Armageddon isn't upon us

The meaning of words is seeping away as our language changes. But it's not the end of the world

David Mckie. The Guardian. 31-8-2006

Language evolves. For years there was a gap in the dictionary where a word describing statistical distributions with notably different variances ought to have been. But then some ingenious person came up with a word that's been known and loved ever since: heteroscedasticity. So when the other day I came across the word heteronormativity, which I don't recall ever meeting before, it caused not the slightest qualm. It is not to be found in any of my (slightly outdated) dictionaries, which have nothing between heteronym (a word of the same spelling and pronunciation as another, but having a different meaning) and heteroousian (of unlike essence; sometimes in the context of the Father and Son in the Trinity). But the new word's meaning was clear: it indicated a society, or perhaps a climate of opinion, where heterosexuality was the norm and homosexuality the exception.

I think these considerations may explain why the readers' editor of this newspaper has been repeatedly called into action to point out that there's no such expression as "legs akimbo". Arms akimbo, certainly: akimbo means "with hands on hips and elbows out" ; but you can't do that with your legs, even if you call on your knees to play the part of your elbows. Yet contributors to the Guardian continue to write of legs akimbo, suggesting that such a posture exists, but lacks a word to define it. It is time one was invented, possibly echoing akimbo without implying any kind of equation. "Legs armando" perhaps, or "legs palumbo", might serve.

There are other words, though, which need to be protected, since without such protection their meaning seeps away. A powerful example of this is "disinterested", which originally meant having nothing to gain or lose from a given situation. One might say, for instance, that Lord Falconer, who was arguing at the weekend that Tony Blair ought to stay in office and not, as others advocate, stand down soon as leader and open the way for Gordon Brown, was not entirely disinterested in this matter, since no one ever elected him, and his whole political career has been built on his friendship with Blair, who was once his flatmate. But unfortunately if you say nowadays that Falconer is not entirely disinterested, many assume that you mean that he isn't entirely bored.

I'm a little concerned in this context about the word "challenging", which used to mean offering a challenge, and still does when, for instance, the secretary of state for communities describes the present debate about multiculturalism as "challenging". In other circumstances, though, it's increasingly used to mean "dire". Thus the present state of Iraq clearly deserves the epithet "dire", but supporters of Blair and Bush prefer to describe it as "challenging". Companies reporting rotten results avoid calling them "dire" by saying that they are "challenging". The original meaning is being unduly stretched to afford a convenient euphemism. This kind of linguistic practice may not be wholly dire, but it's certainly challenging.

Another word which may very soon need a spell in intensive care is "Armageddon", a term which has increasingly crept into our discourse within the past year, and not always justifiably. This is a solemn word, which the Guardian's house dictionary, Collins, defines as the final battle at the end of the world between the forces of good and evil, as described in the book of Revelation. It does allow a second meaning - a catastrophic and extremely destructive conflict, such as the first world war. The rate of use this month has been swelled by the showing on television of the film of this name in which the world is, I understand, saved from extinction by the efforts of the actor Bruce Willis.

Though most of those who use the word Armageddon have something really severe in mind, one or two looser usages have begun to steal in. One columnist at the weekend, for instance, applied it to floods in Hungary in which three people died and 250 were injured. Perhaps he was being ironic (always a dangerous practice in journalism), but I rather fear that if present trends continue - as in such matters they usually do - we shall before the end of the football season read pieces in which Armageddon refers to the threat of relegation now facing, say, Luton Town.

· The new edition of Samuel Butler's The Authoress of the Odyssey which I mentioned two weeks ago is published by Bristol Phoenix Press, a partner imprint of University of Exeter Press, not Bristol Phoenix Books. I hope to return to the subject of resurrectionist publishers soon.