READERS’ WORDS

During assembly at school, the principal announced that “Mrs So and So is late”. I did not have a lot of problems with that as it was not the first time she was late, except the principal meant she had passed away that morning. — Andile Nxele “Sexy” as an adjective is grossly overused, vague as well as plain daft. Can be said of a new car, a bicycle, a laptop, almost anything. — Paul Schamberger In Johannesburg there is a place that sells wendy houses. They have a sign which reads “Wendy’s”. This has been a pet irritation of mine for years. I keep asking, “Wendy’s what?” but there’s no answer to that question. A joke my husband and I share is this: We were shopping when we spotted a sign above a box of items. The sign read “deranged goods”. We were amused and perplexed. We stood there discussing it and laughing but the funniest part was that people looked quite puzzled. No one seemed to understand what we found amusing. We guessed that they had meant to say something like “end of range goods”. — Sharmla McCall On October 27, you brought back some nostalgic reminiscences for me with your references to acronyms on envelopes. I remember SWANK and HOLLAND from the ’60s, and there was another one, AFRICA, which was not used by polite correspondents. Another one, in the form of a slogan rather than an acronym, read: Postman, Postman, don’t be slow/Be like Elvis: go man go! — Jonathan Ossher Re: last week’s pedant class: I’ve just posed for a picture dressed as a hot dog. It sounds weird, I know. But it’s not often I’m a roll model. — Neville Barber

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