Twelve hundred words for Drunk

Happy New Year from all the Dabblers. To get you in the mood for tonight's celebrations, here's Mr Slang's very first dabble from the archives, all about being drunk... If I do a rough count of the main themes that inform my recently published Green’s Dictionary of Slang, I find – ... Read More...

Last Christmas Forever

In which Gaw writes in praise of a song you're heartily sick of by now... At this stage of the proceedings to ask you to pay some attention to a Christmas song is about as palatable a proposition as asking you to polish off another box of sickly chocs. However, I ... Read More...

Christmas in the Left-wing Style

Frank Key recalls a cosy memory of a 1980s Christmas on the political hard Left... 1983 was, for me, a memorable year for Christmas crackers. I was young, newly-married, and an earnest and idealistic leftie. Being the armchair revolutionary type, I had not actually joined any of the various socialist or ... Read More...

R. S. Thomas on Christmas

Despite his reputation as the World's Grumpiest Poet, R.S. Thomas wrote a number of lovely, short Christmas poems. Our resident Dabbler Verse expert Stephen Pentz offers a compendium... The word that comes to mind when I think of R. S. Thomas is fierce. However, having said that, I feel that I ... Read More...

Fossil Words

Much ado about nothing as we bandy about some fossil words in today's Wikiworm, unearthed from the weirder side of Wikipedia. A fossil word is a word that is generally obsolete but remains in currency because it is contained within an idiom still in use. Fossil status can also occur for word senses and for phrases. An example for a word sense is ... Read More...

Merry Christmas from The Dabblers!

Merry Christmas to all our readers! In lieu of a card, here are some Christmas memories from the Dabbler Editorial staff, plus some lovely music... Gaw - Arguments About War Some of my fondest Christmas memories are of the arguments (and I don’t mean rows). There was a golden period for arguing: two ... Read More...

The Christmas Ghost Story

Professor Nick Groom explains the English tradition of the Christmas Eve ghost story... The nights are long and dark, the wind is bitter chill, the leafless trees are rimed with ice: winter has arrived with a sudden ferocity. What better than to lock the doors, curl up beside a log fire, ... Read More...

Grey Fox, Men’s Style Blogger

Since 2011 David Evans, AKA Grey Fox, has been building up a sizeable online following with his blog,  covering the somewhat overlooked world of style for the over 40's gentleman. Regularly appearing in the UK press and flying the flag for british made products, we caught up with him to find out more about ... Read More...