Gordon bennett saying goodbye

James Gordon Bennett (right) and his playboy son, Gordon Bennett

The English language is the most widely taught and understood in the world, yet the origins of many of its words and phrases remain a mystery. Now word sleuths are hoping to employ the public's experience to help explain some common words.

It's not an epitaph one would wish for - to become the physical embodiment of a swear word. But how else do you explain Gordon Bennett, the expression of surprise that, in lewder company, would take four-letter form?

But who was the original Gordon Bennett, and how did he come to be immortalised in the English language?

No one knows for sure, which is why the country's leading language experts are consulting the public on the origins of this and dozens of other vexing words and phrases,

In tracking the origins of Gordon Bennett, these - to employ the parlance of a notable linguistic conjurer of our times - are the known unknowns:

• There were two famous