Uxbridge English Dictionary

From time to time, I like to play Uxbridge English Dictionary. It’s a game from ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue’ (new series starts on Radio 4 next Monday), taking an educational look at our mother tongue.

English is a rich and varied language, but there’s often confusion between apparently similar terms. For example, a lot of people don’t know the difference between adverse and averse. But anyone who takes the trouble to look them up will discover that adverse means harmful or unfavourable, whereas averse is the less catchy bit between choruses.

But meanings are constantly changing, so here are some new definitions I’ve spotted recently:

• Abominable – practice frowned upon by all but the most aggressive of matadors
• Accomplish – one who aids and abets Sean Connery
• Admin – contribute the least
• Apollo – Roman god of chicken
• Appearing – an iPhone app that pierces your ear while you talk on it
• Balderdash – the rapid receding of a hairline
• Canada – a snake in a tin
• Category – an allegory about a cat (q.v. Allegory – a category of alley)
• Cauterise – what I did just before she looked away with disdain
• Cognac – to trick a long-haired Himalayan beast
• Dysentery – what the seeds of dissent eventually grow into
• Exist – person who is prejudiced against their former lovers
• Hackney – IRA punishment before the invention of guns
• Hammersmith – the legend of Mjöllnir, weapon of the mighty Thor
• Laxity – a rural area
• Lymph – mythical woodland seductress with a sore leg
• Mailbag – scrotum
• Phobia – not real ale
• Polymath – if Janet has two parrots and John has three parrots…
• Post-it – girl who was once fashionable, now of very little note (q.v. Exit – recently fashionable girl now on her way out)
• Psychotic – nervous twitch that makes you stab people
• Pumpkin – commit incest
• Rampart – part of a ram
• Rueful – a traffic jam in France
• Seamstress – the consequence of an over-generous lunch
• Transsubstantiation – providing evidence of one’s sex change
• Treacle – deforestation
• Unleavened – the condition of trees in autumn
• Vagrant – taxi driver’s conversation
• Watershed – outdoor water closet
• Wednesday – ‘At what hour does the sun rise?’

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