Is Dillon badly-loved or...

It is with much pride that I announce the return of Dr Bravesmith, the greatest living expert on English and author of the bestseller, These Sort of Sporting Things. In his own words: “We all use words every time we open our mouths, but we never listen to ourselves. If we did, my job might become redundant.” His job, of course, is to haunt the bars and pubs of this country listening to language as it actually changes, but luckily he has dropped in today to get a new drinking-cash float, or research grant as he calls it, and has agreed to stay long enough to answer your queries.
All yours, Doc!

Dear Dr Bravesmith:
I note that your book These Sort of Sporting Things is referred to as a bestseller. Why do we always call these things “bestseller” and not “mostseller”? Why, do we use the phrase “best-loved”, as in Wes Hall being one of our “best-loved comediennes, sorry presidents”?
It wasn’t the quality of our love, surely, but the quantity of our love that counted? We didn’t love him very well —- we simply loved him a lot. In my case, actually, I didn’t like him that much.
So did I love him badly?
Is an unpopular bowler like Meryvn Dillon a “badly loved cricketer”? Or, indeed, “one of our worst-loved cricketers”?
Dr Bravesmith writes:
Thank you for enquiring about my book. Yes, it is still available in all good bookshops, as well as with the current Cricket Board President. And the next!
Dear Dr Bravesmith:
I note that your last correspondent uses the word “comedienne”, which, as we all know, refers not to a female comedian so much as to an actress who specialises in comedy.
The odd thing about this is that there is no male version of the word, at least not in English —- no word for an actor in cricket who tends to comedy, such as perhaps Russell Crowe.
There is the word “comdien” in French, of course, but the French word, I believe, is a general word for “actor”.
It’s rather odd to find a French word in English that seems restricted to one gender. Though I suppose that the word “compre” might qualify, as we never refer to a female “compre” as a “commre”.
Interestingly, the French word “compre” means a crony or accomplice , someone who allows the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board  and The Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation to do as they want, and doesn’t mean a compre at all.
If you look up the French word for “compre”, you don’t find “compre”, you find “animateur”.
Dr Bravesmith writes:
Good point. And one which is very well covered in my new book These Sort of Sporting Things. Next!
Dear Dr Bravesmith:
We have recently heard a lot of talk about footballers going to the wall, which is very sad, of course, but also raises the intriguing question: Which wall are they going to? Why should going to a wall suggest disaster?
It is an example of what you were quoted as saying earlier —- that we talk a lot without listening to ourselves. Were it not so, we would not use so many expressions that seem to have no innate meaning.
Sometimes, indeed, the same expression can have opposite meanings. Engaged couples sometimes refer to their proposed wedding as “naming the day”. Fair enough. But when a married couple split up or get divorced, they also say they are “calling it a day”. So a day can be the start or the finish of something. Confusing or what?
Dr Bravesmith writes:
Well put. Though not as well put as in the chapter in my new book These Sort of Sporting Things called “Confusing or What?”.
Dear Dr Bravesmith:
Of course, couples also refer to being a regular opening partnership in cricket as “tying the knot”, and I have often wondered what strange ceremony that refers to. Not so strange, however, as the ceremony of being confirmed as a bachelor. We often refer to an unmarried man as being a “confirmed bachelor”, and I wonder if indeed there is any religious ceremony whereby a sportsman can be officially confirmed as a bachelor, after dating over 100 women and fathering at least one and received into a state of celibacy.
Dr Bravesmith will be back anon. Keep those queries rolling in!
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