A particularly egregious (I've long wanted an excuse for using that word) example in this morning's 'Independent' . Dave Brown, the cartoonist, says he uses the image of the 'fat cat' 'relatively regularly'. The addition of 'regularly' seems to make matters worse - relatively to what?

And, while I've got everyone's attention, here's something else. I've noticed two examples this week of the misuse (sorry to be judgmental) of the Latin 'pace'. It doesn't mean 'with due acknowledgements to' the source of something, which is how George Galloway (no less) uses it in this morning's paper: he says that to wage aggressive war is 'pace Nuremberg, "the ultimate crime"'. It actually means 'with all due respect to', 'with due deference to', 'by leave of', or 'no offence to', and should be used to politely acknowledge someone with whom the speaker or writer disagrees.