Do you ever find yourself writing a word or phrase then looking at it as if it were the first time you’d ever encountered it? Every so often, I’ll write that something is full to the gunwales and think, ‘Heck, I need to know exactly what that means and look it up. (It’s a nautical term referring to the upper edge or planking of the side of a boat). I was reading a novel not that long ago, traditionally published by someone quite famous and it was spelt as gunnals. Which made me very cross because I am such a pedant.
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