Welcome to my Desk, where you’ll find all sorts of items to hold your interest. Unlike my real office desk, which is cluttered with books, files, news cuttings and the remnants of my lunch, this Online Desk will be efficient and easy to navigate.
Learn some of the tricks of solving those weird cryptic crosswords on my tutorials page.
If you wonder about the origins of some of our wonderful English expressions, Words & Phrases is the place to find out more.
Read about the puzzling but positive effect Lovatts has on your health in Puzzles & your Health. We’d love to hear from you, so write a letter to Christine’s Mailbag. You might want to comment on my regular column @ Christine’s Hello.
There’s something for everyone here, so come on in!
Latest Posts
Prefixes & Suffixes
When we come across a word we don’t know, we can often work out what it means by knowing what the prefix or suffix means.
We know, without having to think about it, that the prefix un turns a positive into a negative. Happy becomes unhappy, done becomes undone. Dis means ‘the opposite of’ or ‘not’, as in disconnect or disease (the [more…]
Fast Friends
The word befriend was being used back in 1559. In all the time since, the opposite hasn’t been needed – until now. What does it say about us?
The word unfriended (meaning ‘friendless’) has been around since Shakespeare’s time and the noun unfriend (meaning ‘enemy’) since the 13th C, but when it comes to the verb ‘to remove a person from your [more…]
Ring The Changes
It’s an immutable fact, whether we like it or not, that we change as we grow older, whether for better or worse. We might become less flexible but wiser, our cooking might improve but our memory doesn’t. Our crossword-solving skills advance, of course – but sadly it gets harder to read the clues.
So it is with words. As English evolves, word [more…]
Uncover a Puzzling Picnic
It’s hard to imagine a picnic basket or alfresco spread these days without a few internationally-inspired bites tucked between the sandwiches and lemonade. Whether you’re in a park, on a beach, or simply basking in the garden, outdoor dining often invites a menu rich with borrowed words. Even if you know what these tasty items are, their linguistic roots add an [more…]
Down by the Coral
Coral reefs may be home to a spectacular array of life, but they are also teeming with mystery and meaning. Even the word coral invites curiosity: it stems from the ancient Greek korallion, itself a borrowing from older Semitic languages. Originally, it referred not just to living organisms, but to the precious, hardened skeletons that people would shape into beads and [more…]
A Positive Attitude
The English language has many words for that sparkly, spirited attitude to life, which have been adopted from various languages.
Panache was originally a French term for a tuft of feathers on a helmet and now means flamboyance.
Pizzazz, meaning glamour or vitality, is of unknown origin. Some describe it as ‘an indefinable dynamic quality’.
Brio is vivacity, from Italian, and probably came into [more…]