Mea Culpa: check your references

As we brought you the news that AJ Odudu, the TV presenter, had pulled out of the Strictly final because of a torn ligament, we quoted her tribute to “someone as special, patient and devoted as Kai”, saying she was “referencing her professional partner, Kai Widdrington”. This seems a stilted and formal way of saying “referring to”, which feels more like the way someone would actually speak in conversation.

Horse shoes: We haven’t had a “shoe-in” for a while, so it was like seeing an old friend after the lockdown when our report of Formula One said that a decision by Michael Masi, the race director, about the rules “made Verstappen a shoe-in for the victory”. Thanks to Roger Thetford for reintroducing me to the phrase, which was changed to “shoo-in”. It refers to (rather than “it references”) the rigging of horse races – all someone has to do is to “shoo” the winner over the line.

More than one: A headline on an Independent TV story said: “Firefighters pull multiple people from rubble after gas explosion in Sicily.” As Paul Edwards reminded me, I have complained about “multiple” before, as I think “several” is more natural. “It is particularly odd here,” he said, “since ‘people’ is already plural; and reading on I see that only two people were actually rescued.” Not only tautological but an overdramatisation too.

Deep and crisp and even: It is nearly Christmas and that means two things: that Slade record and “wintry conditions”. This is a long way of saying “snow”, and we used it in a review of snow boots, presumably to avoid repetition, saying that the pattern on the tread “digs into wintry conditions well”.

Formalities: A sad story in Home News in Brief about a toddler being run over by a caravan said: “Police investigators believe Josie had either been stood close to the caravan when it began moving and was knocked down or had put herself on the floor and was run over.” Richard Thomas wrote to point out the use of informal language: our usual style would have been “been standing” and “ground” rather than “floor”.

Ongoing campaign: Pleased to report that most of our uses of “ongoing” last week were when we were quoting other people. But we still managed to refer to “the ongoing battle with Covid-19” and, in a business report about BT, “the ongoing broadband rollout”. As the Cybermen say, when they advance menacingly on the Doctor and his companions: “Delete. Delete.”

Nothing to lose but your chains: The more I see the phrase “supply chain” the less it seems to mean. There was a time when some economic commentators claimed that western economies had become uniquely dependent on long, complicated sequences of just-in-time deliveries. Well, maybe, although ways in which spices made their way to Europe from China and India in the so-called Dark Ages seem complicated enough. But now the phrase seems to mean simply shortages caused by post-lockdown disruption to labour markets, in which case, why don’t we say that instead?