German has always felt the language that I come back to. It's given a very hard time by most people for being ugly and guttural. In fact, it's one of the most melodic, lyrical languages around. And German literature is amazing. It's just a treasury for me.
Probably my favourite winter-word of all. Apricity is the warmth of the sun on a chilly day.
There is an art to eavesdropping, but I think to some extent we are all guilty of picking up those little odds and ends that can be quite intriguing if you analyse them.
As dialect began to be collected in the late 19th century, such words as Yorkshire's 'gobslotch' emerged, revealing the burgeoning association between gluttony and stupidity.
Language is essentially tribal, so jargon can actually be a really good thing because it unites people.
I'm an Arsenal fan and an even bigger Arsene fan.
I work with the Oxford Dictionary databases, which sounds really boring, but they're actually fascinating as they show you how current words are being used.
I really was the nerd in the car that read vocabulary books. If we were going on day trips, I would quite like to have just stayed in the car with my German and French vocab books. It's embarrassing to admit to it now.
Footballers, managers, pundits and fans make up possibly the biggest tribe of them all, especially in this country. Whatever is said by pundits is echoed across sofas and in pubs all over the nation.
New words can spread like wildfire thanks to social media - you only have to look at 'mansplaining' and 'milkshake duck' to see language evolution at work - so why not old ones too?
Glogg is a Scandinavian mulled wine, sweetened with honey, almonds, raisins and spices. Its name suits its purpose so beautifully.
New words travel from one variety of English to another and at a rapidly increasing rate, thanks to the way language is exchanged today over e-mail, chat rooms, TV, etc.
I don't intentionally eavesdrop. I'm not looking for salacious gossip, I'm just looking for vocabulary items.
The earliest dictionaries were collections of criminal slang, swapped amongst ne'er-do-wells as a means of evading the authorities or indeed any outsider who might threaten the trade.
Linguistic supersizing is on the increase, and it may show the influence of advertising-speak and corporate jargon on language, in which everything needs to be hyped to get noticed. It means that some of our greatest words are losing their power.
For the Anglo-Saxons, meat was the main meal of the day, which revolved around 'before-meat' and 'after-meat.' But it has ended up as the metaphor for the most basic: 'meat and potatoes' is as far from sassy - from 'sauce' - as you can get.
In the earliest days, make-up and moralising were intertwined. The 'cosmetic slops and washes' of the 17th and 18th centuries aimed to smooth complexions and revive a woman's 'bloom' - but their critics were never far behind.
We all know that little words or phrases can mean a lot, yet so few of us know just what to say. Phrases, such as 'chin up,' or 'it could be worse,' usually have the opposite effect; they feel tired and impersonal, even dismissive.
In South Korea, some 20 million people share just five surnames. Every one of Denmark's top 20 surnames ends in '-sen,' meaning 'son of,' a pattern that is replicated across Scandinavia. British surnames have never favoured such neatness, and we can be grateful for that.
No one expects the tone of an election to be mild-mannered, least of all a presidential one.
