And one which is very well covered in my new book ‘These Sort of Things’. Next!Dear Dr Wordsmith: We have recently heard a lot of talk about farmers going to the wall, which is very sad, of course, but also raises the intriguing question: which wall are they going to? Why should going to a wall suggest disaster? It is an example of what you were quoted as saying earlier – that we talk a lot without listening to ourselves. Were it not so, we would not use so many expressions that seem to have no innate meaning. Sometimes, indeed, the same expression can have opposite meanings. Engaged couples sometimes refer to their proposed wedding as “naming the day” Fair enough.

But when a married couple split up or get divorced, they also say they are “calling it a day” So a day can be the start or the finish of something Confusing or what?Dr Wordsmith writes: Well put. Though not as well put as in the chapter in my new book ‘These Sort of Things’ called Confusing or What?.Dear Dr Wordsmith: Of course, couples also refer to getting married as “tying the knot”, and I have often wondered what strange ceremony that refers to. Not so strange, however, as the ceremony of being confirmed as a bachelor. We often refer to an unmarried man as being a “confirmed bachelor”, and I wonder if indeed there is a Church of England ceremony whereby a man can be officially confirmed as a bachelor and received into a state of celibacy.Dr Wordsmith writes: No But the Catholic Church has such a ceremony It is called “receiving someone into the priesthood”.

I believe that the Catholic Church is having difficulty in recruiting enough priests these days, and it may well be that young men are not prepared for the challenge of the strenuous sexual life that being a celibate Catholic priest now seems to involve (thoroughly covered in my new mostseller ‘These Sort of Things’, or, if it isn’t, it will be in the next edition).Dr Wordsmith will be back anon Keep those queries rolling in!
More from Miles Kington. Half of Britain’s butterflies are declining in numbers, with changes in countryside land management practices mainly to blame, according to a new study believed to be the world’s most comprehensive survey of any insect group. Half of Britain’s butterflies are declining in numbers, with changes in countryside land management practices mainly to blame, according to a new study believed to be the world’s most comprehensive survey of any insect group.
Loss of specialised habitats such as coppices, grazing marshes and heathlands have sent a quarter of British species, such as the pearlbordered fritillary, into declines of more than 50 per cent, with another quarter, including such species as the green hairstreak, declining by between 20 per cent and 50 per cent. The declines have been going on for 200 years but the Millennium Atlas of Butterflies in Britain and Ireland, published yesterday by Oxford University Press, reveals that some have become sharply steeper in the past two decades.More than 10,000 peoplecontributed about 1.6 million butterfly sightings between 1995 and 1999 to provide the raw data for the new 400-page atlas, which gives detailed distribution maps for all of Britain’s 59 native species of butterfliesIt indicates that 15 species have disappeared from more than half of the places where they once were found, and eight have plunged further since the late 1970s.