I must preface this post with the following trigger warning; This post contains an image of a slug, which is a particularly unattractive garden pest but I rather suspect a vast number of young people who have never ventured into the outdoors may have not come across one before.

Further to my previous post concerning the use of the word ‘drop’ to describe the release or the delivery of a programme to iPlayer, I had a considerable number of people who also thought, like myself that the programme had been cancelled or dropped from the schedule, hence their request to explain what the word ‘drop’ actually meant, other than the dictionary definition; ‘to fall vertically.’

In an effort to clarify the situation I replied thus; It’s the use of modern language where one uses completely the wrong word to describe something and sadly this sort of thing is becoming more and more common place. I seem to remember watching His Majesty’s BBC news where they used the word ‘dropped’ when talking about something which had just been released, my how far we have come from the days of Alvar Lidell reading the news on the wireless dress in a dinner jacket and with received pronunciation.

I’m hoping this fad which was started by the youth of today will eventually fade away before we get to a point where complete sentences will be made from random words, none of which relate to the topic being written about and are completely incomprehensible.

However, I had a thought that those of us who find this sort of thing a little uncomfortable might start a movement to show how foolish this is by starting our own trend using a word ourselves in completely the wrong context in the hope that it might point out the error of this sort of behaviour. I had thought I would start using the word ‘slug’ to describe something really ‘good’ and see if the young folk would start to use it but failed dismally as I’m not in touch with sufficient numbers of ‘d’ yoof dem,’ as they say. It may of course require a visit to my local neighbourhood to see if I could contact some of ‘my brothers in the hood’ to start the ball rolling.

Conversely, us older folk could take possession of the word for our own personal use and spread it about like wildfire in the hope it may catch on and here are some suggestions as to how to use the word ‘slug’.

Try, if possible, when using the word ‘slug’ that the intonation in your voice suggests a rather dreary and downbeat tone to imply the word means the complete opposite of ‘good or excellent’ God forbid someone should understand what you are tying to convey with your use of the word.

I shall dear reader, leave you with that challenge and wish you ‘slug’ luck whilst saying how really ‘slug’ it is knowing we are at the forefront of the evolution of modern language.