Celebrating the wonderful descriptive ability of the world's journalists
It started with a fish finger.
More specifically, it started when Juliet read a newspaper article that referred to fish fingers as "the cod digits" and immediately rang Matthew to share the good news.
He was not surprised. He had been waiting for this moment for years. That was over a decade ago. Since then, @SecondMentions has been quietly documenting the noble, desperate, occasionally unhinged lengths that British journalists go to in order to avoid repeating themselves.
A spider is "the eight-legged marvel". Boris Johnson, depending on the publication, is "the clown prince of politics" or, our personal favourite, "the blond disruptor". You begin to wonder if anyone at certain newspapers is allowed to write the word "potato" twice. The answer, it turns out, is no. And that's brilliant news for all of us.
Juliet & Matthew
We are Juliet and Matthew Maguire, a husband-and-wife team living and working in London, with a strong connection to the world of journalism. We’ve been running our Second Mentions account on X/Twitter since 2013, building up a devoted following.
Juliet
Former journalist, now BBC product manager, Juliet began her career as a reporter and editor at local and national newspapers, which means she has, at some point, almost certainly written a second mention herself. She refuses to confirm which ones.
Favourite second mention: "cod digits" (fish fingers) closely followed by “the porcine-poultry hybrid” (sausage rolls)
Matthew
Matthew has spent fifteen years working in sport, which means he has read more sports journalism and therefore more creative synonyms for "footballer" than almost anyone alive. He is carrying this knowledge with dignity.
Favourite second mention: "porkers" (pigs)
What they said...
The Times called Second Mentions "the best thing on social media," a description we choose to take completely at face value with no caveats whatsoever. In August 2025, Biteback Publishing released The Little Book of Second Mentions: The Art of Avoiding Repetition, bringing together the finest and most gloriously unnecessary examples from over a decade of dedicated reading.
Victoria Coren Mitchell called it "an extremely funny idea". The Financial Times called it "a delightful book for anyone who loves words." Rachel Johnson, LBC, called it "the perfect loo read." We are choosing to focus on the Victoria Coren Mitchell one.
Got one?
If you've spotted a second mention you'd like to share, we want to hear from you. Submit them here. If it's good enough, and even if it's wonderfully terrible, it may well appear in the weekly roundup.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for noticing. And thank you, above all, to every journalist who ever stared at a deadline, looked at the word "apple", and thought: no. We can do better than this.
"the world's third most popular fruit"
apple
