At work, serious problems are often first mentioned in small words.
Just a heads-up : A problem is coming. One small thing : Something important has gone wrong.
A bit of a hiccup : A setback that will cause delay. Teething problems : Faults in something new, which may be serious.
We may have a slight issue : There is a problem. It’s probably nothing, but : This needs attention.
I don’t want to make a fuss, but : A real complaint follows.
British English has many phrases for a rebuke given out of sight of others.
A word in your ear: A private warning.
To take someone aside: To speak to someone away from others, often to correct them.
To be carpeted: To be called in and reprimanded by a superior.
Interview without coffee: A severe reprimand by a senior officer. The phrase began in the British Army.
See me: Written by a teacher at the end of a piece of work. The pupil should come for a talk about it.
In July 2010, the new coalition government set up the Behavioural Insights Team in the Cabinet Office. It became known unofficially as the “Nudge Unit.” Its annual report described randomised controlled trials as being “at the heart of the team’s methodology for testing new initiatives and demonstrating what works.”
In June 2012, the team published a paper with Ben Goldacre and David Torgerson. Its title set out the method: Test, Learn, Adapt.
John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding first appeared in 1689. It asks where the mind gets the material for reasoning and knowledge. Locke answers: “To this I answer, in one word, from experience.” Later in the same book he writes: “No man’s knowledge here can go beyond his experience.”
Ron Davies, Secretary of State for Wales from 1997 to 1998, introduced devolution to Wales. He is known for the phrase “Devolution is a process and not an event.” He meant that the first settlement would not be the last, and that more powers would come to Wales over time.
In February 1999, The Irish Times quoted his fuller version: devolution “is a process. It is not an event and neither is it a journey with a fixed end-point.”
British English has many phrases for trying something out before committing to it.
To fly a kite: To float an idea to test opinion.
To test the water: To find out how people react before deciding.
To pencil something in: To agree a date or plan that can still change.
Let’s see how it goes: We will start and decide later whether to continue.
To keep one’s options open: To avoid a decision that rules out other choices.
The chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi worked at the University of Manchester from 1933 to 1958. In The Tacit Dimension, published in 1966, he summed up the idea of tacit knowledge in one sentence: “we can know more than we can tell.”
In 1747, the naval surgeon James Lind was serving on HMS Salisbury in the Channel Fleet. From 20 May, he tested treatments for scurvy on twelve sick sailors, in six pairs. Each pair received a different supplement, including cider vinegar, herbs and citrus fruit. The men given oranges and lemons recovered fastest.
Lind published the results in 1753 in A Treatise of the Scurvy. His experiment is considered one of the first controlled clinical trials.
In 1978, James Dyson noticed that vacuum cleaners lost suction as their bags clogged. The company’s own account of what followed reads: “Five years and 5,127 prototypes later, the world’s first bagless vacuum cleaner from Dyson arrived.”
The conflict in Northern Ireland from about 1968 to 1998 is known as the Troubles. Some 3,600 people were killed. The name had been used earlier for the violence in Ireland between 1912 and 1923.
The Irish Times has described the term as a euphemism. It noted that the word “avoided ascribing blame to any of the participants.”