Words: coffin, n.
ANOTHER NEWSPAPER'S corrections column has alerted readers that they might have been misled by a report that "the left-arm spinner ricked his back lifting his coffin out of the car". This was not some prescient bargain, a new line from Homebase, but recent slang among Australian and English cricketers for a cricket-bag taken on tour - not yet in any dictionary, nor in G. A. Wilkes's boggling Australian Colloquialisms.
Without exhausting the word, one could say the coffin dropped the coffin on his coffin: it can mean clumsy fellow and foot. It came in the 16th century, via Old French for little basket from Latin and Greek, and can also mean a horse's hoof, printing frame, pie crust and - as a harbinger of death - a coal that leaps from the fire.
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies