down to Whisky, Yankee, X-ray, Zulu) has only been in use since about 1955. There were earlier (similar) key word lists that preceded the now familiar one. And from about 1941 both the United States Navy and Britain’s Royal Airforce used a code that used ‘roger’ as the standard key word for the letter ‘R’. (On the current system it has been replaced by ‘Romeo’ as the R word.) So if you wanted to (very quickly) indicated that a signal, or a message, has been received you would broadcast the initial letter of the word ‘received’—R. And how would send that ‘R’ signal? By using the keyword for that letter ‘roger.’ And that’s all it ever meant—‘roger’ meant ‘received.’ Which is why in movies they say ‘roger and out’ or ‘roger that.’ Now you know. 

Galvanised A reader (Martin) has written to ask an interesting question: ‘How did people being motivated to perform to a high standard become associated with ‘dipping steel into molten zinc’, that is, being “Galvanised”?’ And we understand what he means, don’t we? We are familiar with both uses of the word ‘galvanised.’ We talk about ‘galvanised iron’ and we also say that ‘The promised bonus galvanised the staff into action.’ Both uses make sense, so how are they connected? The word ‘galvanised’ comes from the name of the Italian doctor and physicist Luigi Galvani (1737-1798). And what he described was the way that an electrical charge could make the muscles of dead frogs’ legs move. This was the discovery of what is now called ‘bioelectricity.’ Biological electricity has the same chemical underpinnings as the current between electrochemical cells. Galvani continued actively investigating animal electricity until the end of his life. Which is all very good—but where does the coating of iron and steel come into this? The answer is: very much later. Galvani’s experiments (and the original use of the word ‘galvanised’) was in the 1700s. Later, in the 1800s, it was discovered that a protective coating of zinc could be applied to steel using an electrical charge. So, what we think of as the figurative use (‘galvanising’ people enlivens them) came first—it preceded by a century the production of galvanized steel. So, there you are Martin, we are not applying the metallic process to people, but the other around—it was the existing biological word that was applied to iron and steel.

Raining cats and dogs I wish I had a dollar for every time someone asked me why we say, ‘Raining cats and dogs.’ (Come to think of it, since I get paid to do language journalism I probably do have a dollar for every time I’ve been asked that!) All it means (as everyone knows) is that there has been a heavy rainstorm. So, where do the small animals come into it? The Oxford English Dictionary says that it is first recorded (with any certainty) from 1661. And that date is significant. At that period in England gutters were not the neatly constructed channels at the sides of the streets that we know today—back then there was one gutter in each street, and it was (very often) a large drain running down the middle of the street. Also back in those days there was a large population of stray animals in any city or town of any size. A heavy rainstorm would result in the bodies of dead strays being washed down the large drain in the middle of the street—so ‘it’s been raining cats and dogs’ started as a joke about where those small dead bodies had come from. Not a very good joke, I agree, but a joke, nonetheless. In 1710 Jonathan Swift wrote a poem called ‘A Description of a City Shower’ which contained these lines:

Sweeping from butchers’ stalls, dung, guts, and blood;
Drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud,
Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the flood.

That, I think, is a contemporary observation of exactly what I am saying. Now, there are some other proposed explanations of ‘raining cats and dogs’ (that it might come from mythological beliefs that these small animals had a mystical control over storms). But that looks farfetched to me, and I am sticking to my explanation (which makes much more sense). 

Literally Emil (a viewer of the ‘Credlin’ program) would like to know why the word ‘literally’ is so often misused? It’s a good question. I am tempted to reply: ‘Ignorance, Emil, sheer ignorance.’ The truth is that all language errors come from a lazy mind or a lazy mouth. This one is from lazy minds. People don’t stop and think what the word ‘literally’ means. It came into English from French around 1429. It means ‘to the letter’ or ‘exactly’ or ‘just like this.’ So when a friend says he is ‘literally dead on his feet’ he is asking for a coffin not a rest break. Unless it would have been visible and obvious to anyone there at the time, then it is wrong to use the word ‘literally.’ It’s fine to say after a heavy rainstorm that ‘it rained cats and dogs’ (a familiar English idiom—which, since it has sprung to mind, I will explain tomorrow) but, but, but, it is always wrong to say ‘it literally rained cats and dogs’ because cats and dogs don’t ever fall out of the sky! Sadly people have started using ‘literally’ as a vague, meaningless intensifier. They use it to say, ‘I mean this, and I mean this a lot.’ Well, that’s not its meaning. It adds nothing to most sentences in which it appears. It seems to be me that today literally almost no one knows how to use ‘literally’ correctly. (And in that sentence it was used correctly!) So, what is my advice? I think this is probably the time to stop using the word at all—since it has so many people so confused. It has been misused to the pointing meaninglessness—so just drop this word from your vocabulary.

Strategic The word ‘strategic’ has been in the news lately. For example: ‘Yemen’s Houthi rebels seized two strategic islands in the Red Sea’s Bab el-Mandeb Strait.’ The Oxford defines ‘strategic’ as meaning, ‘useful or important in relation to military strategy.’ Which (for me at least) raises the often tricky question of: what is the difference between ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics? Is that a question you have occasionally thought about? I suspect the answer is not immediately obvious. Basically ‘strategy’ seems to mean ‘a plan’—or, at least, that seems to be the core notion. The Oxford talks about strategy involving ‘planning or directing the larger movements or long-term objectives of a battle, military campaign.’ In other words, strategy is the big, overall, plan. The Collins talks about ‘a general plan, or set of plans.’ The Cambridge calls it a ‘detailed plan.’ But when we turn to ‘tactics’ the focus seems to be not on the plan so much as how to accomplish it. Draw up a plan (that’s the strategy) then work out how to do it (that’s the tactics). The Merriam-Webster dictionary says ‘tactics’ means ‘disposing and manoeuvring troops, ships, or aircraft’—in other words, the ‘how’ of putting the plan into action. The Cambridge says tactics means the organisation and use of troops etc.; the Collins talks about ‘direction and control’; while the Oxford uses the word ‘deploying.’ And I think that nails the difference between ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics—between the ‘plan’ and the ‘how.’

Buck stops here This is an expression that a reader has asked me to write about. ‘The buck stops here’ is a promise that responsibility will not be passed on to anyone else. U.S. president Harry S. Truman had a sign on his desk saying, ‘The buck stops here.’ Truman didn’t coin the phrase, but it went into dictionaries from about 1952 because of his popularising it. Fred M. Canfil, United States Marshal for the Western District of Missouri and a friend of Truman’s, saw a sign like it while visiting the Federal Reformatory at El Reno, Oklahoma in 1945. He thought it would appeal to Truman and had a copy of it made and sent to him. The expression comes from the game of poker. Players were highly suspicious of possible cheating. To avoid unfairness, when the deal changed hands the person next in line to deal would be given a marker. This was often a knife with a handle made of buck’s horn—hence the marker was known as ‘a buck.’ When the dealer’s turn was over he ‘passed the buck’. The dramatic contrast to ‘the buck stops here’ is found in our own political leaders. When told about the tragic lifestyles (and deaths) of little Aboriginal children in West Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, ‘That’s a state problem.’ No, it’s not. Following the 1967 referendum, under the constitution Aboriginal welfare is vested in the federal government, not the states. But Albanese seems incapable of accepting responsibility for anything. Unlike Harry Truman, Albanese’s tactic is to always ‘pass the buck.’ Victoria’s Ben Carroll is just as bad. Asked about the appalling state of Victoria’s roads he said, ‘I’m not the roads minister.’ But he is the premier, and responsible for the whole state. A responsibility he refuses to accept. Just like his friend Albanese he ‘passes the buck.’

Transhumanism This strikes me as a nonsense word naming a nonsense concept. But who knows I might be wrong. (Yes, I am wrong sometimes… I remember the last time I was wrong… it was a Thursday, I think… about seven years ago… and, yes, I am only joking). The word ‘transhumanism’ was coined in 1957 by Julian Huxley in his essay New Bottles for New Wine. Julian Huxley (1887-1975) was an English biologist who had all sorts of weird beliefs (including in eugenics—stopping lesser people from breeding—and parapsychology and spiritualism). One of the mad ideas he dreamed up was ‘transhumanism’—the belief that humans can deliberately evolve beyond their current physical and mental limitations. Different ‘transhumanists’ have a range of different ideas. Some of them seem to think that the next level of human evolution will be human brains (or human minds) kept alive forever inside computers (sounds like a heap of fun!) Some have pictured robots (so not static computers, but walking, talking bipeds) inside of which are human minds—kept alive forever inside repairable machines. Huxley wanted to consciously apply scientific knowledge to overcome biological and social limitations. I mention this because one of the key founders of AI, Eliezer Yudkowsky (who I mentioned yesterday), seems to have started his journey into the world of strange ideas with this one—'transhumanism.’ My own view (for whatever it’s worth) is that human beings are souls—and that souls survive death, so immortality is already part of being human without any technological interference being required. Anyway, I thought this was an interesting word (and interesting notion) that you might be intrigued to hear about. (Something a bit more mainstream tomorrow!)

Superintelligence I have to follow up yesterday’s exposure of what AI really is by unpacking this expression ‘superintelligence.’ One of the key American researchers (one of the foundation researchers) into artificial intelligence is Eliezer Yudkowsky (born, 1979). After pioneering some of the big ideas behind artificial intelligence, he turned his attention to what he called a ‘runaway intelligence explosion.’ This was labelled ‘superintelligence’ by philosopher Nick Bostrom in his 2014 book of that name. Yudkowsky is best known for his 2025 book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why AI Would Kill Us All. Clearly these are people pushing an alarming doomsday scenario. At some point, clearly, Yudkowsky’s enthusiasm for AI turned to fear, and he came to believe that a superintelligent machine could escape human control. But his fear is no reason for the rest of us to start building underground bunkers and stocking up on canned food! There are two things to remember: (1) this is not real intelligence, it is ‘artificial’ intelligence—just an imitation of the real thing—and real, human intelligence will always have a quality that AI can never have; and (2) this sort of thing happens with every new technology. Possibly when our cave dwelling ancestors first discovered fire it may have taken them a while to work out that fire was a good servant, but a bad master. They may have burnt down the odd tree or bush unintentionally until they discovered they needed a control device (called a ‘fireplace’—for them perhaps circle of stones) to keep their new invention under control. So, there never will be any ‘superintelligence’ only ‘super-artificial-intelligence’ (which is not the same thing) and it seems as though everyone is alert to watch out for accompanying risks. So you can sleep easy at night!

AI I suppose it is time for me to re-visit the expression ‘AI’ (‘Artificial Intelligence’). It is back on the agenda with all the current debate about how safe AI might be for human beings and human society. One computer whizz actually stirred a small storm of controversy when he said AI might kill us all. Hence, some governments are saying there need to be ‘guardrails’ hedging in AI, while Donald Trump is dead-set against any such regulation. All of which means it is time for me to go back to exposing the real meaning of the source expression ‘Artificial Intelligence.’ And they key (as I have pointed out in the past) is to be found not in the noun but in its qualifying adjective. In other words it is the adjective ‘artificial’ that tells us what AI really is. It is not ‘intelligence’ it is ‘artificial intelligence.’ The relationship between intelligence and AI is the same as the relationship between artificial flowers and real flowers. On the one hand you have real flowers which are organic, growing, and living, and reproducing—on the other hand you have a manufactured, contrived, imitation of real flowers. In exactly the same way, you have on one hand real intelligence that organic, living, growing and reproducing—on the other hand you have a manufactured, contrived imitation of real intelligence. The proper technical name for the computer function we call ‘AI’ is actually ‘Large Language Computing.’ And because it is very powerful very fast, very complex, calculating that uses a large corpus of human language it succeeds in imitating the appearance of real (human) intelligence—without (in reality) being any more real than artificial flowers. Does that help in understanding what we’re dealing with here?

Anthropic One of the huge AI companies has chosen the word ‘anthropic’ as their brand name. The word ‘anthropic’ means ‘of, or related to, human beings.’ It comes from the Greek word anthropos meaning ‘human.’ Does it strike you as odd that a company that is pushing AI should (by using such a name) be saying to the human race ‘we’re on your side.’ Because there is no certainty at the moment that AI is a technology that will prove to be an unbounded benefit to humanity. I suppose it might be—but we shall have to wait and see. The word has (up until now) mainly been used in the expression ‘the anthropic principle.’ This is a scientific principle that says when you look at what are called the ‘constants’ of the physical universe (such as gravity, the balance between helium and hydrogen, the size of our sun, the size of out planet, the laws of thermodynamics and so on) they are all exactly fine-tuned to support human life. If any one of them had been even fractionally different then human life would be impossible. The fact that they are exactly (to the smallest decimal point) what is needed to support human life looks to be beyond coincidence—it looks suspiciously as if the whole universe was designed precisely to bring forth and support human life. Which gives the universe an intelligent and purposeful design. That, until now, has been the main use of the word ‘anthropic’—and now it’s being used by an AI company as if to imply ‘everything we do is for the benefit of the human race.’ At least that appears to be their claim. Whether it turns out to be true or we shall (as I said) have to wait and see. 

Home in on There it was in the newspaper—the use of ‘hone in on’ when (surely!) the only correct usage is ‘home in on.’ The story was about the pursuit by the Albanese government of a group called the Plymouth Brethren. They are, it seems, a very conservative group and during the last general election they campaigned against Labor. Anthony Albanese and senior frontbenchers have accused them of improper behaviour. But my point is an entirely verbal one. The journalist writing about this said: ‘Labor has honed in on the behaviour of the Plymouth Brethren. Oh, no they haven’t! The verb ‘to hone’ means ‘to sharpen.’ You can ‘hone’ a knife, you could use it figuratively and say you have ‘honed’ (sharpened) your arguments. But you can’t use ‘honed’ to mean ‘targeted.’ Here’s the background. Apparently the verbal phrase ‘to home in on’ was used by pilots employing their electronic equipment to target incoming missiles or enemy aircraft. The problem is that ‘hone’ and ‘home’ sound so similar (only differing in one letter) and people have forgotten that the original meaning of this verbal phrase was ‘targeting.’ Webster’s English Usage (1989) notes that ‘hone in on’ seems to be on the increase, although it is not yet recognised by any of the major dictionaries. What all of the dictionaries do recognise is ‘home in on’—the Cambridge English Dictionary says it means ‘to aim for’; Collins says, ‘to guide or be guided as by radar, heat, etc., to (a destination or target); while the Longman gives this definition, ‘to aim exactly at an object or place and move directly to it’ Now that’s what the Albanese hit mob is doing, right? It is ‘homing in’! I do wish some of these journalists would buy a dictionary!

Puns We all know what a ‘pun’ is: a joke (often a feeble joke) that is a play on words—sometimes using words that sound similar, or that have two meanings. But where does the word ‘pun’ come from? The experts at the Oxford say they are unsure, adding: ‘perhaps formed within English, by clipping or shortening. Or perhaps a borrowing from Italian.’  The Italian word they have in mind is puntiglio which in English becomes ‘punctilio’ and means ‘a minute detail.’ The word ‘pun’ has been part of English since at least 1644. And I can’t write about puns without giving you some examples (don’t blame me if they make you groan rather than laugh);

A man died when a pile of books fell on him—he only had his shelf to blame.

Thanks for explaining the word ‘many’ to me—it means a lot.

Boxes of weight loss pills were stolen from a chemist—police say the suspects are still at large.

Today a man knocked on my door and asked for a small donation towards the local swimming pool, so I gave him a glass of water.

Stop making jokes about being blind—I don’t see the point.

If at first you don't succeed—then skydiving is not for you.

Why did the octopus beat the shark in a fight? Because it was well armed.

A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.

I put up a high-voltage electric fence around my property over the weekend, my neighbour is dead against it.
I'm reading a book about anti-gravity. It's impossible to put down!

Well, I did warn you, didn’t I. And looking at those awful puns I was reminded that kids find these thing hilarious (when they’re around nine or ten years old). If you are a glutton for punish (if you’ve gone off you ‘glutton free diet’) American wordsmith Richard Lederer has written a whole book about puns. 

Recently added A little while back I shared some words recently added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and to Dictionary.com. Today a handful of words recently added to the big Oxford English Dictionary. If you visit the Oxford site regularly, you’ll know that on the front page they are constantly listing a dozen or so words under the heading of ‘recently added.’ Here are some recent ones:

Crate day—the first Saturday of December in New Zealand, a day on which the beginning of summer is celebrated with crates of beer. The term was first used for a party held on Boxing Day by a group of friends in Tairua, New Zealand, for which partygoers were asked to bring crates of beer. In 2010, the day began to be observed nationally on the first Saturday of December as part of a promotion by a mainstream radio station, The Rock.

Café hopping—the activity of visiting bars or nightclubs; the practice of enjoying the nightlife of a city or town. Now usually: the recreational activity of visiting multiple cafés in a town, an area of a city, etc. Originally an American expression, now common in South-East Asia.

Café brûlot—this is an oldish French expression just now emerging into English. It refers to a fairly dramatic sort of drink: coffee flavoured with a mixture of sugar, spices, citrus peel, and brandy, which has been ignited and allowed to burn for a short while before being added to the coffee. (I’m not sure I want flames with my cup of coffee!)

Cafecito—this is Spanish for a small cup of coffee. I take it this is close to what we would usually call a ‘piccolo’ in Australian coffee-talk. This Spanish term names a kind of espresso originating in Cuba, made by whipping a small amount of strong coffee with an equal part of (usually brown) sugar and pouring more coffee to this mixture so as to produce a thin layer of foam on top (also known as a Cafe Cubano). 

Touristified—this means what it looks like: the name for a place that has been spoiled by the flood of tourists who come. The Oxford notes that it has ‘connotations of superficiality or lack of authenticity.’

Will-they-or-won’t-they—this is a phrase we have been using for years (with or without the hyphens), and now it has been added to the big dictionary, with the Oxford saying it means, ‘characterized by prolonged uncertainty about whether something is going to take place.’ And they then explain the context in which this is most commonly used: ‘often in the context of films, television series, etc., where the mutual attraction between two characters is repeatedly impeded as a device to sustain dramatic tension.’

As I think I’ve said before: I’m not about to run out of a job anytime soon—English is the gift that just keeps on giving!

Grandtherapy The role played by grandparents in our society has changed over the last couple of generations. Those of us who are Baby Boomers probably remember grandparents who took very little interest in us. Today grandparents become the ‘go-to’ solution for childcare, holiday care for grandkids (and helping with the grandkids school fees!) Is this a good thing? A very good thing! The newspapers these days are filled with stories about how to age well—how to remain healthy, avoid dementia and all that fairly important stuff. Now it turns out that grandparenting is one of the best solutions for aging well. So much so that it’s been given a name— ‘grandtherapy.’ In other words, being ‘working grandparents’ heavily involved in the lives of the little ones is one of the best therapies we can have. Writing in The Daily Telegraph Gary Martin said this: ‘Grandtherapy is the physical, mental and emotional lift older people can gain from being actively involved in the lives of their grandchildren.’ It turns out that a 2026 study published in the American Psychological Association’s journal Psychology and Aging examined almost 2,900 grandparents. Those who looked after grandchildren performed better on tests of memory and rapid word recall than those who did not provide care. So, every time you lower your aging frame down onto the carpet to play with Lego, and every time you read a book to the small fry, you are doing yourself some good. Plus—the benefit is two-way. I read a quote some months ago (and now I can’t find where it was, so I can’t give you the source) which said that ‘having loving grandparents provides a foundation for life.’ Those wonderful little kids benefit too. Clearly the more loved little kids feel, the more secure their foundation for life. So, it’s good for them—and it’s good for us. As Gary Martin says, ‘The secret of aging well might be as simple as a small hand reaching up for Nan or Pop.’

Snerdle One of my colleagues at The Spectator Australia, Kerry Wakefield, recently alerted me to a new word. Here’s what Kerry wrote: ‘Hi Kel, FYI, recently discovered the verb “snerdle” for a long-cherished activity, well-practised but only recently named!’ So, Kerry told me the word, but not what it meant, so I had to go hunting. According to the Urban Dictionary this word ‘snerdle’ means ‘to cuddle with, rub faces and noses with, and generally make a fuss over your pets.’ Which reminds of a TV commercial I have (vaguely) seen over the past few months. In the ad a young woman is sitting on a park bench when her dog jumps up and she does exactly this—rub faces, cuddles and the rest. (Mind you, I have no idea was the commercial was advertising, so perhaps it didn’t work for me!) The Urban Dictionary says this meaning for ‘snerdle’ dates back to around 2008. However (you knew there was a ‘however’ coming didn’t you? Yes, the world of language is full of uncertainties) however, there also appears to be a Yorkshire dialect verb ‘to snerdle’ which has a related, but broader meaning—namely: ‘to nestle closely, wrap up comfortably in bed, or go off to sleep snugly.’ This verb is used to describe snuggling or getting cozy,often in bed, and can apply to children, pets, or anyone seeking comfort. So far, ‘snerdle’ is found in none of the major dictionaries, but the Collins Dictionary has it in its special list of ‘new word suggestions’—words that have been nominated for inclusion in the big book, but have not yet produced enough evidence to warrant their inclusion. They say this word was submitted for consideration in November 2025 (which fits in with Kerry’s ‘recently coined’ comment.) The Collins boffins say that in their view ‘snerdle’ means ‘to wrap up snugly beneath the covers.’ Then they give an example of the word being used in a sentence that is slightly different: ‘The kittens snerdle together on the windowsill, peering at the snowfall.’ (Well, not all that different, I grant you.) So, is ‘snerdle’ a word you will be adding to your (already vast) vocabulary any time soon?

Misused words—part two Yesterday I gave you a short list of some of the most annoying ‘misused words’—that one’s get right up my nose! And I asked for your nominations in this same category. My thanks to all those who replied—you had some brilliant suggestions. Here are some of them.

From time immemorial—proposed by Craig. And, yes, Craig, just because something is old it has not been around since the dawn of time (which is what ‘time immemorial’ means). 

I could care less—Robyn points out that the halfwits say this when what they really mean is ‘I couldn’t care less’ (the dial couldn’t be wound down any further—which is not what the butchered version says!)

Golden goose—Nicholas points out that it was not the goose that was golden but the eggs. As in ‘the goose that laid the golden egg.’ People who leave out the egg end up with egg all over their face.

EverythinK—Nicholas is also irritated by those who add a non-existent K to the end of ‘everything’ and ‘anything.’

Pacific—protests Christina, as said by people who mean ‘specific.’

Rain, rein, and reign—Gordon says that even newspapers get muddled about whether they mean tethering a horse, or the rule of a monarch, or a heap of precipitation!

Lend—Bill says people are having a lend of us when they say ‘loan’ in place of ‘lend.’ 

Nookyular—meaning what they do at Lucas Heights. This has raised the blood pressure of many of my correspondents.

100 percent—said by people who are trying to just say ‘yes.’ Jonathan wants a simple affirmative, not a mathematical announcement.

My thanks to everyone who wrote. The trouble is the people abusing the English language are not reading Ozwords! So, how do we get the message to them?

Misused words Recently Tony Mochlair on 3AW interviewed me about commonly misused words. Here is a short list of some of the common misuses that annoy me—see if they also annoy you:

The proof is in the pudding—oh no it’s not! You won’t find the proof hidden in the pudding like a silver coin in a Christmas pudding. The correct expression is ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating.’ If you don’t eat it you haven’t proved anything!

Espresso—have you noticed that people who drink eXpresso coffee also travel on a moving staircase they call an eXcalator?

One fell swoop—people say ‘one foul swoop’—wrong! ‘Fell’ is an old English word meaning wild (it’s related to the word ‘feral’ for a wild animal, and the wild parts of Yorkshire are The Fells). So, it means ‘one wild swoop’—foul is just foul!

Toe the line—I’ve seen people write ‘tow the line.’ What do they imagine it is? A tug-of-war? No, ‘toe the line’ means stand up the line that everyone else is lining up to, like runners at the start of a race.

Begs the question—means assuming the truth of your claim from your first sentence. It does not mean ‘raises the question’ or ‘avoids the question.’ No one understands this, so best avoided.

Cheap at half the price—of course it would be! So, sell it to me at half price! What the speaker means is ‘cheap at twice the price.’

Literally—comes from the French and means ‘to the letter’ (if you’d been there, you’d have seen this physically happen). So, when you say you are ‘literally’ dead on your feet you are asking me to give you a coffin, not a rest.

And I have many more on my list. What is your list of ‘misused words’? Share you list with me, and I will publish it here.

Brain Rot This looks like one of those trendy new words that was coined about a week ago. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that ‘brain rot’ was actually coined in 1854—and by Henry David Thoreau no less, in his masterpiece Walden (a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings). In that book he refers to the disease called ‘potato-rot’ that was inflicting the British Isles at the time, and then laments that no one is tackling the much more serious complaint of ‘brain rot’ which (he says) ‘prevails so much more widely and fatally.’ Of course these days we suspect that ‘brain rot’ is the risk facing those people who are glued to their little screens for hours every day. I have sat in a railway carriage on the Sydney metro reading a book (as I do on the train) surrounded by dozens of people—all of them glued to their little smart phones as if their lives depended on it. The ‘brain rot’ we’re talking about here includes shortened attention spans and the steady eroding of the ability to work through a complex issue one logical point at a time. The big American dictionary, the Merriam-Webster, defines ‘brain rot’ as slang for ‘a perceived decline in cognitive function attributed to consuming too much shallow or addictive online content.’ ‘Brain rot’, they add, can also be used to refer to the shallow or addictive content itself. I suppose the point is—how many cute cat videos can one person watch on Tik Tok without losing their capacity to think at all? The Oxford takes a similar line and says that ‘in recent use (brain rot) is particularly associated with the overconsumption of such content posted online.’ Writing in The New York Times Maxi Heitmayer says, ‘Every decade or so, adults discover that young people are consuming media that corrupts their minds—and a moral panic ensues… Now the panic surrounds “brain rot”—the state of being entranced by an infinite stream of nonsensical TikToks and Instagram reels.’ Maxi is mistakenly trying to hose down our concerns—but we should be concerned before ‘brain rot’ reaches epidemic proportions.

Taekwondo The 2026 Asian Games are being held in Japan. There is competition in 43 sports and over 460 events in 53 venues in Japan’s Aichi-Nagoya Prefecture. One of the events is this ‘taekwondo’ which is defined as ‘a Korean martial art particularly characterized by the use of a combination of kick movements in combat, and widely practised as a sport’ (Oxford English Dictionary). I presume that like all martial arts it has an ancient heritage, but the word only turns up in English from around 1962. In English we pronounce the word as tigh-kwon-DOH. And when I look at that pronunciation I’m sure I’ve heard of it (without ever being quite sure what it was). The name combines two Chinese words meaning ‘kick’ and ‘fist’—and I’m sure that more or less describes what the fighters in the arena get up to. Except at these Asian Games where something quite weird is happening. It seems that this time it’s being done differently—fighters square off against each other on the mat (but not actually within striking distance!) and then perform the Korean martial art’s familiar kicks and punches but (and it’s a big ‘but’) without physically striking one another. What happens is that their movements control images (called ‘avatars’) that fight on a screen. So this is a combat sport in which no actual combat takes place? That would be like two boxers standing a couple of metres away from each other, swinging punches into the air, which controlled computer images of boxers hitting each other. Or something like that. Critics have dismissed this event at the Asian Games as ‘just a video game,’ despite its use of traditional taekwondotechniques. That sound you can hear is the ancient masters of this ancient combat sport spinning in their graves.

Patisserie Brigade The leader of the ‘Patisserie Brigade’ Noël Bodin has died at the age of 80.  You might think you have never heard of the ‘Patisserie Brigade’ but I’m sure you have. Do you remember occasional news stories cropping up over the years about celebrities, politicians and public figures being hit in the face with a cream pie? Ah, yes, that’s the ‘Patisserie Brigade’ at work! Many of the people hit with a pie by Noël Bodin were French political and cultural leaders, but his targets included Bill Gates and Bill Clinton. Wikipedia credits him with a total of 28 distinguished targets in his pie-ing stretching from 1969 to 2023. Noël Bodin was born in Belgium in 1945, and spent his life as a comedian, writer, critic, actor and famous (or notorious) pie thrower or entarteur (I take it than an ‘entarter’ is a person who ‘tarts’ someone). He was described as ‘the French-speaking world’s best-known prankster.’ He led what he called the ‘International Patisserie Brigade.’ Godin used pastry-hurling as a form of protest, describing himself as an ‘anarcho-confectioner.’ He told reporters that his pies were always fresh and high-quality, purchased at local bakeries. He once wrote a book about his exploits called (very cleverly) Cream and Punishment (an obvious pun on ‘crime and punishment’). The word ‘patisserie’ means ‘food made by a pastry cook, or pastries collectively, or a shop that sells such pastries.’ The word came into English from Middle French around 1594. But here is the weird part—the Oxford English Dictionary says that it went in French from Scottish! At least I think that’s what they’re saying—they certainly refer back to an earlier obsolete Scottish dialect for a pastry cook or pastries (who would have thought?)

Mansion A recent news story said that San Francisco real estate agents claim that the rapid expansion of the AI industry is helping fuel a ‘mansion shortage.’ As the AI industry creates new wealth, more buyers are competing for a limited number of large single-family houses. Dozens of homes reportedly sold for at least $1 million above their asking prices, and even all-cash offers on properties listed for as much as $25 million have been outbid. Well, we know what they mean by ‘mansion’ in that context: ‘a very large, impressive, or stately residence’ (Dictionary.com). Here in Australia we might call a very large, flash house in the suburbs a ‘MacMansion’—combing ‘mansion’ with the abbreviation of ‘MacDonalds’ (hamburger joints pretending to be ‘restaurants’). Similarly a ‘MacMansion’ is a two-storey suburban home pretending to be a lord’s residence. And in Britain ‘mansion’ can have another meaning— ‘Each of a number of separate dwelling places or apartments in a large house’ (Oxford). Hence, there might be a building called ‘Belgravia Mansions.’ But this use of ‘mansion’ for multiple dwelling places has a distinguished history. When William Tyndale did his famous translation of the Bible in 1526 (from the original Greek) he translated Jesus’ words as: ‘In my Father’s house there are many mansions’ (John 14:2). The original Greek text uses a word (monai) which is probably better translated ‘abodes’ (or dwelling places)—this is the plural form of a word that means tarrying or stopping or abiding place. And this may, indeed, lie somewhere in the background of our English word ‘mansion’—having travelled through Latin and French to make its way into English, where it turned up around 1375. 

Bung Recently Bernard Salt (writing in The Weekend Australian) drew my attention to that fine old Aussie word ‘bung.’ Bernard said that from the 1960s the word ‘bung’ meant ‘to throw or place or put something on, as in to bung a sausage (on the barbie) or a coat (if it’s cold). Or, indeed, to bung something on the table if it’s to be discussed, admired, and/or eaten. To bung on an accent or affectation was done by someone to present as being a bit la-de-da.’ The final authority on everything to do with the Australian language is The Australian National Dictionary so I decided to hunt through its pages for a clue to ‘bung.’ And the result is interesting. That big book records another familiar meaning of ‘bung’—namely ‘broken’, as in ‘the TV’s gone bung.’ This is definitely an Australian coinage which seems to start in Australian pidgin English around 1841. To start with ‘bung’ just meant dead, but over time it acquired a wider range of meanings— ‘to go bung’ could mean bankruptcy, financial ruin (from 1897) or to be incapacitated or broken (from 1945)—but the Aussie word ‘bung’ never had the meaning of ‘to throw or put.’ That seems to come, not from us but from Scotland! The verb ‘to bung’ meaning ‘to throw, to send, to put’ is recorded as coming into mainstream English from a Scottish dialect source in 1825. So, there you are Bernard—a little revision on your excellent column: one ‘bung’ is an Australian coinage (the going ‘bung’ one) and the other ‘bung’ (the throw something on ‘bung’) is not. But if you hadn’t raised this, we would never have discovered it—so, well done!