lucy mangan

From ‘nanwar’ to ‘gastrique’ Lucy Mangan takes a look at some of your hilarious word submissions

27th Apr 2016

Well, this week’s submissions have been a series of shocks and misdirections and no mistake, yer little monkeys! First was “nanwar” which was submitted, unusually, by the good people manning BBCStore’s Twitter account. For a few terrible moments I thought it was an announcement for a new show. “Nanwars!… Read More

Lucy Mangan on the your latest word submissions

14th Apr 2016

Well, goodness me, what have we here? First, from new contributor patrick_gooch comes “amalgamerge”, a kind of tautologous portmanteau (tautomanteau? LET’S MAKE IT HAPPEN, PEOPLE) apparently meaning “to amalgamate slowly and stealthily”, though I’m not quite sure where the slowness – etymologically speaking – comes from. And then,… Read More

Lucy Mangan takes a look at your recent word submissions before Easter hits

24th Mar 2016

How have we left it this far into the American president-picking process to enjoy the fact that the archaic English word “trumpery” means “nonsense; something without use or value”, “showy and worthless” or any combination of the above. The only way it could be improved would be if someone went… Read More

It’s World Book Day and Lucy Mangan looks at some really ‘conooper’ word submissions from Moville Community College

3rd Mar 2016

In celebration of World Book Day we have a special delivery today, from the students at Moville Community College in Donegal. Kay Ward and her students were looking at poetic techniques in class and talking about why poets use certain words instead of others and even sometimes make them up. Read More

What’s all the snoise about? Lucy Mangan looks at some of your recent word submissions

29th Feb 2016

Forgive me if I am not quite myself at the moment. I am heavily involved in a friend’s ‘wedmin’. She introduced me to the word and consequently the plethora of miseries it covers. It’s short for ‘wedding administration’, regarding which there are no other abbreviations, short cuts, abridgement, truncations, condensations,… Read More

Are you ‘mabobing’? Read Lucy Mangan’s new article to find out.

12th Feb 2016

I am mabobing as I type this, according to CorrinFoley – making random, fidgety movements (banging my foot against the chair, rapping my fingers on the keys between sentences). It’s because I have so many decisions to make in this column, the first of… Read More

‘Drynuary’ is nearly over, so what’s next on the word list? Here’s Lucy Mangan with your update…

29th Jan 2016

How are you? Have you survived Dry January? Or ‘Drynuary’, as submitted by Tommy, which if we’d thought of it earlier could have saved us all vital nanoseconds over the last four weeks. When you consider how boring all conversations about dry January are, a nanosecond saved on such discussion… Read More

Lucy Mangan looks at your first word submissions of 2016

8th Jan 2016

Happy New Year to you all! I trust you all had a lovely break and are now enjoying unparalleled success with your chosen resolutions. I am not. But in a crazy twist no one saw coming, I have conceived another one which renders any guilt or fretting about this impossible. Read More

Lucy Mangan’s ‘awesomesauce’ take on your new word submissions

20th Nov 2015

A bumper crop of delights this week, thank you, and from a wealth of new contributors as well as doughty old timers! Thank you, everyone – it feels like Christmas has come early. Welcome to Willow, first of all, a newcomer who gives us “awesomesauce”, which I love almost as… Read More