Habiliments. “Your article on habiliments,” emailed John Walmsley, “brought to mind a word used by my great-uncle (and others of his generation) in the 1970s in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. It may still be in use there. My great-uncle referred to one’s underwear as ‘your decibels’. (The spelling is as I heard it at age 10.) Once I started to learn French at school, I assumed that this was derived from déshabillé. I just checked my Chambers Dictionary, which is always strong on the words of my Ulster youth. There I find dishabilles and my schoolboy etymology is confirmed.”

Graham Thomas added, “Habiliments reminded me of a book I read in my youth: My Father in His Dizzerbell by Douglas Hayes. Dizzerbell was the eponymous father’s rendition of the French déshabillé and usually meant his dressing gown, which he wore before donning his clothes for the day.”

Focus! Marni Hancock spotted a typo in my review of Steven Pinker’s new book last time. I wrote “mental effect” when I meant “mental effort”. My typing fingers have a will of their own sometimes. However, readers who suggested kindly that in using focussed in the piece I had suffered a keyboard malfunction were off-track, as doubling the s is standard in British English.

Beta testing. Many thanks to everybody who made useful comments on the draft page. With your help the redesign is now in good shape to be rolled out to the whole site. I hope this will happen next weekend.