Judges have been urged to "deal with the real world" as a woman found to have libeled her ex-husband argues that a dictionary should not have been used to define her Facebook chat.

Nicola Stocker, 51, has asked the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling that she was guilty of defamation when she told her ex-husband's new lover that he had tried to strangle her.

Mr Justice Mitting, who heard the original trial, said that based on the definitions of the word strangle in the Oxford English Dictionary she must have meant Ronald Stocker was trying to kill her.

Opening the case before the UK's highest court David Price QC, representing Ms Stocker, said that "at its heart [the case] concerns four words - tried to strangle me".

Ms Stocker had used the phrase during a Facebook exchange with Deborah Bligh, the new partner of her millionaire ex, in December 2012. She also revealed he had been arrested a number of times.

Mr Price said that it was a "common way" of describing the assault for which Mr Stocker, 68, was arrested when the police arrived two hours later and found red marks around his wife's neck.