Those who are mightily unhappy at the state of our language have had some impressive voices in their camp. In 1712, the author of Gulliver’s Travels Jonathan Swift appealed to the Earl of Oxford for some form of linguistic law before it was too late. “My Lord; I do here in the Name of all the Learned and Polite Persons of the Nation, complain ….. that our Language is extremely imperfect; that its daily Improvements are by no means in proportion to its daily Corruptions; and the Pretenders to polish and refine it, have chiefly multiplied Abuses and Absurdities; and, that in many Instances, it offends against every Part of Grammar.”
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Read MoreAdd that to the insistence of Gen Z on flipping the existing meanings of words that have been with us for centuries, and you can see why some hearts are sinking. 2024 saw a whole new side to the word “brat”, while the expression “very demure, very mindful” sashayed from satire to style mantra within a matter of days.
Their disappointment only deepens when they hear dictionary-makers explain that their role is to describe language rather than prescribe it. Samuel Johnson, maker of one of the most important dictionaries in history, might have got away with rude pronouncements on anything foreign (including the Scots), but today’s documenters cannot.
Lexicographers will of course patiently set out our stall: that there never has been a golden age of English; that Shakespeare and Keats were equally derided for their verbal concoctions; and that new technology is routinely condemned for its improverishment of language. When challenged on the importance of rules, we will respond with “what rules?”. The only one in English that all of us regularly trot out is “I before e except after c”, yet as Stephen Fry in an episode of QI pointed out years ago, for every one word that conforms to the rule, there are 21 that don’t.
On top of all this, our vocabulary has never been reassuringly stable. Many of our words have undergone extraordinary changes of meaning: “silly” once meant “blissful”, “nice” meant “foolish”, and “travel” began with an instrument of torture.
So you won’t be seeing any penalty notices for grammatical infringements any time soon, but nor will you be watching chaos unfold. Language can be a brat sometimes – wild, unapologetic, and resolutely self-serving – but we party poopers wouldn’t have it any other way.
Susie Dent is a lexicographer and etymologist. She has appeared in Dictionary Corner on Countdown since 1992
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