Mea Culpa: Eeyore, the most misunderstood animal in the Hundred Acre Wood

In an editorial this week, we noted Philip Hammond, the chancellor, “has been awarded the sobriquet of ‘Eeyore’ for his gloomy demeanour”.

I have had my doubts about the word “sobriquet” ever since I learned it is 17th-century French for a chuck under the chin. There is nothing wrong with the English “nickname”, the etymology of which is even more interesting. It is a corruption of “an eke-name”, using “eke” in its archaic sense of “also”. Still, if we are going to go for elegant variation, sobriquet is better than the ghastly, journalese “moniker” (mid-19th century, of unknown origin).

But I was really interested in the besmirching of Eeyore’s good name. This gives me the chance to recall a brilliant article by Robert Wright in the New Statesman last year, in defence of AA Milne’s stuffed donkey. As Wright said, the use of Eeyore’s name as a synonym for unhappy pessimism is a “misunderstanding of one of the key characters in children’s literature”.

The caricature is completely wrong: “Eeyore is the most deeply contented animal roaming the Hundred Acre Wood. He accepts reality and eschews the flights of fancy that lead other inhabitants into scrapes. It is time for a country undergoing a great upheaval to reclaim him from those who would paint him as a doom-monger.”

Hear, hear.

Torturous: This was not our error, but is a good excuse to point out a metaphor so worn by use that it has lost its original meaning. In a preview of the Salzburg summit, we reported an official as saying, of the leaders of the other 27 EU countries: “They are looking for something positive to say. Carrot and stick.”

As Julian Self, a reader, said some time ago, the thing about the carrot and stick is that they are both tortures. The carrot may be positive in the sense it appears to offer the prospect of something desirable, but it is a cruel trick. Incidentally, I was surprised the metaphor does not come from a traditional folk tale. It was coined by The Economist as recently as 1948.

As it turned out, the EU27 leaders didn’t even hold out the tempting but unattainable offer of a possible deal – they just said of the British proposal: “It won’t work.”

Semi-mythical beings: We used the word “legend” to describe Tommy Hilfiger, Michael Schumacher and Ry Cooder in separate articles this week. It is an overused word to describe people who are really good at something and still alive, as opposed to semi-mythical figures from ancient history.