Obiter’s appeal for legal neologisms (17 November) showed a definite logophiliac tendency in the profession. In fact we were diluviated.

Predictably, we had several suggestions for ‘grayling’: ‘as slippery as a grayling’ was one of the more printable, from Hajj Ahmad Thomson, who also came up with ‘legal aide’ for McKenzie friend. Such an individual might deploy ‘lippy’, the term for advice for litigants in person proposed by Dan Mace, or maybe relying on ‘ultraviral’ advice: ‘populist misrepresentations of the law, usually found on social media,’ according to Ben Power.

Robert McCreath credits his own cack-handedness to such gems as ‘darft: a laughable and error-strewn attempt at a document’, and the related ‘witless statement: a darft witness statement’.

Mark Anderson rose to the challenge of coming up with archaic legal terms that deserved wider use - we enjoyed ‘moral turpitude’ (as in the US landing card) and ‘laches’ for ‘unreasonable delay’.

Louise Maynard proposed ‘costimate, an estimate of tribunal costs’ and ‘blogworthy, a case of legal significance or interest’.

‘Paradime’, according to Rob Smith, is the ‘low salary paid to a paralegal’.

Our favourite, however, was ‘Costs-mudgeting – a vexatious opponent’s approach of adding so much detail and so many caveats and assumptions to a budget that it becomes entirely useless’.

Thanks to Ashley Lawson. A copy of the Collins English Dictionary is on its way – we hope without any laches

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