3 FEBRUARY 1961, Page 13

SIR, — There is no need for Alan Brien to go back

to Chaucer's seven-letter word 'queynte,' In the Penguin Canterbury Tales, Neville Coghill uses the admirable synonym 'quim,' which has the apposite four letters and is mellifluous in comparison with D. H. Lawrence's vulgarism. Also (with the other) the word was in common use in the West Country regiment with which I served forty-five years ago. Oddly enough, neither word did a callow youth any harm. Things must have names in the vernacular tongue. The Latin alternative, although admirably descriptive, offended, and offends, me more. It seems up-stage rather than ob scenus.—Yours faithfully,