IN Northgate, Darlington, where you can eat in a different place every night for a month, the Sitar restaurant is about to re-emerge as Posh. Whether they had originally intended to call it Posh Spice, only to be thwarted by an impoverished young mother anxious to protect her trade mark, we cannot say.

Nor are we able to suggest whether the style matches the new name, since the idiot-proof window shutters were down and the door - posh or what? - is made from reflective glass. It is not, in any case, the point.

"Posh" is believed widely to be among the earliest acronyms, that is to say a word formed from the initial letters of other words.

Radar is an acronym, from radio detection and ranging; laser was beamed up from light application by stimulated emission of radiation. Thanks to television, MASH - mobile army surgical hospital - may be the most familiar of all.

Posh, it is widely and erroneously supposed, is an acronym of "Port outward, starboard home", a shorthand description of how the wealthy undertook their sea voyages in order to have the best of the sunshine in both directions.

The Oxford English Dictionary will have none of it, though is unable satisfactorily to explain the word's origins.

The Internet, meanwhile, is overrun with sites purporting to list acronyms, most at best mnemonics - devices like the favoured childhood means of remembering the seven colours of the rainbow - and at worst a sort of reverse acronym.

A reverse acronym - we shall have to coin a better term for it, a knackronym, perhaps - is an existing word or term for which the constituent letters are made to represent something else entirely - www, for example, glumly becomes worldwide wait. Many sail close to the jurisprudential wind. Defamatory or not, the whole exercise represents one of the many dangers - and we are still in the cyberspace shallow end - of giving the unlettered a global audience.

True acronyms sit comfortably amid everyday language, or - like so many nimbies - confidently await full membership. Perhaps the greatest sign of acceptance is that they no longer appear in violent capitals.

Readers are invited, therefore, to submit their favourite or most enduring acronyms. In this back yard they'd be most joyously welcomed.

FROM acronyms to anagrams, last week's column pointed out (via Janet McCrickard in Darlington) that "evil's agent" was an anagram of evangelist. Methodist local preacher Ian Andrew in Lanchester retorts that other evangelical anagrams include "Vital G seen" - "the G, of course, standing for God" - and of "eve'lasting". Eve'lasting? "If Janet McCrickard can have an apostrophe," says Ian, "then so can I." More anagrams welcome, too.

SO the column remains a sort of last chance saloon for the English language, or at least its sick room superintendent. From all parts, readers continue to request copies of the "traditional punctuation poem" mentioned several weeks ago, usually adding their favourite little solecism whilst about it.

"My English teacher would be aghast at the use of 'different to' instead of 'different from' writes Miss F Holden from Leeds.

"Please try to do something about the persistent use of wrong tenses," implores Freda Dow from Sedgefield.

Others have already joined the resistance. Mr M Dunstone from Darlington wrote eloquently in Hear All Sides the other day about the Queen's English Society - "to promote and uphold the use of good English and to encourage the enjoyment of language". Their next meeting is in York in September.

There is a wide difference between precision and prissiness, however, and in Friday's paper someone fell headlong into the gulf.

Mr Tony Maher, representing the Plain English Campaign, objected to a recruitment poster produced by the ever-innovative East Durham and Houghall Community College, based in Peterlee, urging "Gan on, have a go".

What could be plainer, or more direct? Mr Maher, as we grammaticists say, is clearly a knackronym.

SEVERAL readers have also pointed out that since we began featuring mondegreens - misheard song lyrics - the little perishers have also begun to take over the correspondence columns of The Times and the Mail on Sunday. Phil Steele, exiled in Crook, puts it best: "Shildon lads lead the way once again, and the London nationals follow."

PHIL Lambelle's young daughter was due to take part in Darlington Community Carnival last weekend. Since the leaflet offered neither starting time nor place, he rang the contact number at the town hall. "Who are you?" the lady demanded. "Which organisation do you represent?"

Patiently, Phil explained that he was simply a poor father anxious that his child didn't miss the fun. Finally the town hall stronghold eased open.

"Why didn't you put it on the leaflet in the first place?" asked Phil.

"Because people wouldn't buy a programme to find out," said the lady.

Phil is reminded of a pub scene he once witnessed in which a chap enjoying a quiet pint was approached by an apparent stranger:

"Now then, how's the wife?"

"Why, canny."

"Bairns?"

"Canny, aye."

"And the leeks?"

"Weez askin', like....?"

A MONTH or so ago, we remarked upon the careful courtesy of the cards which the postman now drops through the door if no one appears to be at home.

Abed at 7.30am, Peter Murphy in Evenwood couldn't fault the sentiment, either - until he came to the final line. A birthday present awaited, not at Evenwood post office, nor even Bishop Auckland, but at Darlington, a near 30-mile round trip. Peter's getting on; his car was off the road. "If they're so anxious to be helpful," he asks, "why must they make pensioners do that?"

....and finally, one of Sunday's papers described North West Durham MP Hilary Armstrong, the new Chief Whip and potential scourge of the Parliamentary Labour Party, as among the most influential women in government.

That day we happened to be in her genial company, firstly at the final service at Billy Row Methodist church - more of that in Saturday's At Your Service - afterwards in search of a pint and a lemonade at the legendary Cow Tail, a mile or so to the west.

Officially the Dun Cow, the Cow Tail is a wondrously unspoiled pub run by the Parkin family for 170 years. Latterly, however, opening hours have become ever more restricted. Thus it was that at 12.35pm on Sunday the door remained firmly barred. Steve Parkin, aroused, insisted that he no longer opened on Sunday lunchtime.

Beseeching expressions availed naught, not even from one of the country's most influential women. Next to dear old Steve Parkin, the PLP is a Playful Little Pussycat by comparison.

Published: 04/07/2001