Games and Facts Blogs

Yea! We've just had the Budget announced in Australia, to the inevitable wailing of baffled interest groups and the whirring of spin placed on it by competing political groups. Did I mention there's a national election coming up within months?
So this made me think of the terms wh ... read more

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Readers of Lovatts puzzle magazines often send in funny misprints from church bulletins. I suspect they’re written at the last minute. Maybe the parish priest or vicar is preparing ... read more

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I'm making a creme for my souffle, my coffee's in the cafetiere, the pate comes from the cafe, the decor of which betokens an elite chateau ambience. While the attache has written a communique in detail, with detachment far from mediocre, I've made a flambe of a kepi and epee, just fo ... read more

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Some of the expressions we use regularly don’t seem to make any sense. We hear them being used but rarely stop to think about where they come from.
For instance, To make no bones (as in, “Waiter, I’ll have tomato soup and make no bones about it…”) mean ... read more

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But which ones?
If you're standing at dawn, or sunset, on an apparently endless plain of saltbush* and red soil, with an occasional mulga punctuating the horizon and the hemisphere above painted by the sun's oblique rays, your emotional response to the scene will always be your ow ... read more

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Have you noticed how often clichés creep into conversation? Consider 'at the end of the day' which means roughly the same as 'when all's said and done' or 'considering all the facts'. In other words, it doesn't really mean very much at all, like 'actuall ... read more

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There are probably more quotes about love than any other topic, and why not, when love is what makes the world go round?

With St Valentine’s Day this week, there’s no better time to read what famous people have said about love:

It’s easy to halve the ... read more

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Humdrum, run-of-the-mill, even bog-standard, 'ordinary' is one of those words we use all the time without thinking.
Of course, 'ordinary' once also meant a fixed menu or the establishment which provided it. And, astonishingly, a penny-farthing bicycle was once referred to ... read more

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Hello!

The waltz is considered by young people nowadays to be old-fashioned, but did you know it was once known as 'The Forbidden Dance'?

In the 18th century, dancing was very much a communal activity. Dancers didn’t just dance with a partner, but in two lines, ... read more

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My name is Jessica and I’m a chronic, shameless list-maker. I make lists every single day for all sorts of things: the grocery shopping, the daily ‘to-dos’, work projects, personal projects, movies I want to see, books I want to read, ideas for gifts, ideas for holidays, menu pl ... read more

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Yes, one should never make New Year's resolutions, they're always the first to be broken. Nonetheless, to mark the beginning of another stage in the progress (or, for the pedants, regression) of our language, I'm determined to try.
 
1. I will not flinch when someone de ... read more

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Igor Stravinsky wrote the ballet The Firebird and it was first produced in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes on June 25, 1910, exactly as far from Christmas Day as possible. And, indeed, if you are a traditionalist, Tchaikovsky's ballet, The Nutcracker, is the one for ... read more

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