Grammar: Neologisms 25

Pastel-hued

New expressions, or good takes on old ones: "Oft observed, but ne'er so well expressed." Clichés are not "colour", they are as exciting as an old sofa that's losing its stuffing. Use your imagination.

New to me: obnubilate (cover with clouds); assibilation (T becomes S)

Pastel-hued euphemisms, genteelisms: Like “passed away” or “gender-affirming healthcare”.

Monday-morning quarterback: wise after the event

completely asinine on many levels

with the detached air of a scientist viewing guineapigs

bien-pensantery

I’m not bitter, don’t put it in the paper that I’m bitter! (Says something bitter.)

Of any attempt to slow climate change: The WEF wants to use it to steal our platelets.

classic deconstructionist stylistic filler text (on Judith Butler)

sludge trudge: mudlarking

bringing a spoon to a knife fight

Talk left but walk right.

progressive pieties, dulcet psychobabble (atlantic.com in a piece on polyamory)

hair-on-fire panic (Simon Schama, 2024)

social justice worrier

Fox News haircut

This is the lean forward moment. (Says a man trying to sell a diamond necklace.)


I wasn’t telling what they were selling: We weren’t on the same page or singing from the same hymn sheet.

Deinococcus radiodurans is a type of bacteria that is resistant to radiation doses that could kill a human being, can withstand acid, dehydration and cold, and is able to survive outside of the International Space Station for three years. Scientists call it Conan the Bacterium. (@qikipedia)

Preaching on Sunday, so have been carefully grinding the serial numbers off a P.G. Wodehouse joke and swapping in a couple of moving parts from Ælfric of Eynsham. (@jembloomfield)

This morning’s Today prog interview with Kim Leadbeater is depressing. She brushes away carefully expressed concerns and offers only peppy enthusiasm and emotional mood music. (@JonnyWorst. Leadbetter is the proponent of the assisted dying bill.)

Weird, dehumanised management speak. (Fergus Butler-Gallie on Paula Vennells)

The @DWPgovuk computers are so ancient they have to be wound up every Monday. (Paul Lewis)

curated peppy homilies (Audrey Luwig re LinkedIn)

To quote the beloved Molly Ivins, if her IQ drops any lower, we'll have to water her twice a day. (@AlessandraAster)

These people are one chromosome short of being a potato. (@AlexTaylorNews)

Wow, if the average IQ of these people were a speed limit we'd be passing them on foot. (@sourpatchlyds)

If you believe that, your brain may be stuck in the “off” position. (@WildfireWhisper)

He had the IQ of a house plant. (Bill Pronzini)

vice-signalling (Pedr Ap Robat. Example: Defund the RNLI – they’re just a taxi service for illegal immigrants! You need to let your cohort know that you have all the right [wrong] opinions. Move on to cruelty to children and make it clear you're in favour.)

On sex and gender Kemi Badenoch’s position is not out of step with the public and she may be able to embarrass Starmer, who has shown bewildering levels of prevarication on whether biological sex matters when it comes to single-sex services, sports and spaces. (Sonia Sodha)

We’re Icarus and our wings are beginning to melt. (@rustbeltenjoyer on American “planning”)

Adapted, seemingly in the dark with a shovel, from Amy Liptrot’s prizewinning memoir. (Kevin Maher, Times on The Outrun)

Budget Day coverage is so over the top. Jeremy Hunt is going to make a speech, not emerge from a chrysalis. (@JoanneLimburg)

I realise now that medical transition was sold to me as a hardware fix for software issues. (@HazelAppleyard_)

The guff about “a consent-based process” is eyewash of course. (Brynley Heaven on a proposed nuclear waste dump site)

Please remember that there is no morally coherent difference between the animals you love and the animals into whom you stick a fork. (@garylfrancione)

"Poshlost" – an untranslatable Russian word that means: "petty evil or self-satisfied vulgarity". Vladimir Nabakov described it as "Corny trash, vulgar clichés, Philistinism, imitations of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic". It is a desire to drag all things down. (@MrEwanMorrison)

The lenses in your retrospectoscope need to go back to specsavers; they have acquired a strange rose-coloured hue. (Rowley Cottingham)

Firms owe the council millions in unpaid business rates, but as we have tried to pursue them we have come up against patsy directors registered on Companies House, and phoenixing, where firms have shut to re-open under a new name in the same property but are able to avoid their business rates liability. (Report on Oxford Street and American Candy stores).

Stunning how stupid this Tory governmentt is. Unprecedented, historic. Labour at their silliest were never this regularly, rake-steppingly ridiculous. (@stephen_collins)

Lightgassing: When one person agrees with another person's false beliefs in order to be supportive. (@omni_american)

More here, and links to the rest.