816-1: Feedback, Notes and Comments

Jan van den Berg followed up my item on according to Cocker: “in Dutch we have a similar expression: volgens Bartjens (‘according to Bartjens’). Willem Bartjens was a schoolmaster who wrote a book on arithmetic in 1604. Its last edition appeared in 1839.”

Many subscribers commented on the quotation that I attached to the article on prestidigitator last time, which included the phrase “cavort and gamble with words”. Should gamble not have been gambol? As Joel Karasik put it, “I would assume he wants to play with words, rather than put them at risk.” I copied the text from an online database, NewsBank. It probably was a misprint, but I’ve been unable to check the Sunday Times’s original as its site is behind a paywall.

Thanks to everybody who voted in the Love English Awards 2012 from Macmillan Dictionary. World Wide Words finished well down the ranks, with the winner being the Hungarian English-language teaching site 5Perc Angol.