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The Most Popular Posts of the Inky Fool
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This post has already gone up twice; but, as it's the one on which I worked hardest, and as this blog is always gaining and losing adh... -
Just a brief post as I'm running round the country giving talks (Booka Books in Oswestry tonight). I met a German-speaking lady in Edin...
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Because of all the attention this post is getting, I ought to point out that I was not intending to disclose some outrageous Orwellian con...
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I've been staying in the flat of an American friend and found amongst his books an American-English dictionary . It is a slim volume, a... -
A poop-noddy is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as: Sexual intercourse (rare) I don't know about you, dear reader, but I... -
Here is the updated list of the fifty most quoted lines of poetry on the internet, including all the readers' suggestions. We started ... -
If I wish to do an impression of a Chinese chap, I will not allow myself to be hampered by the fact that I don't speak a word of Mandar... -
Pluto was the god of the underworld. He was also the god of wealth. That is why we have plutocracy (government by the wealthy), plutocrats ... -
Back when I was writing The Horologicon , there was one word that I desperately wanted to include. But I couldn't because I didn't ...
Yaffle and the mice frightened the pee out of me as a child. When I was a child, that is.
ReplyDeleteQuote: "...yaffle is, or was, a Kentish dialect term for the Green Woodpecker. "
ReplyDeleteAnd not only in Kent; Yaffle is what we call him in Sussex.
Yaffler is what Green Woodies are called in most English counties 'yaffle' is what they do....
ReplyDeleteLaurie -
Ah yes - I know this from reading Barbara Willard's wonderful Mantlemass series - historical fiction for children, beautifully written. I think it's first mentioned in 'The Lark and the Laurel'.
ReplyDelete