Mind your language I HAVE just witnessed the English language
changing before my eyes, like a chameleon that has fallen into a bowl of borsch. The change occurred to the word cynic. I had seen it coming, because of the gathering number of catachrestic uses of the word.
A handy dictionary (the Oxford Concise) tells me that a cynic is I) 'a person who has little faith in human sincerity and integrity' or 2) 'one of a school of ancient Greek philosophers founded by Antisthenes, marked by ostentatious contempt for ease and pleasure'. Forget the second; that is clear enough in context. It is the first meaning that has changed.
It changed on the morning of 6 September, the day I read a paragraph by Boris Johnson, the editor of this magazine, in the Daily Telegraph. 'David Blunkett,' he wrote, 'is contemplating. , . something like the reception centres that the Tories proposed during the last election, and against which Labour whipped up a hysterical reaction. If that is so, then Labour is guilty of a quite disgusting cynicism.'
But, if this is true, Labour would lack sincerity and integrity. It would be Boris who was cynical enough (in the old sense) to see through Labour. His cynicism would not be disgusting but spot on. Mr Johnson is a lively and accurate writer, fully in touch with the language as spoken, but not, I think, hidebound by theoretical rules.
A few days before Boris's seal of guarantee on the new meaning, I had read in the Telegraph that 'people had become more cynical about charities because there are so many appeals'. Was that the old sense, or did it mean 'less sympathetic' or 'sceptical'?
I have frequently noticed examples of the misuse of cynical for 'sceptical', but that is not the change I am talking about now. Early in the Boris-illuming week, Mr lain Duncan Smith's words about Section 28 were also described as 'a cynical move', meaning 'insincere'. The Daily Mail quoted a report that 'Catholic families were accused of cynically using their children as pawns in the long-running battle of North Belfast', and on a different page asked, 'Is there no end to France's cynical disregard of this country's asylum problem?' The Daily Express agreed that the French were 'cynically shirking their international responsibilities'. The London Evening Standard said that the MP Mr Andrew Lansley 'has moved on from cynical opportunist to principled anti-racist'.
So cynical has become a sort of transferred epithet, no longer applying to the suspicious but to the suspect.
Dot Wordsworth
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