Snobspeak doubletalk

Time of India

09-05-2025

A former associate editor with the Times of India, Jug Suraiya writes two regular columns for the print edition, Jugular Vein, which appears every Friday, and Second Opinion, which appears on Wednesdays. His blog takes a contrarian view of topical and timeless issues, political, social, economic and speculative. LESS ... MORE
On arty-crafty terms replacing good old-fashioned words
An Australian friend has sent me an article from a local newspaper which says that the Down Under continent is being 'uplifted'. Is the land of Oz levitating to the top of the world? Not quite.
'Uplifted' doesn't have anything to do with geology. Or with such gravity-defying, cosmetic surgery procedures like tummy tucks and double chin eliminations, but is the latest addition to the argot of the hospitality industry.
If a hotel offers to change the standard room you booked for a superior room, you are being uplifted. What's wrong with an old-fashioned upgrade? Upgrade has been downgraded and replaced by the presumably more uplifting 'uplifted'. Want an extra dollop of cheese on your pizza? By all means. Get uplifted.
Oral snobbery, or snobspeak, which is reinventing language seeks to poshify everyday vocabulary. In the mid-50s, British novelist Nancy Mitford distinguished between U and non-U language, in which U stood for upper class and non-U for non-upper. For example, U-speakers would say scent, whereas non-U speakers would say perfume; a U-speaker would use the loo, while a non-U speaker would go to the toilet.
In today's snobspeak, a restaurant menu or an art gallery exhibition is invariably curated. This does not mean getting hold of a cleric called a curate to preside over the proceedings. Curated merely means 'put together', but put together is verbal vanilla, oral plain Jane, while curated sounds glam and arty-crafty.
Like 'artisanal'. Artisanal should evoke the image of a workman, an artisan, sweat beading the brow, sleeves rolled up on brawny arms, wielding an implement of arcane use.
But artisanal now refers to small-batch food items that aren't mass-produced, like ice cream, or cheese, or cupcakes, or 'hand-cut' sandwiches, as distinct, presumably, from 'foot-cut' sandwiches, with or without benefit of boots.
'Bespoke' is the artisanal word for custom-made, or made to order. Being more hoity, not to mention toity, bespoke is snobspeak for customised.
But even as snobspeak invents new buzzwords for its lexicon, it runs the risk of being told to shove a bespoke uplifted into your artisanal.
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