Not so green as you’re cabbage-looking. Several readers pointed out that I had said nothing about the second part of this odd expression. Cabbage here is a reference to the head, it being roughly the same size and shape. Cabbage and cabbage-head have long been slang terms for a dull-witted, stupid or naive person.

The Yorkshire exclamation I quoted in the piece is “well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs”, not “bottom”. Janet Alton emailed, “I was born and brought up in a South Yorkshire pit village between Sheffield and Worksop, and if anyone had said ‘bottom’ where I lived, they would have been accused of ‘talking posh’!” She added, “A similar expression of surprise or disbelief is ‘Well, I’ll go to’t back of our ’ouse’.”

The Word at War. In my review of the book, I misquoted the famous statement by FDR that 7 December 1941, the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor, was a “date that will live in infamy”. The book’s authors had it correctly. Nick Willmott disputed one of the book’s statements, “You are not to be blamed for repeating the assertion that the celebrated Keep Calm and Carry On poster was never distributed during World War II. However, Reece Winstones’ Bristol Blitzed of 1976 includes a photograph which clearly shows the poster on display in 1941.”

Testing, testing ... I’m developing a version of the World Wide Words site that will be responsive to differing screen sizes on mobile devices. If you have access to a smartphone, tablet or similar device and would like to look at a sample page and comment in detail on how easy it is to use and — if you can — its design, typography or coding, please contact me for access details. Use the special email address beta@worldwidewords.org.

Housekeeping. If you recognise any of these defunct email addresses as having once been yours, would you contact me? scrapvee@msn.com, bigfoot@jacqi.net, vdrandi3@pop.htnet.hr, u4419216@anu.edu.au.