Words: slenderise, v.

HARVEY BREIT'S little-known New York Times interviews - The Writer Observed (1957) - delay sleep. No griller, he catches authors on the wing. Waugh, for one, remarks, "Psychology - there isn't such a thing as psychology. Like the word slenderising. There isn't such a word. The whole thing's a fraud."

Often deemed American, slenderise was current with Waugh's first novels. The Daily Mail advertised "corsets for slenderising full figures" and the Express lauded "the graceful slenderising V-cut accentuated by removable front of deep ivory crepe de Chine." On Waugh's physique, Breit is excellent: "A remark he makes suggests cynicism, or perhaps a satiric humour, but Mr Waugh's face - bland, pink and cherubic - suggests only innocence."