Simon Koppel

Yeah, "madonna front" is in OED.

"Madonna front, a postiche [piece of false hair worn as an adornment] for women in which the hair is parted in the centre and worn straight, or nearly straight.
J. Stevens Cox, Illustrated Dictionary of Hairdressing & Wigmaking 93/2"

Not completely impossible, but the sentence is all about personal appearance making "a lady of a certain age" look younger than she is, so I don't see how that would fit.

No it isn't, and so I can't quite work out if they're typos or intended to be representing some form of lower-class pronunciation. The only other one I've seen nearby in the text is "edication" which definitely seems to representing the speaker's pronunciation.

The OED would love details on this - their earliest currently attested use of "scrutoire" (in any spelling) is 1665. pages.oup.com/ol/cus/16461...

Extract from Lady Singleton: Or the world as it was, by Thomas Medwin, 1843. Relevant quotation reads: "By the aid, however, of a pair of rattlers, a madonna front, mearly parted to resemble her real scalp, and not a little ronge, she contrived to pass off for some years younger then she was."

@misterslang.bsky.social Have you come across "pair of rattlers"? In context it looks like it might be false teeth, but I've not found any other instances. books.google.co.uk/books?id=B8f...

Foundation for a New Consciousness Guided by Hermes' art, Caris finds the path to a higher consciousness, one grounded in a holistic and alchemical matrix that encourages the growth of a healthy mind. All the arts--including music, art...

Another one here from 1987. It's discussing Roger Zelazny's "Nine Princes in Amber" from 1970, but not a direct quote so I doubt that uses the term. books.google.co.uk/books?id=PY9...

COLOURSCAPE: An ottava rima in iambic pentameter, intersected by a sonnet in iambic monometer — such that the third foot of each line of the ottava rima belongs also to the sonnet.

Somebody shook the tree just a little too hard

An image of Orkney library with blue sky overhead and a shiny concrete ball in front

We popped by a couple of days ago and your balls were glowing.

Not wholly from a linguistics angle, but @babynames.bsky.social is probably your go-to woman for this.

Very nice. By the way, do you follow @anthonyetherin.bsky.social, the doyen of palindromes and other wordplay poetry?

The favourite line I ever read on a CV was:

Employer: The Replacements (covers band)

Job title: Bass guitarist

Main aspects of role: Rockin' out hard and slappin' da bass

New York Theatre Critics' Reviews "Theatre reviews is a complete guide and record of the New York stage, reprinted from New York sun, New York times, New York herald tribune, New York post, New York daily news, New York world telegram...

Pretty sure this is an antedating for "ditziness". It's always hard to be sure just from a Google Books snapshot, but the musical Going Up, which this relates to, had a 1976 revival, which fits New York Theatre Critics' Reviews Vol. 37. books.google.co.uk/books?id=tc8...

FILM NOIR (Palindrome)

Prepare trope résumé:

Mad, arid antihero.

Man in a motel,
at a femme fatale,
to man in a more hit nadir.

A dame,
muse,
reporter —
a perp.

We'll be there in two weeks' time, so if you can manage to keep the light for a while we'd appreciate it.

And sudoku

SUMMER SOLSTICE AT STONEHENGE (Palindrome)

Sun!
In my halo,
open,
I mull its altar: All.

I plait its lost light.
I lag, emanating:
I lay a ray, align.

I tan a megalith gilt.

Solstitial pillar, at last illumine —
pool a hymn in us.

How did your MP vote on the assisted dying bill? MPs have voted to pass a bill at third reading allowing some terminally ill people in England and Wales to get medical help in ending their lives. The bill now goes to the Lords. Find out how every MP...

There are many things you can rightly blame the Labour Party for, but this was genuinely bipartisan. 160 Labour MPs voted against. Every party apart from the Greens was split. www.theguardian.com/society/ng-i...

Oh, hang on, are they the Big 5 African mammals?

What's the logic? I get that the first word is Y as the only vowel. I thought the second word was alternating between AE as vowels and IO as vowels but clearly not.

Dry camel?

Paging @themerl.bsky.social - someone's trying to usurp your rightful spot as conveyors of farming-based social media content!

Emit a tale woven one vowel at a time.

#palindrome

I know this isn't the point, but you haven't been watching much Netflix recently if you think it's "expertly sound mixed".

(To head off the inevitable comments: yes, I do know how to adjust my TV; no, I don't just need better speakers; yes, I have had my hearing checked recently).

What's your sign?

If you're going to call someone out for their use of language, you should really make sure you know the difference between an adjective and a noun.

Randomly, door-to-door. I didn't know it was his house until he opened it.

I tried to sign Eddie "the Eagle" Edwards up for a direct debit to the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust.

Where's that from?! (That reminds me, I need to clean up the "Counties" table in the database I manage!)