I know it well.

It does, you just can't see it.

I'd love to come over some time.

Dærick's beautiful (and occasionally hilarious) artwork was essential.

We shall see...

Rob on stage at the Bloomsbury Theatre

Rob standing before a massive slide saying "English is silly"

A view of Rob on stage from the balcony, with various misspellings of necessarily on the wall behind him.

Rob on stage with an unusual new alphabet behind him.

The first ever RobWords Live shows were an absolute blast. Thank you so much if you were among the hundreds of word nerds who made me feel so welcome in London.

Thank you so much for coming!

Thank you so much, Dærick. Ivar was particularly popular. It was such a pleasure working with you.

Well, you can now be satisfied it has been deleted from the language! Thank you so much for coming.

"Self-combust for City Centre"

It isn't pronounced the same as Mary, right? More like Marilyn, perhaps?

I covered the etymology of awkward in my newsletter recently. "Awk" meant off. Something "awkward" was in the wrong direction. From that you get the idea of something being ill-fitting, or "not fitting in". Someone being stubborn is not going in the direction you want them to.

I prefer your explanation, though

Thanks for watching it!

"What say you" is the normal (Germanic) formulation before the "meaningless do" (periphrastic do) creeps in, turning it into "What do you say?" Shakespeare used both, so that gives you an idea of when that happens.

I think "let nothing you dismay" is just to make the line rhyme with "day"...

New: Football Clichés: Football vs The Dictionary: Susie Dent on bus-parking & bouncebackability The pod welcomes Susie Dent, the queen of Countdown's dictionary corner, to examine the language of football in the sort of detail we've always dreamed of.Susie takes us through the ironic death of...

I doubt I'll find anything better suited to my ears than @susiedentwords.bsky.social on @footballcliches.bsky.social

Click below to enjoy a bit of both.
pod.fo/e/3c0889

Thanks, Doc!

This is why I only ever do Bonnie Tyler.

Can't fault it. Glorious.

Cheers, James

Our pleasure, Pete.

My next YouTube video is already on there, a couple of days in advance.

As of today, RobWords is now on the streaming platform Nebula!

Subscribers can access ad-free versions of my videos and other goodies, as well as those of hundreds of other creators.

My fancy link gives a big old discount, too: go.nebula.tv/robwords

Your brain is on another level.

Glad my discomfort is "entertaining".

Two very sensible pearls of wisdom, I reckon!

"Welshed" would never have sprung to mind, but you're absolutely right.

Slurs and taboo words explained YouTube video by Words Unravelled

We have the linguistic titan that is John McWhorter on Words Unravelled this week.

We discussed profanities, slurs and taboos.

Don't be a $^£%#! Give it a watch:
youtu.be/6JYqGa_-UZE

I researched this after visiting Iceland. "Thing" went from being the meeting to the topic of the meeting, and from there became much vaguer. Exactly the same transfer happened in the Romance languages with Latin "causa" (case/cause) becoming French "chose", Spanish "cosa" etc. meaning "thing".

I forgot to mention Trader Joe's!