Trust the Brits not to call a spade a spade. Speaking in the House of Commons in 1906, Winston Churchill preferred to use the expression ‘terminological inexactitude’ to ‘exaggeration’. A century on — on March 9, 2007 to be precise — Jack Straw, leader of the House, trying no doubt to be politically correct on the day after Women’s Day, ruled that ‘chairman’ would be replaced by ‘chair’. Straw was dismissed as a man of straw by former minister, Anne Widdecombe, who asserted that she was not a ‘chair’ because no one had ever sat upon her.The search for the circuitous phrase is not new. The British preferred to say ‘cloakroom’ or ‘WC’ when they meant ‘lavatory’: today the favourite phrase is ‘loo’. When Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Niggers was being staged in Birmingham, many objected to the title: the resourceful theatre management promptly changed it to Ten Little Indians. Somerset Maugham has related that when the manuscript of his novel, Liza of Lambeth, was to be published, he was asked to change the word ‘belly’ to ‘stomach’, which was thought to be more genteel. In post-war Britain, the goal of inter-racial relations was first ‘integration’. Later, it was dubbed ‘racial harmony’. Now the word is ‘multiculturalism’. No matter what they call it, recent events have shown the whole exercise to be futile.Not so long ago, Punjab separatists objected to being called ‘terrorists’, and wanted to be termed ‘militants’: what is known as ‘a section of the press’, duly complied. You have only to look at the matrimonial ads in newspapers to find the word ‘wheatish’ staring you in the face. People fight shy of describing themselves as ‘brown’ (‘brownish’?). Of course, ‘wheatish’ may eventually be admitted to the English dictionary, like ‘prepone’, another Indianism. The thesaurus of euphemisms now includes ‘differently-abled’ for (‘disabled’), and ‘commercial sex workers (‘prostitutes’). Celebrities now have ‘love-children’ (not ‘illegitimate children’). Former US president, Bill Clinton, when charged with indulging in a sexual escapade with a White House intern, confessed to having an ‘inappropriate relationship’. The high cost of dying is now reflected in the death of the word ‘undertaker’. It has been replaced by ‘mortician’ and ‘funeral director’. All of which shows that language is a living thing — and that’s what makes it such fun.
