Christine Lovatt’s Hello Column
Christine’s Hello column appears monthly in Lovatts BIG Crossword magazine
Behind The Stage Name
The stage names of famous people, which we use in our crosswords, are often not the names our stars were born with. There are many reasons why their original names are not used. In Stewart Granger’s case, his birth name was James Stewart, which was already being used by that other fine actor. Singer [more…]
Rhyme Without Reason
I’ve said before that if you grew up speaking English you are one of the lucky ones, because it’s a mighty difficult language to learn as a second language. Trying to get the pronunciation right is a nightmare for most foreign learners.
All the more surprising, then, that it was a Dutch writer who composed [more…]
Behind the Words
Sometimes a word comes your way which makes you realise that there’s a whole different world of activity out there that you never dreamed of.
I saw the word tribology recently, made a note of it as I always do with a new word, and looked it up. It looks like the perfect word for [more…]
Words on Paper
Before paper was invented, information was recorded on various surfaces such as clay tablets, papyrus rolls, stone, bamboo or wood block. Parchment was made from the untanned skins of sheep and goats, vellum from calfskin.
Paper was invented in China around the first century AD by Chinese court official Cai Lun, who made his paper [more…]
Heroes & Highwaymen
You’ll meet some very interesting but deadly characters within the clues of our crosswords. For instance, the answer to the clue ‘Legendary Swiss archer’ is William Tell.
While there is no definitive evidence that he ever existed, some accounts attest that this folk hero was real and lived with his family in a Swiss village [more…]
Mind and Manners
Almost the first words we teach our children when they are learning to talk is please and thank you – “Say the magic word!” These words are so basic to our lifestyle we couldn’t imagine not using them regularly. The English word please is short for ‘if it pleases you to do this’, similar [more…]
Family Ties
Words are like us, they have families. Etymologists hunt down the DNA of our vocabulary, so that we can find out their ancient ancestors from all around the world and we learn that we end up with words that have changed both spelling and meaning over the years but still retain similarities.
Words that sound [more…]
The Art of Celebration
Thousands of years ago, people in Egypt used a dark powder as an eye cosmetic. This powder was made up of substances such as crushed antimony, burnt almonds, lead, oxidised copper, ochre, ash and malachite and was called kohl, from the Arabic al-kuhl, ‘al’ being ‘the’ in Arabic. In fact there are several words [more…]
Uniquely You
One of the occupational hazards of this job is that I’m constantly flicking through the dictionary, on a mission to find something, only to get waylaid by fascinating words and meanings.
Just now, at the risk of sounding utterly self-absorbed, I looked up the nearest word to my name Christine. Christingle is a Christian service [more…]