Mind your language
IT IS NOT easy to see what some words are meant to mean. Take literally. It is widely used and widely abused. Poor Emma Nicholson was giving a tribute for some reason to Douglas Hurd the other day and said, 'He literally does stride the world like a colossus.' Of course, no matter how generously Mr Hurd strides or even bestrides, nothing can turn the metaphor into literal truth. I suppose literally has become a mere intensive, like very much or bloody well. It is as if Miss Nicholson had said, `Amen, amen, I say unto you . . . '
She can, naturally, be excused as a politician caught on the hop. Stranger is to hear quite ordinary people cluttering up their speech. An advertisement on the wireless for Direct Line insurance has a satisfied customer saying, 'There was no hassle-factor involved at all.' Where does this factor come from? Sun- cream, perhaps.
Now, since no one can escape the Greenbury report, I noted with pleasure a kind caption on a Nine O'Clock News graphic referring to the `renumeration' of water utility bosses. It's just a ques- tion of numbers, after all.
And, to revert to a less trivial mis- usage, BBC South-East, whoever they are, reported a jewellery raid in Biller- icay, Essex, in which a man was shot, by saying, 'It all went wrong.' Indeed it did; very inconsiderate of the shopkeeper to get in the line of fire (or firing line as BBC South-East would probably say).
I'm sorry to sound so crabby. It must he the heat.
Dot Wordsworth
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