The Hole Truth

It’s already almost impossible to respond to the recent flurry over a repellent observation from Washington concerning African countries and Haiti, but I will try here to be grown up about this.

Let’s turn our attention to Bodleian Rawlinson Poetry 148, an Oxford manuscript that is having its moment in the sun (something manuscripts do not in fact like), owing to the curious fact that this 1629 document is the first recorded instance in the noble English language of That Word.

You know which one...