The Saturday Briefing: Knowledge is power
IS THERE anything you are desperately yearning to know? Are there any pressing factual disputes you would like us to help resolve? This is the page where we shall do our best to answer any questions you throw at us, whatever the subject.
CAN you settle a dispute between my wife and me by telling us if Bruce Willis ever recorded the song Under The Boardwalk? JK Kenyon, Rossendale, Lancashire
WITH Bruce Willis’ successes in action movies it’s easy to forget that he was a reasonably successful singer back in the 1980s. His 1987 recording, with backing group The Temptations, of The Drifters’ song Under The Boardwalk reached number 2 in the UK Top 40.
It featured on his debut album The Return Of Bruno.
WHY is the indefinite article before hotel, horrific and historical “an” and not “a”? I have asked many people, including a university lecturer and teaching fellow of linguistics but no one can give me an answer to my question. Michele Young, by email
SUCH expressions as “an hotel” and “an historical event” have their origins in words that came into English from French where the initial “h” was silent. It was therefore natural (if a bit pretentious) to say “an hotel” or “an historical event” while dropping the “h”.
The use of “an” then spread to some words beginning with “h” in which the fi rst syllable was not accented.
So it was “an hoTEL” but a “HOrrible hotel”. When Henry Watson Fowler wrote his Modern English Usage in 1926 he described the use of “an” before words beginning with a sounded “h” as “pedantic” and “undesirable” but some people still use it.
ON a recent television programme I heard that the first mention of the lost city of Atlantis was credited to Plato. I thought the first mention was by Solon. Which is correct? Anthony Allen, Nottingham
PLATO would have agreed with you. He did say it was Solon but only fragments of Solon’s works have survived so the earliest known reference to Atlantis is in a work by Plato saying that Solon visited it.
But some say that he made it up. Solon died in the 6th century BC which was some 200 years before Plato.
WHEN I was a child my mother used to read me a story about Father Christmas. In the story Father Christmas said, “frizzle my whiskers, wizzle my friskers”. No one in the family can remember the title of the book. Please could you help? Elaine Kirkbride. by email
I THINK the book you’re looking for is called Bill Frog To The Rescue which was published in 1951.
Written and beautifully illustrated by Barbara Mary Campbell under the pseudonym CAM, it is a delightful tale of Father Christmas being too ill to deliver presents and being saved by some medicine given to him by Bill Frog. That book and its predecessor Bill Frog are real collectors’ items now, with the second book even rarer than the first and often changing hands for hundreds of pounds.
MY speedometer said I was doing 30mph, my satnav said I was doing 27mph and the speed alert (slow down) said I was doing 28mph. Which one is correct please? Gareth Davies, Wisbech, Cambridgeshire
SPEEDOMETERS are not allowed to underestimate the speed so are normally set to read close to 10 per cent higher than the actual speed.
There is little to choose between satnav and speed alert apps. Satnavs rely on data from satellites while speed alerts take their data from the mobile phone network.
Either of those may be affected by reception conditions but normally they are pretty reliable.
COULD you please tell me where the trend of putting “-ers” on the end of someone’s name started, for example “Aggers” for Jonathan Agnew or “Blowers” for Henry Blofeld. Paul Reynolds, Walsall, West Midlands
SUCH nicknames are known as the “Oxford -er” and were popular at Oxford University from around 1875. However they are thought to have originated at Rugby School. It could well be that the earliest of them were “soccer” and “rugger” as abbreviations of “association football” and “rugby football”. Rugger players have also been heard referring to Twickers (Twickenham Stadium where England play rugby). Their use in cricket was mainly due to their being championed by Brian Johnston (“Johnners”) on Test Match Special. He’d been educated at Eton and Oxford which was where he had probably picked up the habit. A natural extension of the Oxford -er is the modern tendency for nicknames such as Gazza (Paul Gascoigne), Hezza (Michael Heseltine), Bozza (Boris Johnson), Prezza (John Prescott) and Jezza (for almost anyone named Jeremy).