Thought that would grab your attention. I do like a snappy heading. Sitting at my desk watching Italy-Spain at the festival of diving, whingeing, cheating, moaning and crying that is Euro 2008 and what should my thoughts turn to? Why the linguistic incompetence of my fellow citizens of course.
Following my last rant about football-speak, here are a few of the myriad examples of the drivel I have to endure daily (or 'on a daily basis', as one of you lot would no doubt say).
Just seen the umpteenth football-fairy fall over like a giant buttercup. Are they playing in plimsolls? Or is the pitch saturated with hair gel? Anyway, enough of these preening pansies.
If you find yourself coming out with any of the nonsense below, then you should consider following the example of the boxer-philosopher Richard Dunn, who, at the end of his boxing career, decided to take himself off to a hut in northern Norway, where he taught himself Norwegian so that he could read Ibsen in the original. Good for you Ricardo.
'Added bonus'. They all are. If there was such a thing as a reductive bonus, it would be called a penalty. What people are sometimes trying to say is 'another bonus'
'Main protagonist'. Often used by those who shouldn't know better to mean 'participant'. A protagonist is the 'main player' in a drama, so if he is not the main one, he can't be a protagonist.
'Bitter and twisted'. Usually uttered by the unthinking, understimulated ignoramus to mean 'embittered'. Widespread among the lower orders, along with verbiage such as 'he/she turned round and said'. Their empty heads must be spinning with all those twists and revolutions.
'Fraction'. As in 'fraction of the cost', intended to indicate something very small. My maths is rubbish, but I think nine-tenths is a fraction, and my abacus tells me it equates to 90%: quite a bit.
'Rape and pillage'. How many people who use this expression would say 'pillage' without prefacing it with 'rape'. If I were a betting man, I'd wager very few of them know what it means. 'Rape' is almost certainly superfluous(although I've always enjoyed it).
'Opening gambit'. Define 'gambit'. Thought not. When did this creep into the vocabulary(lol) of the linguistically limited? Are we a nation of clandestine chess-lovers? If so, it is the best-kept secret since the wit and wisdom of Leslie Dennis.
'General consensus'. Boringly over-used. Surely everyone knows a consensus is a general agreement? Don't they? Gawd elpus.
'Free gift'. I'll leave you to work that one out yourself.
'Meet with'. Try meeting without.
'Decimate'. Usually used to mean 'destroyed' or 'annihilated'. There is a clue in the word itself. One in ten. Not too bad a 'result'. lol.
There are lots of other examples. I might return to them at a later date. At the moment I am distracted by Samantha eating a large ice cream. She says she loves licking the nuts off a large Neapolitan.
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