The Times - UK (2020-10-17)

32 1GM Saturday October 17 2020 | the times

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alternative term for a first cousin

twice removed. “The term

grandcousin is sometimes used for

the grandchild of a first cousin, or

the first cousin of a grandparent.”

“Elderly relation”, in this context,

might have been the safer choice.

Herd immunity

C

harles Overton of Hereford

enjoyed Matthew Oates’s

“wonderful Nature Notebook

column” last Saturday, but, he says,

“While the idea of ‘old-fashioned

swineherds’ fattening themselves on

acorns conjures up an extraordinary

image, I cannot help but feel that he

meant swine herds — though for the

sake of clarity he might have done

better to say, ‘herds of swine’.

Furthermore, if swineherds should

wish to fatten themselves on acorns,

they would certainly need to soak

them well beforehand to remove the

toxic tannins, or old-fashioned clergy

like me might be called out of

retirement to take their funerals.”

Perish the thought.

Last week I ventured that we were

“all the wiser” for being given a

lesson in basic Anglo-Saxon. This

prompted Malcolm Talbot from

Edderton to write that, while he was

delighted at now knowing where

“bollocks” comes from, he wasn’t

sure he was all that wiser, citing the

great barrister, politician and wit FE

Smith in this courtroom exchange:

“Judge: I’ve listened to you for an

hour and I’m none the wiser. Smith:

None the wiser, perhaps, my lord but

certainly better informed.”

one can no longer mention by name

a site of major historical importance

in the UK.”

It was also ironic, he pointed out,

that in the same day’s paper Patrick

Kidd had told a funny story in the

diary about software “presumably

programmed by an American high

school student” that flagged up the

word “bone” as filthy slang in a

paper written by a palaeontologist.

I couldn’t say who compiled our

list of restricted words — which

automatically block comments in

which they appear — but I’m glad to

report that after a swift intervention

“dyke” is now blameless, and we can

all make as many jokes about the

Welsh border as we like. If anyone

feels inclined to misuse it in other

contexts they will, I’m sure, be

reported to the moderators for a

sharp warning.

Strained relations

‘M

ight you explain to readers

what a ‘great-cousin’ is,” asks

Terry Philpot. This was a

reference we made to the elderly

relation of a chap who inherited some

royal letters. “Cousinship,” Mr Philpot

continues, “is always expressed by

degrees — eg, first, second, three

times removed, so your term is, to say

the least, puzzling. The nearest I know

but have never seen used is a grand-

cousin, the cousin of a grandparent.”

That may well have been the term

we were groping for. I’ve never come

across either a great-cousin or a

grand-cousin, but Wikipedia seems

to think that the latter is an

E

ric Johns wrote from

Swanage to ask whether we

have a policy about puns in

headlines. “On one recent

Saturday,” he says, “I spotted

ten before I even got to the

Comment pages. What is their

purpose? Are they to lighten the

reader’s morning? Or do they just

relieve the boredom of a sub-editor?”

Naturally I would say the answer

to this is that he got it right the first

time; the function of our headlines is

to catch the eye, entertain or inform

the reader. I’d be wrong to deny,

though, that he was on to something

with his second thought. As it

encapsulated into a painfully

restricted space, often under intense

time pressure, is an under-

appreciated art and our headline

writers rarely get the credit they are

due. In that spirit, I posted a tweet

two weeks ago praising the headline,

“Only a plonker would call time on

sozzled bonking”, on the column I’d

written about obsolete words.

It didn’t quite have the effect I’d

intended as, lo and behold, a few

hours later I found I was the most

hated person in the Twittersphere.

Someone, who presumably didn’t

have a Times subscription and so was

denied the pleasure of reading the

piece, had assumed I was advocating

having sex with people who were

incapacitated by drink — or

something of the sort. Can anyone

wonder, they asked, why everyone in

the world hates the British?

Five thousand retweets and 46,000

likes later, I came to understand why

Hugo Rifkind’s Twitter profile simply

reads: “I didn’t write the headline,

though”. I wish I’d thought of that.

Offa withdrawn

A

n indignant email came from

David O’Connor. “I’ve just

discovered that readers can’t

refer to Offa’s Dyke when making

comments on articles in The Times.

When I tried to post a comment

referring to your story about the

Welsh leader threatening to close the

border, I was informed: ‘your post

violated our policy’. I realise that we

live in times of heightened

sensitivities but it seems a pity that

When we hear

the word headline,

we reach for a pun

happens we do have a policy on

puns, which is not to overdo them,

and it sounds as if on that particular

day we may have been a little carried

away with our own wit.

The style guide acknowledges that

puns are “an enjoyable device for

headline writers”, but warns that

their use should be restricted to

funny or light stories, or features,

“and if in doubt, avoid; if irresistible

they must at least be in good taste.”

They should also be instantly

obvious. When Andy Murray was

due to play Alexander Zverev in the

Australian Open, we previewed the

match with the headline, “Zverev

clash will test Murray’s metal”.

“Really?” wrote a puzzled reader.

“Does your writer mean mettle?”

As would become clear in the text

of the story, this was a punning

reference to Andy Murray’s hip

operation — a clever joke, but

perhaps too subtle.

Headline writing, in which

complex sets of events have to be

Ros e

Wild

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