The worst word in the language

Wog. Spastic. Queer. Nigger. Dwarf. Cripple. Fatty. Gimp. Paki. Mick. Mong. Poof. Coon. Gyppo. You can’t really use these words any more and yet, strangely, it is perfectly acceptable for those in the travel and hotel industries to pepper their conversation with the word “beverage”.

There are several twee and unnecessary words in the English language. Tasty. Meal. Cuisine. Nourishing. And the biblically awful “gift”. I also have a biological aversion to the use of “home” instead of “house”. So if you were to ask me round to “your home for a nourishing bowl of pasta” I would almost certainly be sick on you.

But the worst word. The worst noise. The screech of Flo-Jo’s fingernails down the biggest blackboard in the world, the squeak of polystyrene on polystyrene, the cry of a baby when you’re hungover, is “beverage”.

Apparently they used to have “bever” days at Eton when extra beer was brought in for the boys. And this almost certainly comes from some obscure Latin expression that only Boris Johnson would understand.

Therein lies the problem. People who work on planes and in hotels have got it into their heads that the word beverage, with its Eton and Latin overtones, is somehow posh and therefore the right word to use when addressing a customer.

Now look. The customer in question is almost certainly a businessman, and the sort of businessmen who take scheduled planes around Europe and stay in business hotels are fairly low down the pecking order. You think they turn their phones on the instant the plane has landed because the Tokyo stock exchange is struggling to manage without them. No. The reason they turn them on so damn fast is to find out if they’ve been sacked.

Honestly, you don’t need to treat them like you’re on the set of Upstairs Downstairs. They do not spend their afternoons cutting the crusts off cucumber sandwiches. And they do not say grace before dinner. They’re called Steve and Dave and you know what they’re doing on their laptops in the departure lounge? Organising a backward hedge merger with GEC? Fraid not. They’re looking at some Hooters Swimsuit pictures from the internet.

For crying out loud, I’m middle class. I went to a school most people would call posh. But if I came home and said to my wife that I wanted a beverage, or asked her to pass the condiments, she’d punch me.

When I travel, I don’t need to be treated like Hyacinth Bucket. I want you to understand I speak like you do and that I’ll understand perfectly if you say there’s a kettle in my room. You don’t have to say there are “tea and coffee making facilities”.

And please, can you stop saying “at all” after every question. Can I take your coat at all? Would you care for lunch at all? Or, this week, on a flight back from Scandinavia, “Another beverage for yourself at all, sir?” What’s the matter with saying “Another drink?” And what’s with all the reflexive pronoun abuse? I’ve written about this before but it’s getting worse. Reflexive pronouns are used when the subject and the object of a sentence are the same person or thing. Like “I dress myself”. You cannot therefore say “please contact myself”. Because it makes you look like an imbecile.

If you send a letter to a client saying “my team and me look forward to meeting with yourself next Wednesday”, be prepared for some disappointment. Because if I were the client I’d come to your office all right. Then I’d stand on your desk and relieve myself.

I’m not a grammar freak — I can eat, shoot and then take it or leave it — but when someone says “myself” instead of “me” I find it more offensive than if they’d said

“spastic wog”.

Before embarking on a sentence, work out first of all what’s the shortest way of saying it, not the longest. There seems to be a general sense that using more words than is strictly necessary is somehow polite. That’s almost certainly why, on another flight the other day, I was offered some “bread items”.

We see this most conspicuously in the catering industry, where I am regularly offered a “choice of both cheddar and brie”. No, wait. I’ve forgotten the pointless adjectives. I should have said a “choice of both flavoursome cheddar and creamy brie”.

“Are you ready to order at all, yourself, sir.” “Yes, I’ll have the hearty winter-warming soup and the nourishing bowl of pasta, topped with the delicious dew-picked tomatoes, thanks. And to follow, if yourself can manage it, a plate of gag-inducing, nostril-assaulting, bacteria-laced Stilton.”

It’s all rubbish. Why is a bowl of pasta more appealing than a plate of pasta? And why not simply say pasta? Because don’t worry, I’ll presume it’ll come on some form of crockery, in the same way that I’ll presume, if you put a kettle in my room, that you might have put some coffee granules in there as well.

I’ll leave you with the best example I know of this nonsense. It was a rack of papers in a hotel foyer over which there was a sign: “Newspapers for your reading pleasure”.

All they had left was The Guardian. So it wasn’t even technically correct.

[From the TimesOnline]