The outbreak of coronavirus has led to loaded phrases, a rash of cliches and weary metaphors. This contamination of our speech is isolating meaning, destroying semantics and, worse still, trivialising the crisis, says Robert Fisk
ot on the heels of the coronavirus infection has come the infection of our language. Covid-19 will pass. The other disease may be more permanent. Within not days but minutes – even seconds – this potentially more long-lasting infection of our speech passed from politicians to reporters to the people. Few of us now question the loaded phrases, the old cliches put to new use, the tired metaphors and the weary references to war and frontlines – even, inevitably I suppose, to the Second World War.
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