Even business-speak can age and die
Sitting in a high-rise flat staring at a computer screen, it’s easy to believe there was a time when our language was untainted by attempts to make it ugly and incomprehensible. Perhaps in the early part of the last century – when life was innocent and people had more respect (despite the world wars) – people used plain English and editors led simple and carefree lives.
Not so, unfortunately. Evidence suggests that the troublemakers have been at it for some time. But there is hope.
I was out on the blogosphere this week – promoting my new comparative adverb – when I was distracted by a fascinating blog post at ‘The Lexicographer’s Rules’.
The post is about the criminal slang used 80 years ago and looks at what has survived and what not. Naturally, my first reaction was to reach for my 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue and compare the entries for words like ‘quim’, ‘chiv’ and ‘lug’.
It got me thinking about how words evolve and go out of fashion – even in business speak and government.
In the 1948 edition of Plain Words, Gowers talks about ‘decontaminate’, ‘derestrict’ and ‘derequisition’ being “here to stay”, but where do you come across ‘derestrict’ or ‘derequisition’ these days?
Gowers has a go at economists for coming up with ‘diseconomy’ and ‘dissaving’ – neither of which are used now as far as I know. And he complains about the suffix ‘ee’, as in ‘assignee’, ‘referee’, ‘expellee’, ‘persecutee’, ‘awardee’ and ‘amputee’, most of which haven’t survived.
Almost 30 years later, Times columnist Philip Howard wrote a book called New Words for Old which looks at the roots of words and how they have evolved. It includes chapters on ‘compound’ which has come to mean ‘aggravate’ in business circles and ‘consensus’:
“as the agreement by which the major parties agree to co-operate in order to keep the political initiative and power in parliamentary hands”.
(No doubt we can expect a consensus over MPs’ expenses some time soon.)
And there’s a chapter on ‘reflation‘, which I hadn’t heard of but is apparently still used. Howard writes:
“The economists have invented as tools of their arcane and inexact science both reflation and disinflation… and given them quite specific meanings…”
He goes on to say:
“However, dishonest demagogues and thoughtless economists and journalists have seized on relfation as a euphemism for inflation…”
What’s the betting it will reappear in general usage some time soon?
