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Mind your language

That irritating use of ‘progressive’ is more than a century old

But not to worry: someone else will have borrowed it soon

16 May 2015

9:00 AM

16 May 2015

9:00 AM

I was interested by the widespread annoyance at the use of progressive by the lefty parties before the election. Irritation is not the essence of a love of language (philology), but it is a symptom. The suspicion here was that socialism is so pejorative that a euphemism was being sought.

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