I love American English, not least because a lot of it was ours to begin with. Indeed, many Americanisms can be found in the works of William Shakespeare.
The enduring image I will keep of Jane Goodall is of her emotional goodbye to a chimp she had rescued and nurtured, on the day of the animal's release.
Above all, Jane Goodall continues to teach us that, as humans, we are no more entitled to our glorious planet than the chimps she so lovingly protects.
I'm not a brazen extrovert, but I'm not as blushing or demure as people might think.
The word 'eavesdropper' originally referred to people who, under the pretence of taking in some fresh air, would stand under the 'eavesdrip' of their house - from which the collected raindrops would fall - in the hopes of catching any juicy tid-bits of information that might come their way from their neighbour's property.
According to my parents, I've always liked to tune into the conversations of others. But rather than hope for a snippet of salacious gossip, it has always been the words themselves that I wanted to understand.
What I've discovered is that from football fans to undertakers, secret agents to marble-players and politicians, we all are part of at least one tribe. By tribes, I'm talking anthropologically; these groups are determined less by genes and more by the work they do or the passions they pursue.
Booze' was once a popular term in the slang or 'cant' of the criminal underworld, which may explain its rebellious overtones today.
Bizarrely, our English word 'sturdy' may go back to the Latin turdus, thrush. Anyone described as 'sturdy' in the 1200s was wilfully reckless and possibly as immovable as a sozzled bird.
The notion of 'Queen's English' is usually applied to our pronunciation.
English has always been a mongrel tongue, snapping up words from every continent its speakers encountered.
When eyeliner was introduced in the Twenties by Max Factor, a pioneer of Hollywood film cosmetics who began selling to the public, even the word 'makeup' was a revelation.
In the 1900s, bleaching lotions and skin-lighteners were a female imperative no matter what her colour, often carrying suggestive names like 'Fair-Plex Ointment' and 'Black-No-More.' The tiniest touch of rouge was allowed, but only if applied with great subtlety.
We are surrounded by hundreds of 'tribes,' each speaking their own distinct slanguage of colourful words, jokes and phrases that together form an idiosyncratic phrasebook, years in the making.
The battle between server and servee is as ancient as it is well disguised, and it follows, therefore, that waiters have developed a private lingo that allows them to mock, complain, or simply entertain themselves.
Britain's fascination with its changing language is renowned.
Unlike our neighbours on the mainland of Europe, we have resisted creating an academy to legislate over proper English. We each have our linguistic bugbear, but few of us would want to freeze our mother tongue.
One of the joys of language is its constant evolution, and a lexicographer's job is both to track new words and to reassess those from the past.
The character of our language defines us, and dictionaries say as much about us as about the way we speak.
For the Anglo-Saxons, food determined a person's position in society.
