Yet almost nobody, myself included, knows what a Higgs boson is, or at least can give a sensible description of it.

WSJ: Matt Ridley on the Higgs Boson | Mind & Matter

With or without rising gas prices, give us a description of what a fuel-efficient America would look like in terms of highways, railroads, housing, office buildings, shopping.

NPR: A Future Full of Pumped-Up Gas Prices?

Some ill-thought-out wording in the initiative then allowed Mr Lockyer, who has a statutory duty to give a pithy description of each initiative, to argue that it would deny death and disability benefits to the families of the state's firemen and police.

ECONOMIST: Arnold Schwarzenegger: A hard slog | The

Be prepared to give your agent or insurance company representative a detailed description of the damage to your property.

FORBES: Are Policyholders and Taxpayers Footing More of the Bill for Natural Disasters?

Perhaps it beats them, for no description of war or occupation could give readers a sense of history, culture and language being so smoothly and so speciously emptied of meaning.

ECONOMIST: Exiles from history

He refused to give the TV cameras a clip of him actually using the word "Scargillite" but he has used that description - amongst other more colourful ones - away from the cameras.

BBC: Blair warns strikers they cannot win