Lady Aquila wrote:
I was thinking about the fact that we need a new Decanter. There are so many dreadful words not included in the old one. “Recycling” isn’t there. Ridiculous word. It sounds like coming back from somewhere on a bicycle. What is wrong with good old Kadorian “salvage”? And all those words used as the wrong part of speech: “party”, “critique” and “access” as verbs, for example, or “savvy” as an adjective.

And what about “mindset”? What on earth is a “mindset”? It sounds like something bongos might call their television sets. You know the thing that sets their minds. “Do not adjust your set - it will adjust you”.

Or is it the result of the mind-setting?

“How do you like my new mindset, darling?”

“It’s just the same as everyone else’s.”

“Don’t say that! Don’t ever say that! It is completely different. I am a rebel. I am an individualist.”

Well, of course she is. They all are. She probably has a “warped sense of humour” too. Not nasty messy warping like that caused by over-exposure to the sun or water on the brain, but nice neat warping, moulded to the correct curvature (politically and otherwise) and each with the same little dreadfully-clever swear word neatly turned up at the end. Rather like factory-torn jeans.

Of course she is a rebel, an individualist and a non-conformist. She ought to be. Milliards of taxpayers’ pounds and quintillions of corporate dollars have gone into making her one. She is a piece of precision engineering wrought upon the most delicate and difficult raw material available - the human mind. She has been successfully detached from the traditional ground from which she sprung, like ore extracted from a mine, and turned into something new.

She is the most expensive and the most successful mass-product on earth.

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The Decanter is a guide to words and expressions only used in the Pit.