Today I’ll share a couple of short passages from books I’ve been reading recently with my children. Both made me laugh, though I guess the context also helps. The first is from Susan M. Coolidge’s What Katy Did: “Imogen was a bright girl naturally, but she had so read so many novels that her brain wasContinue reading “Milly-Molly-Mandy meets What Katy Did”
Category Archives: Language
Adlestrop
One of the great lockdown pleasures has been digging out old (and sometimes very old) board games and playing them as a family. A new favourite is the wonderfully outdated GWR game, whose board you can see in the picture. The aim of the game, in essence, is to collect lots of stations and thenContinue reading “Adlestrop”
On hirpling and other great words
Yesterday I reviewed George Mackay Brown’s Pictures in the Cave but I didn’t mention his wonderful use of language. Brown certainly seemed to have some favourite words: “hirpling” appears twice in the book, for example, as does “lucent”. Other great words in Pictures in the Cave include “erne” and “crepitated”. So, with a little help from theContinue reading “On hirpling and other great words”