Q. My friend E’s son is about to have what
she calls an ‘illegitimate’ baby — her son is not married to the mother of this child. Her problem is how to introduce this woman without using the word ‘partner’, which she finds an abomination no matter how fashionable it has become. I too find the word not only irritating but misleading. Deborah Ross in your journal is an arch-perpetrator of this trend. I am intrigued to know whether her ‘partner’ is a business partner, a tennis partner, the father (or mother) of her child or even a partner in crime. Please find us a more elegant and informative word.
R.Y., Cobbitty, NSW, Australia A. Since you ask, the partner Miss Ross refers to is the father of her son and therefore a romantic partner. Yet ‘partner’, with its business connotations, is generally agreed to be an unsatisfactory term where open-ended romantic relationships are concerned. Perhaps your friend should jolt her son into recognising just how casual is the status of his relationship with the mother of his child by introducing her as his ‘impregnee’.
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