Equally well-established is the use of the wrong word in place of the established one. The Oxford English Corpus, a vast database of current English that enables lexicographers to track even the subtlest of shifts in the way we speak and write, provides many examples of linguistic mishearings. My favourites include “putting the cat before the horse”, and “like a bowl in a china shop” (I stop just short of “going at it hammer and thongs”); but there are many less frivolous cases that are fast becoming the “standard”. The evidence for “homing in” (“honing” is now rare), “trending towards”, and (purists look away now) “disinterested” for “uninterested”, is gathering speed. For those like me who snarl at the latter, it is worth reminding ourselves that “not interested” was in fact one original meaning of “disinterested”, four centuries ago — when, our Queen may be surprised to know, monarchs also used “ain’t” quite liberally.