Psychobabble—mental health jargon
Psychobabble is psychological jargon used inaccurately and pretentiously that sometimes normalises unacceptable behaviour or criticises normal behaviour. It is also known as therapy-speak or pop psychology. A more specialised branch of psychobabble is neurobabble. It is the vocabulary of the consulting room that has escaped into everyday conversation—trauma, triggered, boundaries, validation, gaslighting. It turns the […]
Meeting behaviours
Australian professionals are experienced and well-educated yet put them in meetings with clear objectives, agendas to address, or problems to solve and peculiar behaviours start to manifest. The Ringelmann effect suggests that the more people in a meeting the less value they contribute. Max Ringelmann discovered in the 1880s that as more people pulled on […]
Danish and “Viking marketing”
In AD 793 the Viking Age was kicked off when Viking raiders attacked Lindisfarne, an island off the northeast coast of England, plundered its Christian monastery, killed or enslaved the monks and appropriated its religious treasures. The Vikings were undoubtedly accomplished shipbuilders, sailors and traders, but their economic model was simpler—to leverage the quality of […]
Odyssey of Homer’s words
We went to see Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey on Tuesday (11 August 2026). We were a little disappointed after the high praise from many film critics. My wife and I thought it was entertaining but a little shallow and my son, who has studied ancient history at university, gave it 5/10. Some critics have suggested […]
Augurs well
I am getting older and I am starting to worry more. I need reassurance. Will I get enough work to pay the bills? Will my wife be satisfied with my domestic duties? Will my children find fresh reasons to criticise their upbringing? As a rugby coach, will enough players turn up on Saturday? I need […]
MacGuffin—Angus MacPhail’s greatest joke
Every profession has its own language. Film-makers have some wonderfully odd terms, but none is odder than the MacGuffin—a film-making trope made famous by Alfred Hitchcock that originates from the writer, Angus MacPhail. MacPhail while a student at Cambridge University helped edit The Granta, the university’s magazine. He, with his friend Ian Dalrymple, also […]
Pshaw—I didn’t say that
One of this week’s Wordle (a popular online word gameanswers was PSHAW. It defeated everyone in my WhatsApp group, and my brother confessed he had never heard of it either (but my mother, an ex-English teacher and great reader was surprised he didn’t know). My confident explanation was that it is a “Jeeves word”. That […]
Recombobulation—pulling yourself together
Since COVID, resilience has become a buzzword for our mental health. We are encouraged to build it, strengthen it and draw upon it. Yet when life leaves us rattled, disconcerted and thrown off kilter, we need a better idea. We need “recombobulation”. To understand it, we first need to know the story of its parent, […]
Eggcorn—a mute point
There are some mistakes in English that occur because the speaker or writer is trying to make a reference they don’t understand, understandable. These are called eggcorns. The most common one you are likely to have heard is “for all intensive purposes”. It is wrong, of course. The phrase is “for all intents and purposes”. […]
Mother—our first word?
This Sunday is Mother’s Day. It will be a day of flowers, crowded cafés and, for many of us, a guilty phone call to our mothers apologising for not ringing more often. “Mother” is considered one of the oldest words in human language (along with “father”). Words for mother are remarkably similar across many languages. […]
Naturist versus naturalist
There is a nature festival in Cumbria (North England) next week that has run into a small, although highly predictable problem. There are two groups of people buying tickets. One group will be dressing up sensibly to protect themselves as they creep through the undergrowth hoping to discover birds, insects and other interesting things. The […]
Life logging
Have you noticed that when something interesting happens, people no longer watch it, they film it. The moment is recorded to be stored away for future reference. This is known as life logging. Life logging is the digital recording of daily life. Applications record, store and retrieve your digital material helped by AI. Photos of […]