Ian McMillan: Word is out about language that should be silenced

When I was young, and I yawned, my mam would say “Tired!” so for years I thought a yawn was called a Tired, and a yawn was only called a Yawn when it involved stretching.

I remember yawning once when I was at secondary school and saying to a girl “I’ve just done a Tired” and she looked at me like I’d just landed from another planet. As indeed I had: the Planet of Embarrassment, the one with the bright red rings.

When I was even younger, 
somebody told me that the word 
Vulgar was very rude, and I recall bursting into tears of shock at Sunday school when Miss Tunstall said that something was “really, really vulgar”’ and she thought I was upset about 
the impending Second Coming, which she thought would be taking place the week after next, which happened to be my birthday.

Now, as a grey-haired grown-up granddad there are some words, I 
just can’t bring myself to say. For instance, lots of people refer to “A raft of ideas” (although, let’s be honest, 
they often say “Rahft of ideas”) and that’s just something I could never bring myself to utter. A raft is something you escape from a shipwreck on, not a receptacle for new thinking.

I’ve also never said “absolutely” when I mean yes, although “absolutely” has become the new “yes” particularly in media interviews. “So, your new book is about tomatoes, Mr. Smith?” ‘“Absolutely!”

And isn’t everybody fed up of the 
old one-letter alphabet when 
somebody is trying to make a point? ‘“My new book is about tomatoes because A, I like tomatoes and also they’re very tasty.” What happened to B? And C? Have they disappeared? Absolutely!

That’s all trivial, of course. One-letter alphabets and rafts of ideas can’t really hurt you. But some words can and when I’m in charge there’ll be a few words that will disappear from the language, if I’ve got anything to do with it.

The first word to go will be the N 
word. You know the one I mean. The word that begins with N and ends with R, the word I can’t bring myself to say, but I’ll have to write it down now: nutter.

I’m surprised the word is still in common use, but it is; you hear it 
and see it written down all the time. Those are the ravings of a nutter. A nutter sat next to me on the bus. He must think I’m a nutter. I think it’s a hateful and hurtful word to describe someone with mental health problems: it excludes them, it narrowly defines them, it demeans them, it belittles them.

When I was younger, people used the word all the time, like they used the word ‘loony’ and they made motions next to their forehead with their finger, but I really thought the word would have died out by now. It hasn’t, though, it’s alive and well, and people still make motions next to their foreheads with their fingers. You hear loony less, though, and that gives me hope. After a while, with language as with other things, a tipping point is reached. And I’m living in hope of the N-word 
tipping point.

As someone pointed out on the radio the other day, even the drivers who use their mobile phones when they’re driving seem to do it shamefacedly, because they know they’re doing something wrong, and most dog walkers now carry a little plastic bag for the detritus, something they wouldn’t have done years ago. People with learning disabilities are now called people with learning disabilities and the names they were called before have begun to fade away. Tipping points have been reached, and change begins to occur.

I think we’re still a long way from the n-word tipping point, though, but I’m going to do my best to keep opposing the use of it. I know I’ll be accused of political porrectness, but that doesn’t bother me a bit. It’s like when somebody calls somebody a Do-gooder as a term of abuse, when surely it’s better to be a Do-gooder than a Do-badder or a Do-nowter? Political correctness is nice; it’s a way of thinking before you speak and act and, unlike what people sometimes say, it very rarely goes mad.

What people sometimes say is that if you lose all the horrible and demeaning words then the language will become less interesting, but the opposite is the case; when comedians stop telling racist and sexist and disablist jokes it means they have to up their game, to work harder to be funnier, and that’s a bonus, I reckon.

So let’s lose the n-word, shall we? 
First, because it will be good to lose 
and also because it will be really good to lose it.