A smallish round-up of words and phrases appropriate for this week. As you may know, the period of Lent begins tomorrow, when Christians across the globe will fast (if they are particularly devout) or symbolically give something up in the forty day run-up to Easter. So, today is Shrove Tuesday – well, for Brits and Aussies it is. This is the day when, in times gone by, all the fats and sugary items in the house would be used up in preparation for the fast. Now it’s just an excuse to scoff lots of pancakes and feel sick. The word shrove is the past tense of shrive – a verb meaning “to grant remission of sins”. It actually follows Shrove Monday, which is something I didn’t know until I looked into it. It’s known as carnival in many European countries (Spain, Italy, Germany) and – more famously – Mardi Gras in South America and the USA. The name means “Fat Tuesday” and again refers to the feasting on fatty foodstuffs before the fast. I just realized the unintentional alliteration in the previous sentence. Nice.

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