Wordwizard

He is her HALF-BROTHER. A full brother would have both parents the same. A stepbrother would have no blood ties, being the son of her mother's husband (Your wife's stepfather’s son).

I have a horrible feeling that we are trying to find an explanation for something that is no more than an expression. It has slipped into the language via usage, but was probably started by a bloke in a pub saying it when he couldn't think of the proper word, and then copied by the chap he was talki...

Nicholas, As far as I am aware this is pure slang, “Are you drunk? I’ll put that down to you drinking three bottles of wine”. We'll see if the English division agree.

I have not been able to find any references to AFROCENTRICITY prior to Dr Asante (who seems to claim that he coined the word) in 1980, and after that his book of that name in 1988. But I admit that I have only spent a couple of lunch hours on it.

Somewhere in the middle of quack, gobble, and cock-a-doddle-do I would think.

I'm no expert in American English, but I always took it as driving cattle. I understand that a cow puncher is also a cow poke. As one can poke someone in the eye with a punch it always seemed a strange pairing of words to me as I sat watching Roy Rogers sing his way out of trouble.

Isn't there a Brunswick in Maine?

Bob in Wales

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(also Berwick and Sedgwick)

If a bird cheeps, it’s chirping. Either is onomatopoeic.

I don’t have a Bible with me to check my memory, but as I recall the first experience of “speaking in tongues” was at Pentecost, when the Disciples started preaching, and everyone present heard them speak in their own language. This seems to have been turned around into someone shouting gobbledegook...

I would not say that “British uses the ‘s’ and American does not”, and I am not sure that I agree about not actually reaching the opera house either. Yes in your example, you do not reach it, but you would not with “Head towards the opera house and turn left when you reach the town hall” either. Tha...

Welsh dungarees were only visible on pregnant ladies in the '70's. They have now, thankfully, gone the way of flares and platform soles.

If you don't answer our previous letter, we will get Bush to telephone you.

Right, many thanks, you seem to have BOSS sorted, and I, and my protégée, are very grateful indeed. However, this BIGHEAD business now has me extremely interested. The expression, meaning “a person with too much ego” is in every day use in the UK. But there is quite literally nothing else in the exe...

CONFIRM looks like a phonetic spelling to me, although Phil may just have something with his Northern Ireland question, but wouldn't that be CON FURIM? Any Irish people out there reading this?

Can you please help me with my homework? OK, I left school in 1964, but I got lumbered with helping a young girl with her's. The object was to spot words in a paragraph that had been originally used in America, and had now been absorbed into UK English. Seven of the nine were easy, and by a process ...