I’m quite getting into my stride with this blogging business. It’s great – if no one wants to listen to my ramblings, it doesn’t matter. I just write it here and fling it into cyberspace. Here’s today’s…
We all know that language evolves – and so it should, it’s an organic thing.
Yet when something new arrives it makes me bristle. I just want to yell: “It’s not a word like that. It’s not that part of speech. Stop it.”
We managed fine at the hairdresser before ‘product’ started to be a noun to refer to any goop you put on your hair. Previously we had ‘gel’, ‘spray’, ‘mousse’ or ‘Brylcreem’ depending.
I suppose it just became impossible to invent new words quick enough to keep pace with the gurus of goop.
I came across another one today. ‘Elders’ used to refer collectively to older people.
As in “we had to explain how we would encourage elders to use internet technology in a safe and secure environment” for something that happened on Silver Surfers’ Day.
Now, I’d probably bet that one of the ‘elders’ (who in this instance are over 50) would cheerfully stuff a keyboard down the throat of that patronising person.
But having written news stories and press releases featuring the more mature members of society, ‘elders’ will come in damn handy.
It’s inaccurate to write ‘old age pensioners’ especially as they might, under 65, not be pensioners, ditto grannies. ‘The elderly’ makes them sound like they’ve got one foot in the proverbial. ‘Old folk’, simply yuk. ‘Wrinklies’, ‘crinklies’ and ‘coffin dodgers’ won’t do.
We’ll be stuck with ‘elders’ I fear, it’s just too useful.