talking red

Celebrate National Poetry Day

This year’s annual National Poetry Day, the thirty-eighth, falls on Thursday 7 October. National Poetry Day (NPD) was founded in 1994 by an arts charity – the Forward Arts Foundation – and has gone from strength to strength, boosting, inter alia, sales of poetry: the graph… Read More
research yellow

Is the autumn equinox the start of a new season?

There are just a handful of astronomical events that non-specialists like me know of, and one of them will be upon us very soon: the autumn equinox. On 22 September 2021, day and night will be equal in length across the whole world. How so?… Read More

9 new words in Collins Dictionary

Here are 9 new words recently added to Collins English Dictionary online. There is a scientific bent to the latest update. Along with ‘haplogroup’, three types of ‘blot’ test – Southern, northern, and western – make an appearance. The differences in capitalization among these three are significant, as the Southern… Read More

A little bird told me… 7 animal idioms

It’s new words time at Collins Dictionary and this month we see the addition of words like fingerling, net zero and emotional support animal. This month, there were a few animal-related additions, including the delightful animal idiom to… Read More