Canvas tarpaulin, and a piece of old carpet. I’m not sure that they didn’t lay an old wardrobe on top of that, just to
Camouflage (rather oddly from camouflet, meaning to blow smoke up someone’s nose, a pastime that appears on the linguistic evidence to be specific to the French),
Avenge, revenge. Generally, avenge indicates the settling of a score or the redressing of an injustice. It is more dispassionate than revenge, which indicates retaliation taken largely for the sake of...
An obligatory manifestation of matter, bound to arise wherever conditions are appropriate.
Amoral, immoral. Amoral describes matters in which questions of morality do not arise or are disregarded; immoral applies to things that are evil.
All intents and purposes is colourless, redundant and hackneyed. Almost any other expression would be an improvement. ‘He is, to all intents and purposes, king of the island’ (Mail on Sunday) would be...
Affinity denotes a mutual relationship. Therefore, strictly speaking, one should not speak of someone or something having an affinity for another, but rather should speak of an affinity with or betwee...
Acute, chronic. These two are sometimes confused, which is a little odd as their meanings are sharply opposed. Chronic pertains to lingering conditions, ones that are not easily overcome. Acute refers...
[About Uluru] I'm suggesting nothing here, but I will say that if you were an intergalactic traveler who had broken down in our solar system, the obvious directions to rescuers would be: Go to the thi...
Yucatán in Mexico means What? or What are you saying?—the reply given by the natives to the first Spanish conquistadors to fetch up on their shores. The
You shall be led from hence to the place whence you came…and your body shall be opened, your heart and bowels plucked out, and your privy members cut off and thrown into the fire before your eyes.
You have your whole life ahead of you. But here's the thing to remember. You will always have your whole life ahead of you. That never stops and you shouldn't forget it.
You can’t have a more civilized community than one in which hospital staff play cricket at the end of a summer’s day and lunatics can wander and mingle without exciting comment or alarm. It was wonder...
You can’t go to East Anglia and not visit Sutton Hoo. Well, you can, obviously, but you shouldn’t.
You are totally at the mercy of nature in this country, mate. It’s just a fact of life. But I tell you one thing. What’s that? It sure makes you appreciate something like this when you know it could a...
Yet it has 58 uses as a noun, 126 as a verb, and 10 as a participial adjective. Its meanings are so various and scattered that it takes the OED 60,000 words—the length of a short novel—to discuss them...
Work expands to fill the time available for its completion, still known as Parkinson’s Law.
Without doubt, the moose is the most improbable, endearingly hopeless creature ever to live in the wilds. Every bit of it—its spindly legs, its chronically puzzled expression, its comical oven-mitt an...
With the canal, the cost of shipping a ton of flour from Buffalo to New York City fell from $120 a ton to $6 a ton, and the carrying time was reduced from three weeks to just over one. The effect on N...
Whereas the food debris of the Neanderthals shows a wide variety of animal bones, suggesting that they took whatever they could find, archaeological remnants from Homo sapiens show that they sought ou...