Since I’ve been talking about language, I thought I would add a few other changes I’ve noticed in our public speech. Here goes:
In the last 10 years, Americans have started to use the British “gone missing” or “went missing” to describe lost people or other vanished presences. We used to say “is missing” or just “missing.”
In the same period, three nouns have definitely become fairly common verbs: “impact,” “partner” and “reference” (I still use “refer to” but this is becoming rare; I avoid the other two like the plague).
The words “actively” and “proactive” are now everywhere in American officialese. I’m hoping to see some weary souls insert “passively” and neologisms like “preactive” into reports, press releases and memos just to keep people awake, and maybe play Borat-style with some of our other favored words as well. E.g., “We are passively searching for a company with which to liaise in order to couple and, in resourcing our out-sourcing of people-based contacts (our most precious resource), reference our common preactive stance within both our active and passive client lists.”
I’m sure there are more changes of note– let me know and I’ll post them.
