WHEN does the Strop Gear fracas become an altercation? Could the Bop Gear quarrel have been a scuffle or a mêlee? And will it end in Stop Gear, with the sacking of one of TV’s most colourful, and therefore controversial, of characters?

A wide variety of puns have been deployed in the headlines, and even more words have been employed to describe what happened in a North Yorkshire hotel when Jeremy Clarkson wanted a hot steak but was instead offered a cold collation.

The BBC itself described it as a “fracas”, an elegant European word meaning “a disturbance or noisy quarrel”. "Fracas" was first recorded in the English language in 1727, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, in a letter by Lady Mary Monatgu, the rather scandalous wife of the British ambassador in Istanbul.

Knowing that this French-based word was a little strange, the BBC then took to calling the incident in the Simonstone Hall Hotel an “altercation”, another word with a French background. It means "a vehement dispute or a heated debate", particularly in a court of law.

The same report also referred to the incident as a “quarrel”, another French-based legalese word which we’ve been using since the 14th Century. It means “an accusation or complaint against a person”.

After the initial talk of a fracas, reporters managed to discover anonymous eye-witnesses to shed more light on the altercation. One said: “It was a mêlee, there were no clear punches thrown.” This is a brilliantly appropriate word, working its way from French into common usage in English about 250 years ago and it means “a battle or engagement at close quarters, a hand to hand fight”. And you can imagine the bullish Mr Clarkson in a mêlee - refreshed on rosé wine, his tummy rumbling and his lined smoker’s face snarling as he engaged at close quarters with a minion in the half light of the 15th Century hotel having being offered a smorgasbord instead of a steak.

“Clarkson got angry, it was more like a scuffle,” said another anonymous eye-witness, choosing another very appropriate word. It is probably of Scandinavian origin, popularised by William Shakespeare, and defined as “a scrambling fight, an encounter with much hustling and random exchange of blows”.

Co-presenter James May was then doorstepped by a camera and asked his opinion. He was the only one to employ a slang phrase, saying it was “a bit of a dust-up”, a journalistic phrase to describe a quarrel or disturbance which crept into the English language via the Daily News – the paper founded by Charles Dickens – in 1897.

The BBC is now undertaking a very expensive investigation to discover what happened in the hotel near Hawes. But a quick flick through the dictionary will tell them much of what they want to know: it was a confused struggle, a scrambling scuffle, a vehement engagement at close quarters with random, ill-defined blows. The linguistic evidence suggests that the bust-up was just a bit of a dust-up that did not come close to being a fully blown punch-up.

And on that bombshell...