Mea Culpa: here be dragons, near Oxford Circus

In a report of Extinction Rebellion’s blockade of Oxford Circus, we said: “Demonstrators had amassed outside the Brazilian embassy.” Thanks to Philip Nalpanis for pointing out that we meant “massed”. Amassing is something that people and dragons do to something such as treasure. Massing is doing the same thing to themselves, namely gathering in one place.

I try to avoid formal grammar terms, because I think it’s better to explain things without them, but if you are interested, amass is a transitive verb and mass is an intransitive one.

Most odd: Philip also pointed out that we referred, in a report about Afghanistan, to William Burns, the CIA director, as the Biden administration’s “senior-most secret services officer”. This is an odd and distracting construction: we would normally say, as we had done earlier in the same article, that he was the “most senior”.

The headline on the article, “Head of the CIA met with Taliban leader, report says,” could also have done without the “with”, an Americanism that is increasingly common in British English but not yet fully assimilated.

Take back control: The sub-headline on another article about Afghanistan said that the National Resistance Front was gearing up for a “battle to wrestle back control” of the country from the Taliban. Thanks to Richard Thomas for suggesting that this should be “wrest”, meaning take something forcibly from someone’s grasp.

“Wrestle” works just as well, implying a longer struggle involving repeated attempts to gain the upper hand (wrestle being the frequentative form of wrest). But it would be a shame to lose wrest, from the Old English for twist or tighten, which also gives us wrist, writhe and wreath.

Word to end by: More formal grammar in an email from Bernard Theobald, who took us to task for ending a headline with a preposition. But you don’t need to know what a preposition is to know that there is something wrong with this: “Labour vow to reduce rate benefits are scaled back by.”

It was ambitious to try, in a headline, to explain the formula for reducing universal credit as earnings go up. The longer headline on the website (as opposed to the version on the subscription edition) was: “Labour commit to reducing rate in-work benefits are scaled back.” That avoids ending in “by”, but it is no easier to understand, needing an “at which” after “rate”. I think it would have been better to go for something like: “Labour promise more generous benefits for low-paid workers.” We could have explained the mechanics of changing the taper rate of universal credit in the article.

Not in debt to Latin: In a comment article on the election of the first female leader of the Unite union, we said: “Ms Graham will be her own woman and not in hoc to the McCluskey camp.” As Roger Thetford pointed out, “hoc” is a Latin word used in English only in phrases such as ad hoc (meaning improvised) and post hoc (after the event). We meant “in hock”: that is, in debt.