Mea Culpa: A bit of unnecessary play-acting

We used a vogue word in an editorial about the EU trade talks, saying: “Apart from pride and a performative desire to be seen to act ‘tough’ there isn’t much to be said for the UK’s present negotiating tactics.” I think people have recently started to use “performative” to suggest someone is play-acting, in which case that is already covered by the word “act”.

Inkling about ankling: We further broadened our readers’ vocabulary last weekend, publishing an interview with James Murdoch by Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, which referred to his “ankling the family business he once hoped to lead”. Thanks to Philip Nalpanis for drawing this to my attention, and for sending me to the online Urban Dictionary for a translation: “A Hollywood biz term (used often in Variety), meaning to walk out of, or to quit, a job.”

The Urban Dictionary entry goes on, “Because if you just said ‘quit’, more people would actually understand what you’re talking about,” which seems a fair comment to me. Obviously, Dowd is a big-name writer and we wouldn’t change her copy, but she ought to know better that there is a line to be drawn between educating the reader and putting them off.

Thrown to the winds: In an editorial about the talks between the prime minister’s office and Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, we wrote: “As a result of that picking off of individual, smaller councils, the region may well end up receiving a total that is below the £60m Mr Johnson was previously happy to disperse.”

As John Northover pointed out, we meant “disburse”, that is, “pay out”. “Disperse” almost works, because the money would be spread quite thinly, but I don’t think we meant to conjure up an image of the prime minister throwing £5 notes in the air to spread out over a wide area.

Oh, that pandemic: We referred to the “ongoing coronavirus pandemic” in an article about attempts to clean up the smog in New Delhi. Which made it sound as if we were trying to distinguish the current coronavirus pandemic from all the previous ones.

Coming up: Another word that is usually unnecessary is “upcoming”. We mentioned “the upcoming US election” in an article about the power of Rupert Murdoch, suggesting it might be a chance to “impose a measure of civic responsibility” on Fox News. If we had simply said “the US election”, no reader would have thought we meant the one in 2024.

We also had this headline on a news story: “Upcoming ‘worship protest’ planned for Washington DC’s National Mall.” If it was “planned”, it obviously hadn’t happened by the time we reported it, had it?