Leading article: Swagger and waggishness

Friday 15 June 2007 19:00 EDT
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The English language is surely unique as a vehicle for ingenuity and invention. Take the acronym WAGs. What a delightfully illustrative word. How redolent it is of not-too-serious style, swagger, cheerfully wagging tails and the general waggishness that rightly belongs to any definition of Britishness. And how versatile: from footballers' WAGs - whose big day it is today - to the G8 summiteers. How did we manage without it?

And when it comes to linguistic ingenuity, Independent readers yield to none. Our call for new collective nouns drew no fewer than 7,000 contributions. Down here in the third leader department, our "jabber" of journalists applauds the arrival of a "gazump" of estate agents and a "guzzle" of 4x4 drivers.

So what do you think? A wow of Wags, a welter of Wags, a wish-list of Wags, or a gee-whiz of Wags, perhaps. Whatever. We wish them, singly and collectively, a wag-worthy day.

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