Idiomatic or not the meaning is slightly different. 'I love to dance' is more specific and direct. 'I love dancing' could just mean that you like watching Strictly without ever moving to a beat yourself.

Don't want to spoil the sentiment, as still do not want to cause distress, but my previous comment was littered with infinitives and intended to be ironic. :-)

That's true of course, although I guess you could make a similar point about e.g. 'I love nudity' - being nude myself or looking at nude people? The context would presumably make all clear!

I've just heard Ed Miliband on the radio talking about 'the need to reduce the def-us-ut.' I remember noticing that Tony Blair often pronounced the letter 'i' in this way ('the credut squeeze') . Is there something feudal, reactionary or elitist in the traditional 'i' sound?

I was talking to my five year old grandson yesterday about 'stone, paper, scissors', the traditional children's alternative to tossing a coin for deciding who is to have first choice, go first in a game, etc. He scornfully informed me that its proper name is 'rock, paper, scissors.' Why has it changed?

You mean Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock surely

But it's always been Rock hasn't it? I'm in my mid 40s.

Stone, paper, scissors, vacuum cleaner (put first fingers and thumbs of each hand together form a rectangular opening - sucks up everything, so you always win) was the clever wheeze I was taught. This was in a junior school in Leicester in the early 1950s. It was certainly 'stone' then. Perhaps it's a regional thing? Or has some American TV show influenced recent usage?

shall we refer to that as the stone age. Prior to the invention of Rock.

However, I'm sure I used to play 'paper, stone, scissors' in the 80s (not stone, paper, scissors). Interestingly the order changes the priority order. With paper first the winner is always first, with rock first the loser is first (excepting for the obvious cyclical nature that implies there is no real winner).

I would be interested to know if there is more likelihood of winning at 'rock, paper, scissors' or 'paper, stone, scissors'. My guess is that paper is a safer start for the rock game.

Rock, paper, scissors, shark.

"All-important".

I hate that phrase, truly, madly, deeply hate it. It's only ever used by TV presenters. They must stop and stop now.

"And don't forget to add that all-important pepper to your casserole!"

"And don't forget to get that all-important local authority search!"

"And don't forget that those all-important things that are said to be all-important aren't even really important at all, most of the time, never mind all-important!"

According to my dictionary, the earliest recorded use of the word is by the American writer Washington Irving: 'They [the modern languages] are all-important.'

Why has Brooks Newmark had to resign because he sent 'explicit images' of himself to a journalist? There are plenty of 'explicit images' of me on my Facebook page - every detail of my elegant coiffure and trendy clobber in sharp focus for all to see. What would an 'implicit image' look like?

Quite right, Robin. But as ever, the language evolves to be more efficient. In this context, we all know that 'explicit' means 'sexually explicit'. The word 'explicit' still retains its usual, broader meaning in other contexts, For example, people still used 'explicitly' to intensify the verb told: 'They were explicitly told that…'.

Ah, I see. Thanks!

I heard a BBC journalist the other day referring to people who were 'suffering from mental health'!

In the same context, some politician was looking forward to the day when admitting to 'mental health issues' carried no more stigma than admitting to having sprained one's ankle. I'd have thought that an important step in 'normalising' mental illness was in fact to call it just that.

It reminds me of the attitude to cancer when I was a boy. The word 'cancer' conveyed such terror that it was avoided whenever possible. Things have changed, thankfully. Perhaps the same needs to happen with 'mental illness.'

Agreed re mental health but seeing as this is a thread on English usage, surely a great excuse to share some the wonderful Catechism of Cliché from Myles Na Gcopaleen (Flann O'Brien):

This post was last modified: 13-10-2014 11:09 AM by lacb.

In the olden days, headmasters, clergymen, writers and scholars had 'studies'. Ministers, civil servants and dons had 'rooms'. Doctors had 'consulting rooms.'

Nowadays they all have 'offices', which I think is rather vulgar and undignified. Head teachers and clergy shouldn't have 'offices'. It brings them down from their pedestals.

When I was young, an 'office' was not primarily a place or a room ; it was something more abstract, an organisation or group of people with specific duties. 'The Foreign Office'; 'talk to my office to fix up a meeting'; 'we need to clear that with the Cabinet Office.'

The Americans again, I expect. 'The Oval Office', etc.

Office? Lucky just to have a desk these days!

A spokesman for the Criminal Cases Review Commission quoted in today's 'Observer':

'Initially, we expected there to be a significant wait before that investigation would begin.....'

Does anyone agree with me that this (increasingly common) usage sounds wrong? Surely it should be 'before that investigation began'?

A guess after the excesses of the hipsters 'normcore' is the inevitable reaction. Having found this word on the Railway Telegraph thread it is now in the mainstream/normcore media:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books...unced.html

Of course there is something quite sensible about the idea that what is in 'fashion' is actually the type of clothing worn by most people most of the time. It is actually quite ironic that 'fashion' is so often the things that people don't wear in their everyday life.

I probably need to accept that I am the archetypical 'normcore' and that everybody now wants to look like me. But I also like people wearing different things and I worry that if everybody wears my 'uniform', then I'll have to be the first to rebel.

Gaaaaahhhh! Me and my big mouth!

I tend to be an early adopter of ridiculous slang because I have a dumb and childish sense of humour and just find hipster doofusisms of all eras hilarious. But this word is *particularly* horrible and I wish i'd never introduced it here.....