LOL? YUCK! THE BUZZWORDS THAT ARE SO LAST YEAR
MUMMY Pathway porn, — just LOL, some Care of the that irritating crept into phrases the language in 2012 and became common usage among politicians, the chattering classes and ‘ twitterati’ ( there’s another!). PHILIP
NORMAN picks the worst offenders . . .
1. Reach out to: Implies some sort of extra effort (often by an inhuman customer services department) but actually simply means to telephone or email. Does anyone really have arms that long? Just as bad as ‘going that extra mile’.
2. Go figure: A favourite with people who like to be patronising with an American accent. ( Has replaced ‘ You do the math.’)
3. Mummy porn: Fiction genre created by E.L. James’s sublimely awful Fifty Shades of Grey, which allowed respectable females to read about sado-masochism openly on public transport. Truly, there’s one porn every minute.
4. 50 Shades of . . . : Ubiquitous hijacking of porn-fest title, in books (50 Shades of Mr Darcy; 50 Shades of Red,White and Blue), headlines and products ranging from lingerie, perfume and CDs to hair- dye, baby-wear, tea (50 Shades of Earl Grey) and vegetables (50 Shades of Green).
5. Care pathway: Most misleading euphemism since ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘friendly fire’. It’s actually a system where NHS hospitals have received financial incentives for withholding nutrition and hydration from terminally ill patients. In other words, an uncaring dead-end.
6. Plebgate: And all other derivations of Watergate. Actually, the controversy about former chief whip Andrew Mitchell being prevented from using a particular gate in Downing Street should have been called ‘Gategate’. 7. Pasty Tax, aka Pastygate: George Osborne’s short-lived ‘tough decision’ to levy VAT on warmed-up takeaway food. Memorable for one piemaker’s description of pasties from stalls as ‘an out-of-home eating opportunity.’
8. Mansion: Ordinary house overtaken by property inflation, causing its owner to be regarded as a millionaire — and so a potential victim of punitive extra taxes if the Lib Dems get their way.
9. Step aside: Magic formulation where senior BBC figures in the Newsnight/Jimmy Savile fiasco were allowed to keep their jobs and vast salaries. After the scandal, a BBC statement referred to its director of news, Helen Boaden, and her deputy, Stephen Mitchell, ‘ stepping aside’. Boaden has kept her job. Mitchell has not. As the Corporation saying goes: ‘deputy heads will roll’.
10. Variations of Twitter: ‘ Twitterverse,’ ‘ Twitterati’, ‘Twypo’ (typo while tweeting) Only permissible one in future should be noun for chronic tweeter — tw*t.
11. Hashtag: The means by which Tweets on the same subject are grouped together on Twitter#, allowing users such as Sally Bercow and Tulisa to share their profoundest thoughts and insights. 12. Water-cooler moment: Times when office workers supposedly gather to discuss the latest dreary Scandinavian police drama. 13. Not fit for purpose: Often redundant, since it applies to most public services, from exam-marking to the UK Border Agency. But does allow incoming ministers or chief executives to sound like brisk new brooms.
14. Deliver: Verb once used for supplies brought to one’s door like milk or groceries, but now applied to any kind of product or service. London’s Camden Council promises to ‘deliver cleaner streets’. 15. LOL: Used in David Cameron’s controversially ‘cosy’ text correspondence with former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks. Did it mean ‘lots of love’ or ‘laugh out loud’? The episode has made us all do quite a bit of the latter.
16. ‘Oh . . . OK’: Conversational tic, meaning, ‘I haven’t a clue what you’re on about but I’ll humour you.’
17. Heston’s: Prefix for the seemingly endless TV cookery shows by Britain’s most egomaniacal chef, featuring snailflavoured ice cream, ice lollyshaped foie gras or six foot-high KitKat bars. I’m waiting for this foodie Frankenstein to serve up his own sweaty, shaven head with half a lemon in his mouth.
18. Downton: The TV drama which has spawned a whole servants’ quarters of phrases such as ‘A butler’s life is 24/7 . . .’ ‘It’s been a learning curve . . .’ ‘ Don’t you realise this is the First World War? . . .’ (one of these was actually used in the latest series) 19. Jeremy Paxman’s regular grammatical error on University Challenge: ‘With an average age of 21, let’s meet the team . . .’ Phrased like this, it’s the ‘us’ of ‘let us’ that should have the average age of 21. This is a misrelated participle — colloquially known as a ‘dangler’.
20. Thanks both: Pet phrase of Radio Four Today programme’s Evan Davis, usually after extended drone by, first, Business Editor Robert Peston, then Economics Editor Stephanie Flanders.
21. Bring it on: The way that annoying TV quiz/game show contestants let us know they’re fighting fit and ready for absolutely anything — i.e. the next question.
22. Legacy: Stirring but gloriously vague justification for having spent £ 9 billion we supposedly couldn’t afford on the 2012 Olympics.
23. Chillax: A mixture of ‘chill’ and ‘relax’. Most commonly used by teenagers — as when to their they’ve agitated run up parents a monster have trashed phone the bill house. or their friends
24. Gamesmakers:
volunteers in muddy pink The T-shirts a polite, who helpful made place Britain during seem the Olympics. Why only then?
25. Beach volleyball: Most over-hyped and boring sport since curling. At a time when sex crimes of the dead are being investigated by police, any men watching it would probably risk arrest.
26. Step up to the plate: Or, rise to the occasion, used by people mostly unaware it’s a term for batting in baseball. Though weirdly appropriate when used by contestants on MasterChef. 27. Does what it says on the tin: That is, lives up to advertising. Meaningless, since almost nothing comes in tins any more.
28. A perfect storm: Applied to every kind of social turbulence from media interest in a new celeb to bargain-hunters at sales — but, oddly, never to the actual tempests we’re enduring.
29. Gangnam Style: Inexplicably popular Korean pop song, below even the level of the Eurovision Song Contest, featuring idiotic dance which now ‘everyone’ is doing.
30. Fascinator: Minute female headgear that usually contravenes the Trades Descriptions Act (especially when worn by Zara Phillips).
31. Arab Spring: Brief budding of democracy in Middle East, promptly followed by resurgence of wintry tyranny.
32. Ping: Verb, to send by email. Or ‘ping back’ if it’s something being returned. How much less important could the material sound?
33. You need to: American import, somehow far ruder than ‘You must.’
34. Speed-dial: As in ‘Brad Pitt has Tom Ford on . . .’ Simple namedropping is no longer enough. 35. Ludicrous fashions with nursery names: Such as ‘onesies’, or romper suits for grownups, and ‘meggings’ — leggings for men.
36. Take the hit: As happened to Starbucks, Google et al when forced to pay UK tax they’d previously avoided. Implies strength and stoicism rather than getting rumbled.
37. Game: Meaning profession or job, as in ‘raise his game’, ‘at the top of her game’.
38. Historic: Sinister police term for sex offences allegedly committed by showbiz personalities 30 or more years ago. (Should these also count as ‘legacy’?)
39. Bear with me: Bizarrely over-intimate appeal of telephone operators, usually when misdirecting your call.
40. Do you need a bag?: Supermarket checkout person’s automatic question having rung up maybe 20 different items. ‘ Need’ implies ‘ This is your chance to think again before destroying Antarctica’.