Aussie Life
Aussie life
O wad some pow’r the giftie gie us, To see oursels as ithers see us! said Robbie Burns. And nobody…
Language
There are times when I am tempted to think that English, in general terms, is richer and more colourful than…
Language
A Speccie reader has been in touch to complain about the use of the expressions ‘wind farm’ and ‘solar farm’.…
Aussie life
Off the beach of Ipanema where the tall and tanned girls go, they’ve found Brazilian sharks with cocaine in their…
Aussie life
Imagine if, instead of returning to the USA to become its third president, Thomas Jefferson had died in France on…
Language
A fellow Speccie writer asked me about what he called the ‘absurd equivalence’ being drawn between ‘anti-Semitism’ and ‘Islamophobia’. He…
Aussie life
According to Treasurer Jim Chalmers, increasing competition among supermarket giants will help deliver lower grocery prices. ‘If it is more…
Language
If you haven’t come across it before, let me introduce you to ‘linguistic engineering’. This useful expression has been around…
Aussie life
Not very long ago, the propensity of some Australians to sit around watching other people do things on screens rather…
Language
In the light of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump we need to look at this term ‘assassination’. The core…
Aussie life
I’ve just watched Senator Fatima Payman’s performative ‘I quit but not really, I’m moving to the crossbenches’ media conference. It…
Language
Angry people keep chanting ‘Free Palestine’ on our streets. They shout that ‘Palestine’ should stretch from the Jordan River to…
Aussie life
For most of China’s 1.4 billion population, 2024 has been the Year of the Dragon, which makes it, according to…
Language
I’ve been searching through the language used to describe the train wreck of a presidential debate between Joe Biden and…
Language
How are you enjoying dealing with the bureaucrats who run our lives these days? (I heard your answer, and you…
Aussie life
Being an AFL umpire does not look like a job for the thin-skinned. Given the passion of the code’s fan…
Language
My thanks to Speccie reader Ian from Cairns for suggesting that the members of the Albanese government are post turtles.…
Aussie life
I’m in a nursing home. It’s St Vincent’s, Australia’s biggest not-for-profit aged care provider, one of several in Brisbane run…
Language
A Speccie reader asks for a word that explains the obsessions of the woke around us. Looking for a single…
Aussie life
Encomium or insult, tribute or travesty; the line between portrait and caricature can be a very fine one. Readers who…
Language
This is an appeal to Speccie readers to join a modest campaign to ban the use of ‘begs the question’.…
Aussie life
As the Q&A host was telling me, the conservatives have a ‘problem with women’. Or with more election campaign zing,…
Language
Here’s one to add to your Weird Word collection: ‘empleomania’. This is a mania for holding public office. and there…
Aussie life
It is a point of principle for the residents of the smarter parts of Manhattan not to notice – and…
Language
The word ‘colonialism’ has become (at least for some people) a ‘snarl word’ – something that is always bad, and…
