The English language is wonderfully nuanced, with some words having a very narrow and specific meaning. ‘Scrumping’ isn’t just stealing fruit; it’s stealing apples. ‘Punnet’ is a container, but only for soft fruit. We have a word - ‘defenstration’ - to describe falling, or being pushed, out of a window. ‘Tines’ have one meaning only: the prongs of a fork. ‘Genuflection’ is kneeling. An ‘embrasure’ is a refuge for pedestrians on a bridge.
We also have some odd gaps in the language, as exemplified by a DIY testing kit for bowel cancer, which arrived by post yesterday. According to the instructions, you take the little stick and drag it across the… well, what? We have ‘faeces’, ‘shit’, ’turd’, ‘stool’ and ‘excrement’… but the writer of the instruction booklet has settled on ‘poo’. Does anyone really say ‘poo’… unless they’re talking to, or about, a toddler?
Two pix licenced today: taken on the same day, and within 50 metres of each other, at River Head in Driffield...
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