An Irish Diary

Verbing on the ridiculous – An Irishman’s Diary about bad English, overprotective parents, and the Winter Olympics

With the Winter Olympics under way, many of us are receiving our quadrennial reminder of the existence of a sport called “curling”

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Frank McNally
Sat Feb 10 2018 - 00:01

In two different Marks & Spencer stores this week, I saw product-recall notices with contrasting uses of English: one acceptable, the other an abomination.

The store announced instead that it was 'actioning' a recall. Excuse me while I retch

The good one involved gluten-free Scotch Eggs, which it had turned out were not entirely devoid of gluten. So with due apologies, the store announced these had been “withdrawn”. To which I say: fair enough. No problem there (unless you’re gluten-intolerant).

But the other announcement involved a toy, remote-controlled helicopter, which was prone to overheating. And in that case, merely recalling the product wasn’t considered sufficient. No. The store announced instead that it was “actioning” a recall. Excuse me while I retch.

Is it because it was a helicopter that this extra verbal drama was required? Is it that, rather than wait for people to return them, like the eggs, M&S was planning to deploy swat teams to descend on households with overheating choppers and extract them before an incident occurred?

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I only ask because, like many people, I suffer from a condition known as jargon intolerance. The triggers vary widely, but a big one in my case is the use of “action” as a verb.

Symptoms include nausea, teeth-grinding, and the outbreak of a rash.

And I was exposed to all of these by the helicopter notice, which did not have a “contains corporate-speak” warning anywhere.

Yes, yes, libertarian commentators on language, I know English is full of verbs that used to be nouns. And yes, I know lawyers have always been actioning things, or at least considering them actionable.

No, I wouldn't be surprised if Jane Austen or somebody used it in a 19th-century novel too.

Even so. I put it to you that, if “actioning” was a real thing, the corporate world would by now have job titles to match.

Specialists in the area would be known as – what else? – “actioneers”. Whereas not even ambulance-chasing solicitors call themselves that.

I rest my case.

***

Actually, while resting my case, I also opened my copy of the Bible, aka Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage, and was relieved to see it's not just me who still has a problem with this.

This is itself damning, because if a word has been around that long and still looks ugly in everyday English, it clearly was never cut out for the job

Fowler calls the usage “widely stigmatised as an example of ‘verbing’, [..] gratuitously converting nouns to verbs” and warns it “will undoubtedly upset, not to say enrage, some people”. He also quotes “Burchfield” (I knew him well – a prince among lexicographers) commenting “acidly” in 1996 that the word “is best left at present to the tight-lipped language of business managers”.

There follows the inevitable acknowledgement that actioning is far from new. In fact, never mind Jane Austen.

It turns out Henry Fielding used it, in the legal sense, "in his 1734 translation of Don Quixote". But this is itself damning, because if a word has been around that long and still looks ugly in everyday English, it clearly was never cut out for the job. And in general, Fowler agrees.

Admitting that action-as-a-verb still has the "stale whiff of bureaucracy or HR-speak", the dictionary concludes with a "tragically laughable" example from the Daily Telegraph (1981), viz: "Dismissal will be actioned when the balance of probabilities suggests that an employee has committed a criminal act."

Indeed. ROFLT, as they say (rolling on floor, laughing tragically).

***

With the Winter Olympics under way, to change the subject, many of us are receiving our quadrennial reminder of the existence of a sport called “curling”. And I was fascinated to learn this week that, in countries where it’s popular, “curling” is also an adjective applied to overprotective parents.

The metaphor is perfect. For just as curlers furiously brush the ice in front of the gliding “stone”, so such parents seek to smooth their children’s path through life, eliminating all risk.

It only adds to the analogy that curling’s target zone is called the “house”. Given the perceived dangers of the park or playground, the house is where overprotected children end up too.

Curling parents – and I’m not sure I don’t occupy the category myself – are sometimes blamed for another winter-related phenomenon, “snowflakes”: a harsh term for young adults who are easily upset. I can’t comment: I’m not quite far enough down life’s curling arena yet, and I’m still too busy brushing.

The more traditional metaphor, of course, is “helicopter parenting”. This implies a tendency to hover over your children continually, to their equal long-term detriment.

So perhaps, after all, there was a moral in that Marks & Spencer notice. If you’re a parent, and your helicopter is overheating, you may want to action a recall.

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