Due to her untiring and constantly failing attempts to enhance her social standing by employing highly extravagant diction, Mrs Malaprop in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals (1775) has given her name to a specific type of lexical misapplication exploited for humorous effect. While her… read more
Among the inventory of English nominal suffixes, -ette stands out as a relative latecomer with a rather limited productivity and a variety of meanings. Apart from small size, -ette can also indicate imitation or female sex, with the resultant formations often being classed as derogatory. This range… read more