Madam, - Frank McNally, in his column, "The Last Straw", (March 27th) refers gloatingly to my letter of March 10th about the increasing tendency to use nouns as verbs and criticises me for saying that "I tend to bin the offending journal". I'm so glad that he got, however slowly, the point that I was making by using "bin" as a verb, even if it didn't dawn on him that that was my intention, which I'm sure was obvious to most readers. (He found, by consulting some reference books, "that the verb 'to bin' had sneaked in the back door of the English language and was now passing itself off as decent". Well done, Frank!). The intended humour also seems to have escaped him completely. Perhaps I should have italicised the word "bin"! - Yours, etc.,
EDDIE HAUGHEY, Muff, Co Donegal.