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The Spectator
It occurred to me the other day that just as people retire and then fade in to oblivion, so too, words have their era, are invited everywhere and then get outdated and are put out to pasture.
Remember the word hypocrite? Haven’t heard it for a long time. To refer to a charlatan these days, people use the more colourful ‘fraudster’. Similarly ‘cheats’ have become ‘conmen’. And a ‘hoax’ is seldom a hoax any more — but a ‘scam.’
Which side of the language divide do you belong to? Are you aware that the words you utter date you horribly? When describing someone who has qualified for something, do you say they’ve ‘made the grade’ or the trendier ‘made the cut’? The first puts you somewhere in the pre-reform Seventies, the second in the post reform IT-empowered new century.
Do you describe a job that you work for seven days a week as ‘weekly’ or ‘24x7’? Does a party that’s successful strike you as ‘happening’ or ‘rocking’? And when you are relaxed, are you the terribly outdated ‘informal’ or the trendier MTV bequeathed ‘unplugged’?
What about business terms? Do you still say ‘end result’? Tch Tch. Hasn’t any one told you that makes you a dinosaur? It’s ‘bottom-line’ dude. And are you going to, ‘go over’ the official report? You might just as well not, if you cannot ‘scan’ it like the rest of the civilised world.
Do you use the anachronistic ‘blow their own trumpet’ when you should be saying the succinct ‘hype’ instead? And do you betray your gaucheness by calling people ‘pompous’ — when you should call them ‘snobs’? Or reveal which side of the railway track you came from by substituting ‘posh’ for ‘up-market’?
When you are troubled, do you complain you are ‘tense’ — which is so last decade — or ‘stressed’ which is so today? In your book does a couple ‘break-up’ or ‘split’? According to you is Sri Sri Ravi Shankar a ‘Godman’ or a ‘Guru’? The first places you in contemporary times, the second in the last century. And does a film ‘flop’ for you any more — or does it ‘bomb’?
Think about it. The language you speak betrays your age. So if you are still saying someone was ‘strangulated’ you deserve to be so yourself.
And on that happy note — I am not ending the column as much as ‘splitting the scene’.