Audrey Daybook
Brimming with thought-provoking content, inspiring stories and challenging puzzles, it’s a periodical for the sharp-minded modern woman. It’s time for you to discover that there’s nothing quite like Audrey.Hello – BIG February 2016
If you’ve ever played the game of trying to talk on a subject for two minutes without saying um or er, you will realise just how much a part of our everyday speech is the interjection.
The um, er variety are called ‘filled pauses’ giving the speaker time to think of the right words. It’s [more…]
Hello – BIG January 2016
Life in the past was based in the countryside far more than it is today and country people came in for a roasting, wordwise.
The word villa meant ‘country house’ or ‘farm’ and gave rise to village, villein ‘feudal peasant’ and villain. Villain now means the bad guy in a story, a criminal or [more…]
Hello – BIG December 2015
It’s that time again, when here at Lovatts we take a break from our synonyms and antonyms, clues and conundrums, to simply say Happy Christmas to all our puzzlers. We hope you all have a peaceful break in the true spirit of the season.
It’s interesting that although it’s a Christian celebration to remember the [more…]
Hello – BIG November 2015
Shakespeare was the first to use beetle as a verb. In Hamlet he writes, “the cliff that beetles o’er his base into the sea”. Here beetles means that it hangs over – like a shaggy eyebrow?
Beetle-browed means having shaggy overhanging eyebrows, which is odd considering that
beetles don’t have eyebrows but big horns.
To beetle about [more…]
Hello – BIG August 2015
French lawyer and gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote in 1825 “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are”. Or as we say nowadays – we are what we eat.
Maybe that is why we have always used food to describe the various aspects of our lives.
Your head was once referred [more…]
Hello – BIG June 2015
As I write this column, the person who has been the holder of more nobility titles than anyone in the world has died today. At 88, she was also one of Europe’s wealthiest aristocrats.
Maria del Rosario Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart y de Silva was born in 1926, in the Liria Palace, Madrid, only daughter of [more…]
