Words: bleachers, n.

THOSE WHO know only the exhilarating Frank Sinatra/ Nelson Riddle version of "The Lady is a Tramp" will not have heard four-fifths of Lorenz Hart's 1937 lyric about somebody not fussed by the dictates of the style gurus, such as "I go to Coney - the beach is divine. / I go to ball games - the bleachers are fine".

This is a late-19th-century coining for cheap seats at a stadium that do not have any shade - seats where one is bleached. There are signs that it is now used for cheaper seats in general - but the new People's Opera at Covent Garden professed ignorance of the term. "We call them seats with restricted view - more of a mouthful."

An earlier version of bleach is blake - to make pale - but that faded away when confused with blacken.