“The Today programme carries an interesting item about how jackdaws decide when to take flight. They judge by the amount of noise from the jackdaw crowd. If it reaches a crescendo, they fly” – The Spectator, 28 May 2022.
I suppose the word “crescendo” has to be counted as a technical term, though it’s familiar enough and used frequently in precisely the way it’s used here. I never cease to be surprised, though, at how writers who must know what it means employ it as though it’s an abstruse term they can’t quite get their heads around.
