Wordwizard

Many thanks.

We went for day out in the Welsh countryside today and the conversation, as often happens, got a bit silly. "Oh look! Moo cows". "There are baa lambs over there", and what have you. I, being what I am started to think, why, when we have moo cows, baa lambs, bow wows and what have you, do we have "Ge...

Either of the first two would be perfectly satisfactory, as would be the third if it had read,
"That is too severe a sentence" (without 'of').

Amazing. I only knew it as someone who spreads "news".

Many thanks both.

I am reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Well, rephrasing that, I am attempting to read The Hunchback of Notre Dame, it is hard going in English, what it is like in French will remain a mystery. . In one interminable chapter Dom Claude is visited by Gossip Coictier and Gossip Tourangeau. Not even t...

Thanks John. I didn't understand it either.
This was the Wales/England game in 1980.
It may help explain why I was baffled.

Nothing wrong with it as far as I am concerned.

I will be interested to see if anyone agrees with me that "alright" is not a word.

I have been looking for the origin of the expression, "Daylight robbery". I have read on line that it began when George III imposed the window tax, but it sounds like a backronym to me. Does anyone have any ideas?

Can I pick your brains please Wizards?

Without spending hours on the investigation, I have been trying to find a word for a toilet that is not a euphemism, and can't.

Toilet, lavatory, WC, loo, bathroom, Gents, Ladies, crapper, etc.. All euphemisms as are all the other words I have met.

It is an expression that I use often without a second thought.

Strangely enough I had come across the term before. I have a vague memory of hearing it in an American film, but please don't press me any further.

A bloke in the pub said that his doctor had told him that he had an iron deficiency. He asked the doctor how he knew and he told him that his shirts were all wrinkled.

I am afraid that I can't see any sense. Assuming that there were several people in the room, why would only one be at risk of being disturbed?