Mind your language
MORE ON who/whom. Mr Brian Glanville, the newspaperman, writes to complain about the mistake often made by those who `are trying to be terribly pseudo-exact and use whom, an accusative, when a clause intervenes and it should manifestly be who, nomina- tive'. The example Mr Glanville sends is a cutting from the Independent on Sun- day: `Mr Egidio has secured the release on bail of the policemen, whom he sus- pects have been made scapegoats by the authorities.'
Mr Patrick Dalzel-Job from Ross- shire agrees that this construction is very annoying, and particularly blames the Daily Telegraph, though I can't say I've found it worse than most. 'I think you will agree that it is much worse to use whom when it should be who, and to use I when it should be me, than to use who when it should be whom or me when it should be I, because the writer or speaker in the first case is trying ignorantly to be clever.' Yes, I think that puts it clearly.
Reverting to the great moles fascina- tion, I am grateful to Mr John Gibbs for sending me a copy of a letter of his that the New Statesman published in 1966. He pointed out that the Oxford English Dictionary did list the mediaeval word quaint, though it did not print the mod- ern spelling of the same word. Not that it meant mole, of course. And Mr Gibbs goes on to say that, in the armed ser- vices, dried apricots are, by a fancied resemblance, called twats. That would have given Browning, who thought the word meant `a nun's head-dress', some- thing else to think about.
Dot Wordsworth
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