Mary Kenny from Malahide is troubled by another word she found in Peter Carey's novel, True History of the Kelly Gang, for which he won the Booker Prize. The adjective in question is adjectival. Whenever Ned wants to use the f word he substitutes adjectival, so that we get "the adjectival police" , "the adjectival rain" etc. Mary wonders if this word would really have been in Kelly's vocabulary.

Indeed it would be; and the euphemism is still common in England, where it has reached literature by way of the dialects of the south-east. H.G. Wells in New Machiavelli, published in 1911, has: "My mother would never learn not to attempt to break him of swearing . . . refusing to assist him to the adjectival towel he sought". In George Mitchell's The Man Who Grew Tomatoes (1959), you'll find: "Beresford told him to take his adjectival charity elsewhere".

I'm informed by an Australian friend that the euphemism was quite common in police and court reports of the 19th Century; Kelly may have learned it from the newspapers.

I am asked by Rita MacMahon from Limerick if there is any truth in what she has read in a cookery book published in 1880 regarding the etymology of mustard. The origin of the word, this book informed its readers, was in the motto on the city crest of Dijon in France, famous then and now for its mustard - Moult me tarde, supposedly a corruption of Latin multum ardeo (I desire much). Dear me. The word is from Old French moustarde or mostarde, from the Latin mustum (must, the fermenting juice of the grape that was added to the condiment to give it a bite).

The word first appears in English literature before 1300. A cookery tract of the period insists that "Pepir nou shalt thou eten, This mustart shal ben thei mete."

Ms MacMahon also asks why the pineapple is so called, since it resembles neither an apple nor a pine. Apple is Common Teutonic: the Old English was μppel, the Old Norse apli. The relation of the Irish abhal, ·ll and the Welsh afal to the Teutonic is not known. Now back in Beowulf's time μpfel was loosely used to describe many kinds of fruit, even cucumbers; pineapple referred to the shape and appearance of the fruit.

Dublin's lexicographer, Archbishop Trench, told the story of the confusion of the French daily paper, Le Journal des DΘbats, which "made some uncomplimentary observations on the voracity of the English, who could wind up a Lord Mayor's dinner with fir-cones for dessert".