[H]e took off his Highland bonnet, and performed a bow and scrape.

[…] everywhere you see listings festooned with Goto statements and peppered with peeks and pokes.

Windmilling the arms and rotating the hand from the wrist are examples of circumduction.

His interest in railways is not the quality that marks Pearson out. Everyone was interested in railways. Over a thousand miles of them opened between 1837 and 1845, most of what would become the national network. … You needed an Act of Parliament to build a railway; but that wasn't very hard to obtain if you could give the appearance of adequately funded competence.