shewhomust | Concerning usage

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Call me old-fashioned, but when I use the word concerning I mean 'regarding, having to do with...' and my Chambers dictionary agrees with me. I dislike the current use to mean 'giving cause fir cincern, wirrying'. It annoyed me when I first heard it, and it annoys me more now that the nature of the news provides constant opportunities for its use. I heard it twice within 40 minutes on the Today programme this morning.

I think what I particularly dislike - apart from the obvious fact that it is Wrong, that that word does not mean that - is that it is used euphemistically, to avoid using words like 'worrying' or even 'alarming'. Don't be worried, don't be alarmed, just be concerned. In my mind's ear, that 'concerned' is spoken in the low, sodt, caring voice that Margaret Thatcher learned to use, and it makes me feel patronised and lied to.

Perhaps I'm overreacting here.

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/714703.html

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From:

sovay

I heard it twice within 40 minutes on the Today programme this morning.

Huh. I have heard it used in that sense, but never quite seriously, e.g., "That's . . . concerning." I am also more familiar with it in the having-to-do-with sense.

From:

shewhomust

Interesting. I wonder if it's promarily British usage, then. I think it's quite new, maybe only a year or so, so perhaps it will spread to the US. Or perhaps that element of understatement makes it a better fit for this side of the Atlantic!

From:

asakiyume

I think it's in the nature of the times that we pour a whole lot of emotions onto things that might not bother us that much under other circumstances. On the other hand, people using words in ways we don't like... that's annoying in the best of times.

I like what you did with your subject line, by the way ;-)

From:

shewhomust

I like what you did with your subject line, by the way ;-)

Thanks. And thanks for that sensible, balanced response, too - as you imply, of course I am overreacting, and of course this is the sort of thing to which I will inevitably overreact!