I’m a New Zealand writer with over thirty years hands-on professional experience as a published author and in publishing. My main interests are in the sciences – physics, particularly, though I’m deeply curious about a lot of stuff, especially the human condition. I have qualifications in writing, music and anthropology among other fields, and hold multiple post-graduate degrees in history. I’m also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society at University College, London. I write a lot. My published writing, sold on merit, includes over 550 articles, academic papers, reviews, novellas and short stories, and over 50 books on topics ranging from travel guides to biography, engineering, military and social history. I’ve been published principally by Penguin Random House.
This week’s obscure English word is plew. It’s a nineteenth century word reputedly derived from Canadian French, ‘poilu’ (hairy/bristly), and means beaver skin or pelt. And beaver pelts, it turns out, were a standard measure for defining value among fur traders in the day. Your challenge: write a sentence or two in the comments using … More The obscure word of the week is plew
Back when I was a kid I read an awful lot of science fiction – mostly Clarke, Asimov and Heinlein with a fair amount of Niven, Pournelle and others stirred into the mix. All of them portrayed futures in which the engineering problems that still confront us today had been largely solved. Space travel was … More We are living in Arthur C Clarke’s future
This week’s obscure English word is elance. It’s from old French and means to hurl or launch at something. Your challenge: write a sentence or two in the comments using either word. Copyright © Matthew Wright 2022
In recent months I’ve found myself pulling up in traffic queues to find the car suddenly filled with low-frequency thumping of the kind I’d normally associate with a failed big-end bearing. Every time it’s been the car ahead of me, which has its stereo blasting away for the benefit of everybody in a wide radius. … More Car stereo systems and gorilla chest thumping
This week’s obscure English word is grenaille. Actually it’s French, but it turns up in English in high-class eateries a a fancy word to describe very small potatoes. (Pommes de Terre Grenailles). The funny thing is that the original word grenaille, like so many French words, is a military term. It originally meant lead shot. … More The obscure word of the week is grenaille
Something I’ve noticed online of late is the number of people who believe they are experts in fields in which they’re manifestly not qualified. The ones I’ve run into clearly believe themselves to ‘know more’ even than those qualified and professionally working in that territory. On my experience of them, such people don’t want to … More The problem with self-appointed online experts
This week’s obscure English word is newel. This is the central pillar of a spiral staircase. Your challenge: write a sentence or two in the comments using this word. Copyright © Matthew Wright 2022
It’s Anzac Day: memorial day in New Zealand and Australia when we remember the dead of all our wars. Why choose then, and not 11 November, to mark all war dead? For both Australia and New Zealand the emotional power of the Gallipoli campaign was enormous: after the war, this became the moment when both … More Lest we forget: a reminder of the folly of war
This week New Zealand’s inflation hit a 31-year high after decades when the spectre of relentlessly rising consumer prices seemed to have been conquered forever. What happened can only partly be blamed on domestic issues – a 32 percent rise in the price of fuel, for instance, simply had to be accepted. Although that last … More The inflation monster is baaaaaaack
This week’s obscure English word is forswunk. It’s an obsolete English term essentially meaning to be exhausted from over-work. There’s also forswink, which is the transitive verb form. It’s similar to last week’s word quanked, which means to be overcome with fatigue. Your challenge: write a sentence or two in the comments using either word. … More The obscure word of the week is forswunk
Matthew Wright 
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