Monday, March 22, 2010

Notes and Queries (2)

Words of the Day:

Hawk: one who hawks, or peddles, his political influence to business interests via the services of a lobbying organisation.

Dove: one who seeks to wash away the sins of Honourable Members, e.g. by retrospectively redefining terms in order to exculpate his colleagues from charges of theft by false accounting. The term is derived from the name of a popular brand of soft soap.

3 comments:

James Higham said...

Is a hawk the same as a Hewett?

Sackerson said...

We welcome the learned Dr Higham's question. We think that a hewett is a unit of measurement. Readers will recall that a milliHelen is the degree of pulchritude required to sink a single ship; similarly, a hewett would be the level of exploitation of public office necessary to double one's income.

Sackerson said...

ERRATUM

In the above comment, "sink" should read "launch". We ascribe the error to our over-concentration on the plight of New Labour, and the deafening crescendo of scurrying.