Letter: I, Divvymost

Sir: Liverpudlians ('joc. native of Liverpool') will have been puzzled by the definition you quote from the new Shorter Oxford English Dictionary of 'divvy' as 'foolish' ('Oxford editors put in a word for Major', 24 August). For us joc. natives, the definition you quote from the OED for 'dweeb' would be closer to the mark ('a person who is boringly conventional, puny, or studious').

Somewhere around 1972 I was marching down Brownlow Hill from the Liverpool University campus with my nose in the air and three volumes of Spenser's Faerie Queene under my arm when a snotty little boy ran out of a block of flats and confronted me with: ' 'ey, lad, you're the divvymost]'

Yours faithfully,

NICHOLAS MURRAY

Kinnerton, Powys

24 August