Aretha’s recent death got us all listening to her records again. The great Respect features “sock it to me”, presumably including an exclamation mark, but I’m not sure as this was a specifically U.S. phrase and I don’t presume to know all its nuances. Whatever coolness it once had was, I’m guessing, torpedoed by the disgraced Nixon picking it up and using it. Long gone now anyway, the phrase and everyone involved.

Now there are a lot of phrases we take for granted, they’re fashionable, but do they add anything? Just read a long and thoughtful reader’s letter to a football website and everything was fine until the chap added, as his parting shot, “just sayin”. What does this even mean? That he’s taking less or no responsibility for what he’s just written? That we shouldn’t blame him for whatever thoughts might ensue as a result of his words? That he wants to be loved? Maybe someone of the Massive can fill us in here.

So, former phrases, present phrases – I’ll add one more category: phrases that need to go now! Stop it, will you? I’m thinking here of “spitting the dummy”, so ubiquitous that the player was » Continue Reading.