A selection of headlines from stories in the news. They use English in a way that you might think is intended to confuse but it’s all perfectly clear to the native speaker.
This headline in the Daily Mirror describes an attack by a chef on one of his staff, after a famous food critic branded his food disgusting. The worst thing is the food critic, AA Gill, was only “joking” – he later gave the restaurant a rating of four out of five in his Sunday Times column. Ah that famous British sense of humour.
The headline is a play on something you still find on British menus (yes, even though it’s French) the “plat du jour”, which means “dish of the day”. The word “splat” describes the sound of something soft and wet or heavy striking a surface – in this case the hand of a chef landing on a kitchen worker. Personally I would have used “spat”, which means “A petty quarrel”.