Words: Experiential, adj.

SHOULD HER Majesty make Chris Woodhead, her Chief Inspector of Schools, stand in the corner? For him, to dally with a sixth- former is "educative and experiential" all round.

It is hardly a romantic word ("feeling experiential, darling? I'll chill the Chablis"). Indeed, according to Coleridge's The Statesman's Manual (1816), where it first appears: "The understanding or experiential faculty, unirradiated by the reason, has no appropriate object but the material world." Oddly, it was first used as an adverb (1647) by Henry More - and to describe the spiritual influence on the soul.

Woodhead's text is more Cole Porter. He "learned reliance / On the sacred teachings of science": youth should "do what all good scientists do. / Experiment."