Toby Young
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As an experiment, I conducted a straw poll on Twitter in which I asked people to send me the words and phrases that irritated them most. Almost without exception, they singled out language used by people lower down the status ladder than themselves. For instance, many of them flagged up the management gobbledegook that has become deeply unfashionable since David Brent started using it in The Office. Examples include ‘blue sky thinking’, ‘outside the box’, ‘24/7’, ‘guestimate’ and ‘110 per cent’. No doubt there are several good reasons why people object to this jargon, but I am sure the main one is that the corporate drones who use it are ‘in trade’, to use a 19th-century expression. They are unlikely to have studied the humanities at an ancient university. ‘Anything said by Apprentice candidates,’ was how one of my correspondents put it. A variation on this theme was provided by people who disliked jargon used by employees of internet companies: ‘glocalisation’, ‘webinar’, ‘blogosphere’, ‘twitterverse’ and ‘i-EVERYTHING’.
Then there are those terms used by people trying to sound hip by appropriating the language of a ‘cool’ sub-culture. ‘Any word using the bro prefix for faux Californian effect,’ wrote one person, singling out ‘bromance’, ‘brofessor’ and ‘bromo sapien’. (Another example of faux Californian: ‘chilax’.) In the same vein, several respondents objected to white people using hip-hop slang: ‘Homey, that béarnaise sauce you made is whack. Do you know what I am saying? For Real.’ Perhaps the best example of this particular misuse of language is that provided by Alexei Sayle: ‘Anyone who uses the word “workshop” who isn’t connected with light engineering is a wanker.’ Inverted snobbery cropped up in lists of words and phrases used by Sloane Rangers. Thus, one person objected to anything ‘Cod- Shakespearean’ and singled out ‘mine host’ and ‘take a pew’. In the same vein, another correspondent wrote: ‘The use of “London Town”, “Londinium”, “the Smog” or any archaic term for London induces rage.’ The fact that such antiquated language is almost always used ironically offers its users no protection. Other people were just straightforwardly snobbish, offering examples of words that Alan Ross might have designated ‘Non-U’ if he was writing his essay today. These include ‘moist’, ‘gusset’, ‘Ciao’ (unless Italian is your first language), ‘eaterie’, ‘soirée’, ‘classy’ and ‘any size on the Starbucks menu’.
By accusing my correspondents of being snobs, I do not mean to imply that I am morally superior. I, too, have a long list of words that I consider unacceptable — and, like all of the above, their offensiveness consists in being used by people I think of as lower down the totem pole than me. I belong to the largest class of lexicographical snobs — those who consider themselves better educated and intellectually superior to the masses. For instance, the use of nouns as verbs brings me out in hives — ‘I messaged him’ — and missing apostrophes are almost as infuriating as unnecessary ones. I have a particular aversion to words that once had a derogatory meaning but are now complimentary, such as using ‘facile’ as a synonym for ‘versatile’. And it was difficult to disagree with the person who wrote: “‘hubby’, ‘hubs’ and ‘the hubz’ should be immediately stricken from the language.’ When it comes to words, we are all terrible snobs.
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