When British people are worked up about something, they don’t have a furor. Oh, no. Perish the thought! They go and have a furore.

(I’m highly amused by furore as a word. One would think, by such examples as color/colour and flavor/flavour that the British spelling of furor might be furour, but oho, British English is way too crafty for that! Furore it is.)

And I know it’s a mere quirk of orthography, but please indulge me—I like to think of furores (stress on the second syllable) as Very British furors. Nixon’s involvement in a breach of the DNC headquarters in 1972 caused a furor, but King Edward VIII’s whirlwind romance with an American divorcée in 1936 caused a furore. In my imagination, any old widespread unrest can be a furor, but a furore is not complete without tea-bags and British accents and tiny Union Jack flags.

Sorry. I will show myself out now.