You're listening to Away With Words, the show about language and how we use it. I'm Grant Barrett. And I'm Martha Barnett, and I have a new bit of slang that I learned this week. Grant, it's Nobly Monster. Nobly. Is that with a K, K-N-O-B-B-L-Y? Yes, Nobly Monster. What is a Nobly Monster? Well, it's a term that's used in British newsrooms.

It originated with one of the tabloids where a reporter was writing about a crocodile attack,

but he didn't want to keep using the word crocodile.

So instead, he referred to it as a knobbly monster.

I bet he caught so much flag on the newsroom for that. Yeah. refer to it as a nobly monster.

I bet he caught so much flag on the newsroom for that.

Well, he did, and that term is now used for that second reference.

You know, when you're trying to be creative, I think every writer has run into that, you know,

where you just use the same word over and over over and you want to say it a different way.

Yeah, there's a term for that. It's elegant variation when you're hard pressed on the second reference, so you come up with a more elegant way to say something.

Oh, that's fabulous. Okay. Well, I got a couple of other classic elegant variations or knobbly monsters.

One of them is for bed.

Somebody referred to that as

the horizontal sleeping surface.

Oh, goodness.

And one more,

The Unfortunate Ungulate.

That was when somebody was writing

about a sheep stuck in a car.

A sad sheep?

Yeah, that would have been

another good third reference.

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