Patsy Collins - Words about writing and writing about words

' Hoy !' is a call for attention, sound made to drive livestock or a way to hail a boat ... apparently. Personally I'd go fo...

My dictionary gives several complicated definitions of saline , but they all come to pretty much the same thing – has salt (or salts) in ...

If a person is froward , then they're perverse or difficult to deal with. I'll admit that I occasionally act frowardly , but I don...

You've probably come across the word incorrigible , which means a person is unable to be changed, corrected or reformed. It makes p...

Vegetal refers to plants, or anything which has the nature of plants, or is vegetative.

A gimmick is a trick or device, used to attract attention, publicity or trade. Valentine Gimmick is the title of my story in the Valenti...

Bosky means wooded or bushy. One multistemmed tree would be slightly bosk y, a dozen would be boskier and a whole forest is the boskiest ...

Thermotaxis is the regulation of heat in warm-blooded animals. When it's hot, I like to cool down in the sea. Does that make me therm...

Rebutter , surprisingly isn't something you do to bread when you consider it's not been spread with a liberal enough amount of dai...