Simon Koppel
@simonkoppel.bsky.social
Quizzer, charity-adjacent and lexicography-curious. He/him.
OK, can't find that one, but this interview has "It was like, who's going to die first?" www.beatlesinterviews.org/dbjypb.int2....
November 20, 2025 at 3:13 PM
OK, can't find that one, but this interview has "It was like, who's going to die first?" www.beatlesinterviews.org/dbjypb.int2....
I don't know if I'd call this a garden-path-sentence or something else, but it's thoroughly confusing, especially in British English where "lift" is likely to be read as a noun ( = "elevator") and more so if you've not come across the company. #linguistics www.linkedin.com/news/story/o...
November 17, 2025 at 2:15 PM
I don't know if I'd call this a garden-path-sentence or something else, but it's thoroughly confusing, especially in British English where "lift" is likely to be read as a noun ( = "elevator") and more so if you've not come across the company. #linguistics www.linkedin.com/news/story/o...
You can still what it was by the alphabetising.
October 24, 2025 at 1:33 PM
You can still what it was by the alphabetising.
@alakazammit.bsky.social Did you know that you're quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary? They've just added the word "armscye" and you're one of the five quotations they list
September 24, 2025 at 12:24 PM
@alakazammit.bsky.social Did you know that you're quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary? They've just added the word "armscye" and you're one of the five quotations they list
@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...
July 29, 2025 at 11:46 AM
@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...
We popped by a couple of days ago and your balls were glowing.
July 16, 2025 at 2:01 PM
We popped by a couple of days ago and your balls were glowing.
What perfect albums came out when you were 16?*
*No retroactive cool, please. Albums that were in the house that you actively purchased and listened to.
Yes, I definitely had a taste for slightly folky but ultimately fairly mainstream singer-songwriters.
*No retroactive cool, please. Albums that were in the house that you actively purchased and listened to.
Yes, I definitely had a taste for slightly folky but ultimately fairly mainstream singer-songwriters.
March 19, 2025 at 4:57 PM
What perfect albums came out when you were 16?*
*No retroactive cool, please. Albums that were in the house that you actively purchased and listened to.
Yes, I definitely had a taste for slightly folky but ultimately fairly mainstream singer-songwriters.
*No retroactive cool, please. Albums that were in the house that you actively purchased and listened to.
Yes, I definitely had a taste for slightly folky but ultimately fairly mainstream singer-songwriters.
It's not *impossible* to wear a watch on the side of your wrist, rather than front or back, but it's pretty uncomfortable and I doubt anyone would actively choose to draw it like that. And the little finger looks pretty weird as well.
February 4, 2025 at 3:21 PM
It's not *impossible* to wear a watch on the side of your wrist, rather than front or back, but it's pretty uncomfortable and I doubt anyone would actively choose to draw it like that. And the little finger looks pretty weird as well.
Since I seem to have gained a bunch of lexicographical followers over the weekend (hello!), I'll drop this here before sending it to the OED, which if I'm reading it right is a 24-year antedating of "Blue Monday" in the current sense.
January 20, 2025 at 12:27 PM
Since I seem to have gained a bunch of lexicographical followers over the weekend (hello!), I'll drop this here before sending it to the OED, which if I'm reading it right is a 24-year antedating of "Blue Monday" in the current sense.
In today's edition of "words and phrases are always either much older or much more recent than you realise", I bring you 'political football'.
October 10, 2024 at 12:25 PM
In today's edition of "words and phrases are always either much older or much more recent than you realise", I bring you 'political football'.
Here's the culprit, pretending it had nothing to do with him. #ProofOfCat
September 25, 2024 at 5:03 PM
Here's the culprit, pretending it had nothing to do with him. #ProofOfCat
Sometimes #ProofOfCat doesn't require there to be a cat in the photo. Houston, we have a problem.
September 25, 2024 at 8:20 AM
Sometimes #ProofOfCat doesn't require there to be a cat in the photo. Houston, we have a problem.
And a few months earlier, though in a slightly different context - a Temperance Society rather than something socialist.
August 16, 2024 at 12:42 PM
And a few months earlier, though in a slightly different context - a Temperance Society rather than something socialist.
Here from 1884 in "Justice: The Organ of the Social Democracy".
![Newspaper extract (via the British Newspaper Archive) from Justice. Column is headed Answers to Correspondents, and the first reads:
T.M. Kendal asks "Why cannot Justice let well alone?" [It is because things are not well that we strive to "educate, agitate, organise." Is T.M. really a worker, or only a capitalist in disguise?]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:62ygdaguwbpu5w2vsdfj6bd4/bafkreighxzaeqx53qchf527o3uwmjl7zpbolepsn25go2ht7agy73v3fba@jpeg)
August 16, 2024 at 12:35 PM
Here from 1884 in "Justice: The Organ of the Social Democracy".
The earliest I found for this in BNA is this film review from 1956, but now I'm wondering if "planet dweller" is worth looking into?
August 14, 2024 at 4:19 PM
The earliest I found for this in BNA is this film review from 1956, but now I'm wondering if "planet dweller" is worth looking into?
I've been able to trace it back 20 years earlier than your 1864 citation. No mention in this one specifically of "dancing on his grave", rather, "she would let him have neither peace nor rest upon earth, either living or dead", which is suitably metal.
August 12, 2024 at 1:37 PM
I've been able to trace it back 20 years earlier than your 1864 citation. No mention in this one specifically of "dancing on his grave", rather, "she would let him have neither peace nor rest upon earth, either living or dead", which is suitably metal.
OED has 1996 as its earliest citation but I've found an earlier one - 1993, in Andrew Motion's biography of Philip Larkin (here quoted in a review in The Bookseller). I'll add it to my next batch of antedatings to send to the OED, which I do fairly regularly.
May 17, 2024 at 4:41 PM
OED has 1996 as its earliest citation but I've found an earlier one - 1993, in Andrew Motion's biography of Philip Larkin (here quoted in a review in The Bookseller). I'll add it to my next batch of antedatings to send to the OED, which I do fairly regularly.
Meanwhile our moggy Taz, who is anything but pedigree, is still going strong and causing trouble at nineteen and a half.
May 8, 2024 at 9:16 PM
Meanwhile our moggy Taz, who is anything but pedigree, is still going strong and causing trouble at nineteen and a half.
Definitely better than the American one with Alan Cumming.
December 29, 2023 at 7:03 PM
Definitely better than the American one with Alan Cumming.
Over on the other side, I see that automatic categorisation of trending topics is going well. I guess it's served with rum, but...
November 30, 2023 at 1:50 PM
Over on the other side, I see that automatic categorisation of trending topics is going well. I guess it's served with rum, but...
If you see this, you have to share an image from your phone without explaining it
November 29, 2023 at 1:41 PM
If you see this, you have to share an image from your phone without explaining it
As Twitter dies its slow, painful death, I'm likely to be here more, so here's #ProofOfCat so you know that I am who I say I am.
Taz likes Bluesky but says that at 19 years old he's just as happy these days with brown blanket.
Taz likes Bluesky but says that at 19 years old he's just as happy these days with brown blanket.
October 6, 2023 at 11:54 AM
As Twitter dies its slow, painful death, I'm likely to be here more, so here's #ProofOfCat so you know that I am who I say I am.
Taz likes Bluesky but says that at 19 years old he's just as happy these days with brown blanket.
Taz likes Bluesky but says that at 19 years old he's just as happy these days with brown blanket.