Times, November 20, 2024
‘Coruscating’ means exactly the opposite of what the Times writer/sub intends. It means ‘sparkling’ or ‘flashing’ as in ‘a coruscating diamond tiara’. The word wanted here was probably ‘excoriating’, which means ‘scathing’ or ‘severely critical’. While checking this I was horrified to find that Oxford Languages, the self-proclaimed ‘world’s leading dictionary publisher’, accepts ‘scathing’ as a secondary definition after the correct one. This is simply legitimising an incorrect usage. I give up.