Education Secretary Sets New Standard In English

Education minister Michael Gove today unveiled a radical new standard in English for schools to follow, which scholars of linguistics have tentatively labelled ‘making words up as you go along’.

Launching what promises to be the first of many innovative and incomprehensible noises, Mr Gove pledged that the controversial new ‘free’ schools the Tories have set up would have “no space for teaching of wackoidal theories” based on religious beliefs (or possibly ‘wackodial’, as reporters struggle to get to grips with his new coinage).

Out of the mouths of babes and Oxford-educated Cabinet ministers...

According to experts, the stem of Mr Gove’s peculiar new sound seems to be the slang expression ‘wack’ – meaning either ‘lame’ or ‘sorry-ass’, ‘to masturbate’, or ‘indicating low or dubious quality’.

“The term is frequently used aggressively by rappers in their self-styled ‘hairstyling’ battles,” observed Dr. Mortimer Strangelove, a veteran Oxford English Dictionary lexicographer. “The ‘-oid’ suffix indicates that the object being described in some way resembles one or more definitions of ‘wack’, but unfortunately this does not help us to decipher which particular meaning is intended.”

“More helpfully, however, -al’, the other suffix used by Mr Gove, can be added to verbs to turn them into nouns, e.g. to confess - confession - confessional,” he droned on. “Therefore, since the only verb definition of ‘wack’ is ‘to masturbate’, it would appear that the education secretary is, in his sadly inarticulate way, attempting to reassure the nation that free schools will be barred from teaching children anything which resembles a religious theory of masturbation.”

“I’m sure this information will be of great comfort to parents,” he added sagely. “If Michael Gove carries on making bizarre noises, do give me a shout.”