Mind Your Language with 'The Spectator'

I look forward to Fridays (not just because I was a teacher) but because, usually The Spectator lands in the post box. I find, nearly all, the contributors well worth reading - both those who agree and those who disagree with my views. Whether it's Bruce Anderson on 'Drink'; Tanya Gold on 'Food'; Taki's High Life, Jeremy Clark's Low Life or Melissa Kite's Real Life, I am usually entertained and feel the better for the read. The cartoons can make me chuckle, too. My blind spots are The Turf, Bridge and Chess.

25 July 2020

I must admit, I don't always read in depth Dot Wordsworth's Mind Your Language slot, but usually skim through the piece. This week's (25th July 2020), I found particularly interesting as I had no idea of the origins of the word cancel.

The cancel culture wants to obliterate people who do, or more often say, the wrong thing (for example, that there are such things as women) or even pronounce a taboo word. Taboo words have long been with us. The taboo word fuck was not even included in the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Yet today the dictionary prints far worse words.
...In the 19th century, railway tickets were cancelled by clipping; indeed a scissor-like punch was known as a pair of ticket cancels. Postage stamps, the other glories of the Victorian era, were cancelled, often with Maltese crosses. But cancel originally meant to cross out writing using a lattice of pen lines. This is because in Latin cancelli meant 'bars of lattice-work'. On an ancient Roman basilica (a non-religious place of public assembly and a court of justice), these lattice bars marked off the part where the judges sat. The screened-off part later gave the name to the chancel in a church...
Not many people knew all this; I certainly didn't!