Monday, June 2, 2014

Seen today

I walked past the Radisson Hotel in central London today, and saw on the window of its restaurant the words “Scoff and Barter”.  I looked at the sign three times to make sure that I wasn’t misreading it.


For non-English speakers whose English may need a little bit of help to understand these two words, “to scoff” is to laugh at, and “to barter” is to bargain about the price of something to get it reduced.  Does the hotel really expect its guests to mock and to barter at the prices it charges them?


At least the sign caught my eye, so perhaps that, rather than its meaning, was the purpose.

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