Going spare. Barbara J Mann commented, “It occurred to me while I was reading your article about go spare that I’ve seen spare used to indicate the duty of a current title holder to his family to produce an heir and a spare before he goes into some potentially fatal activity (like war). Moving from that thought to the ‘spares’ having a traditional literary reputation for being disgruntled or caustic or downright rebellious because of their complete uselessness while a more direct heir lives, could probably get you to the meaning of being in a rage or in distress.”

Though the concept is probably as old as primogeniture, the phrase heir and a spare is more recent than you might think. In Britain, it became popular only after the birth of Prince Harry in 1984, the “spare” to Prince William. So far as I can discover, the first example in print is in a US-published book in 1976 and then in 1988 in a piece in the New York Times about the princes’ father, Prince Charles, that seems to be quoting from British sources.

Corybantic. “That consummate wordsmith W S Gilbert,” Bruce Graham wrote, “was not unfamiliar with the Corybantes, although he preferred the adjective Corybantian. In his little-known and seldom-performed final collaboration with Sir Arthur Sullivan, The Grand Duke (1896), Ludwig, a theatrical manager, is encouraging his company to adopt Ancient Greek manners, including ‘rather risky dances’, namely:

‘Corybantian maniac kick — Dionysiac or Bacchic —

And the Dithyrambic revels of those undecorous days.’

An erudite, if somewhat contrived, rhyme. As Gilbert himself said: ‘That kind of fun’s the lowest.’ Keep up the fascinating work!”