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
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 similar sometimes seem to come from different [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 in the English language starting with ‘al’ [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 for children, held shortly before Christmas, in [more…]
What’s In A Name?
It is a glorious thing, apparently, to have something named after you or for your name to become a word.
Many a royal personage has an eponymous country. The Philippines is named after King Philip II of Spain and Mauritius is named after Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange. Explorers such as Amerigo Vespucci (America), Capt James Cook (Cook Islands) and Christopher [more…]
Words Jump Off The Page
Some of our more colourful vocabulary comes straight from the pages of fiction. We can thank prolific author Charles Dickens for introducing in his novels the following words, which are still in common use: butterfingers, someone who drops things; abuzz, alive with noise and activity; the creeps, a shiver of horror; devil-may-care, of a cheerfully reckless attitude; flummox, to greatly bewilder [more…]
Keeping It Fresh
Anyone who was a child in the 50s might remember a time before fridges in the home. It must be hard for younger people to imagine not having a fridge. We had a meat safe, which was used for milk as well. I remember my mother walked to the local village every day to buy food for that evening, as most [more…]