Mind your language

Spectator, The, Jan 3, 1998 by Wordsworth, Dot

THE winner of the Turner Prize for 1997 had made a video of some ranks of policemen standing stock-still for an hour. My less realistic ideal for 1998 would be for the scribblers in the newspapers and the gabblers on the telly to go through a whole year without using these 12 words: trademark (except when referring to trademarks), ground-breaking, homophobic, community (as in `Britain's astronomical community'), gender (for people), inspirational, legendary, perceived, a tad, supportive, lifestyle, and firefighter.

I won't bore on; the objection to most of these words is obvious. Homophobic is a crass example of erroneous folketymology (the homo-element coming from the Greek for `the same' not the Latin for 'a man', let alone anything that denotes homosexuality).

Inspirational is an all-purpose hooray word, like charismatic; it has no content beyond general praise. And whatever happened to inspiring? Legendary usually means `not legendary'.

Perceived is a weasel word implying, though not saying, `falsely perceived'. A tad is a mysteriously voguish word used by would-be smart writers instead of a bit or slightly.

Supportive, lifestyle and firefighter are only too popular among earnest people whose awareness of language is limited, in the same way as their knowledge of the world, to fashionable causes such as rainforests. One of the problems with supportive is that it can suggest that the supportive person not only gives you emotional succour but also actually agrees with you, which need not be the case.

Lifestyle is what those who are too trendy to achieve a settled way of life settle for. And firefighter is for idiots who go around frightened of offending women by saying fireman.

But I do not suppose the offenders could manage a week without these favourite words, let alone a year.