I’ve seen in a few places lately (mainly on comments on blogs, particularly on The Guardian) the use of pre-madonna instead of prima donna. This tickles me intensely, seeing as Madonna could definitely be classed as a prima donna; I assume that a pre-madonna is someone who’s on their way to becoming like Madonna. There [...]

OK, this one is a real word. In America, anyway. But every time I see it, it makes me wince: burglarize The very fact that I’ve never (to my knowledge) seen the -ise form indicates that it’s really uncommon over here. And, yes, it’s therefore for cultural reasons that I don’t like it (i.e. I’m [...]

There is no such word as compulse, Paul McKenna. The verb you are looking for is compel and its past participle is compelled. Not compulsed. Although after hearing you use it about five times in ten minutes, I was starting to doubt myself, and had to resort to the Merriam Webster dictionary. Here is the [...]