What's in a word?

What's in a word? "A rose by any other name still smells as sweet".
But a rose, apart from the flower can mean a decorative fitting on a ceiling, often in plaster or plastic, and occasionally to which a light fitting can be attached, and of course light can be described as the radiation of energy from a heated source, as well as being something of a minor weight. Minor is also a child, miner is an underground worker, minah is a talkative bird. And speaking of takative birds I used to know a girl from the East End who never stopped chattering. But back to roses, and this girl was partial to them, but of the flowering variety rather than the type used to distribute water from a shower head. These and many more oddities of the English language including homonyms, homophones, homographs, chinese whispers, spoonerisms and malapropisms abound in www.tunstillsdislexicon.com

John Tunstill

www.tunstillsdislexicon.com

Blair, Bush and Berlusconi have very little to do with John Tunstill, or his Dislexicon. However they could be referred to as the three “B”s. This terminology, “B” is an initial letter used in place of an oath or swearword, used in polite company, a stupid, or daft “B” is a stupid or daft bugger, a foolish person rather than an electronic eavesdropper; and is an eavesdropper some mindless “B” of a builder who has dropped a piece of guttering?

“B”, can also be used for the pejorative “bloody”, a reference not to how some carnivores eat their steak, but the medieval “By my Lady”, corrupted to bloody by us Anglo-Saxons. The Italians still say “Ma Donna”, my Lady.

And talking of eating steak, was Joan of Arc tied to one piece of meat or a stout pole, a stake? And talking of poles, do the come from trees or Poland?

Clark, the incumbent minister who has just released hoards of near-do-wells onto the unsuspection British electorate, could be described as a “C”, which is far too rude for us to discuss here, however, the term Burk, which is rhyming slang for Berkley Hunt, might just give a clue as to what “C” stands for. If you can’t work it out I’ll send you the answer in a plain brown wrapper.

And as for that other wally, John Two Jags Preston, well, we all know what the letter “P” stands for. He really has been taking the ”P” out of the British public.

Still the local elections tomorrow will put everything to rights, won’t it, those nice Conservatives wouldn’t behave that way would they. Would they? And as for the Liberals, never a breath of scandle, well, at least for the last fortnight.