Jentacular. Darryl Francis emailed, following my piece last week on this word for breakfast, to point out that jantaculum, a variant spelling of the Latin original, was used at Latymer Upper School in west London decades ago for an annual show. It was also used at Reading University around the same period for an annual feast and entertainment. How a word meaning breakfast should have become one for an evening event is difficult to understand. Perhaps a reader can help?

Farther and further. Edna Heard resurrected memories of an old television sketch by the British comedian Benny Hill in which standing passengers were asked to “pass farther down the bus”. An old man was pushed forward. This only works as comedy if farther is unusual and nobody pronounces their rs, which of course is true of much of Britain.

David Milsted recalls furth from Orkney, in the sense of “away from”. Donald Kerr mentioned the Scottish legal term Furth of Scotland, applied to persons, objects or obligations that are outside the legal boundaries of Scotland. Furth is a alternative form of forth, and helps to explain why further is regarded as a relative of it.

Curglaff. Chris Smith emailed from Shetland. He noted that gluff, as both noun and verb, meaning surprise or startle, survives in Shetland dialect. The Concise Scots Dictionary entry is under gliff, noting the variant spellings glaff, gloff, gluff and glouf. The same dictionary says that cur- is an intensifying prefix. That would make curglaff a severe shock. He added, “I have no idea why curglaff should be specifically the shock felt when plunging into cold water; perhaps a Banffshire informant was having a little fun with Jamieson?”

Twig. Readers attempted to equate this British verb with Heinlein’s grok. I’d argue the senses are different. When you twig, you come to a sudden realisation, but of something simple or trivial. To grok is to comprehend something intuitively or to completely understand a matter in all its details and intricacies. As James Forder pointed out last time, one doesn’t twig the theory of relativity; however, one may grok it.