👉 Right, let’s tackle that wonderfully prickly little wiggle of a word:’long-eared. Now, traditionally, when you hear "long-eared," most immediately conjure up the image of a seriously stately bunny rabbit sporting a rather fetching handlebar moustache of fluff and cartilage, wouldn't you agree? And frankly, there's nothing wrong with that! Bunnies are lovely.
But honestly, the descriptive term goes far beyond the floppy-pawed and frankly adorable. Historically, in British English (where it’s still sometimes thrown around rather cheekishly), a "long-eared gentleman (or lady! ț)—that is, a man or woman who was, let's just say, noticeably awkward, socially inept, perhaps even a little… out of touch—was described as such. You know. The sort that tripped on the doorstep and then spent five minutes earnestly explaining the migratory habits of the lesser spotted woodpecker to an uninterested badger. Essentially? Long-eared meant you were operating somewhere beyond the immediately accessible current of human conversation, possibly even a bit…distant from reality. It wasn't necessarily insulting, mind, just… pointedly observant in that way where someone was giving it a really good once over with their binoculars. Here’s our unsettling example: The old woman, entirely long-eared and blinking slowly as if recalibrating her entire perspective of the afternoon, simply stared at the wilting sunflowers until my carefully
