16 JULY 1988, Page 47

AFORE YE GO

Leaves from the commonplace book of Wallace Arnold

THAT estimable wordsmith, the blessed Philip Howard, has produced another wholly agreeable tome on the toing and froing of that most delicate of instruments, the English language. The opening chap- ters of Winged Words, for such is its title, deal with many of the more wince-making uses for decent, old, house-trained words, for instance the employment of `hopfully' to mean 'energetic running using only one leg'. But the larger part of the oeuvre is given over to an wholly engrossing inves- tigation into that most charming of English words, 'forsooth'. It is, opines the blessed Philip, in for something of a revival, and lolly good thing too.