nventor James Dyson, creator of the revolutionary Dyson vacuum cleaner, is not content with dreaming up one of the biggest money-spinning inventions of the past century. Apparently, it's his dream to see his name, Dyson, become a verb, as in 'to Dyson', and knock 'Hoover' out of the public's vocabulary.

Anybody who is at all creative and protective of his or her ideas must surely understand his reasoning behind this. Indeed, as a show of solidarity, I now refer to vacuuming as Dysoning (I have one of the purple, yellow and grey cleaners) out of sympathy.

So it must be frustrating for Mr Dyson (I'm sure the millions of pounds in his bank account are some consolation) to hear what I heard the other day.

I was at the Blue Planet Aquarium at Ellesmere Port listening to a talk about the sharks and stingrays in the giant tank. The speaker described the suction a particular fish was capable of as being comparable with 'six Dyson Hoovers'.

I've always been fascinated by etymology, the study of the source and evolution of words.

I read the other day the source of the phrase, 'it went pear-shaped'. I assumed it was a modern-day term, but it in fact dates back to the early part of the 20th century, when RAF fighter pilots were practising loops. A less than perfect one was said to have 'gone pear-shaped', that is, wrong.

F

urther to my piece a few weeks ago about misheard song lyrics, I spotted the following reworking of Bohemian Rhapsody on the internet. Whoever wrote it was clearly trying to curry favour...

Naan, I just killed a man,

Poppadom against his head,

Had lime pickle, now he's dead.