Walking t’hound on t’Heath over the weekend, I passed a young family, catching a moppet asking “Is this the short cut, Daddy?” to which he replied “No – it’s the long cut.”

Which set me thinking about the ways we learn language, and the language that we learn.

One day perhaps, that child will use the expression ‘the long cut’, only to be greeted by expressions of bafflement. From which she will come to learn that the English language has no opposite expression to ‘the short cut’: that no ‘cut’ is ever long. Such encounters will play their part in developing her own taste for wordplay – ready to pass on, through such casual quips, to children of her own.