Words: warmedy, n.

" `HOW MUCH will it cost to murder my mistress?' The vicar's voice was urgent. That would put the price up." It is easy enough to come up with a memorable opening, harder to produce the rest - and even Tolstoy's sign-off to Anna Karenina is no match for the opening; indeed, few can quote it.

Many an ending does not have the courage of its convictions but goes soft. This is perhaps a human, certainly an American tendency. Yet to reach any dictionary is the recent coining of warmedy, for those sit-coms that seek to promulgate an uplifting spirit. But will warmedy take off? After all, much of Joyce is not on any lips - even though "cropse" (a life -and-death merging of crops and corpse) could be handy in these grim days of Monsanto's mengele food.