Dent's Modern Tribes: The Secret Languages of Britain

the American humorist Erma Bombeck, who once professed: ‘I do not participate in any sport with ambulances at the bottom of the hill.’

a bobby (another nickname, based on the name of Sir Robert Peel, the nineteenth-century Home Secretary who created the Metropolitan Police)

The trouble with words is you never know whose mouth they’ve been in. Dennis Potter

her exposé of the hidden rules of social behaviour, Watching the English, Kate Fox examines the social rules that are particular to all drinking places.

We may be hungrily embracing novelty in technology, but through language we are clinging on to the permanence of the past.

The language of coffee belongs to Italy.

‘It’s mind over matter; we don’t mind and you don’t matter.’

The caption to an article may contain a kicker – a two-word phrase, usually a laboured pun – following a colon and the actual caption, while sidebars and pull quotes are displayed to draw the eye. Collectively, these things are known as a story’s furniture.

‘99’: the pub; originating from the fact that there are ninety-eight practice rooms at the Royal College of Music.