A WORD, PLEASE — tawdry

continuity: Next, Professor Aubrey Vellum, with a queen, a country fair, and one very cheap ribbon.

the verdict: You know that moment at the fairground when the prize you won turns out to be a plastic ring that falls apart before you get home? It glittered so brightly at the stall, and in the back seat of the car it just looks a little bit tawdry.

a word, please: Tawdry. A word, please.

the crack: Over thirteen hundred years ago, in the marshy east of England, there lived an Anglo-Saxon queen named Æthelthryth , though English tongues would come to call her Audrey. She left her royal life behind and became an abbess at Ely. When she died in the year six seventy-nine, the old account of her life says it was from a painful swelling on her throat. And she welcomed it. As a girl she had loved wearing heavy, glittering necklaces, and she believed this was her penance for that vanity. Hold on to that necklace.

the collision: For centuries afterwards, Ely held a fair in Saint Audrey's honour, and the stalls sold silk ribbons to tie around your neck. They were called Saint Audrey's lace, a keepsake from the saint who gave up her jewels. But say Saint Audrey fast, over and over, in a noisy market, and the tee from Saint slides across and sticks to her name. Saint Audrey's lace became tawdry lace, and by the early sixteen hundreds tawdry could stand on its own as the name for those cheap ribbons. And cheap they were. They faded and frayed, and the word frayed right along with them, until tawdry meant anything flashy and second-rate. Today we call a scandal tawdry, though half the time, if we're honest, we mean it's rather fun to read about. You might guess the word grew from some old word for dirt. It didn't. It grew from a saint.

the glimmer: We keep the people we love alive by saying their names, and if we say them often enough, and fast enough, even a saint's name wears down, the way a ribbon does.

the exit: That's the word. Say Saint Audrey quickly three times today, and mind where the tee goes.