The list of business leaders who have damaged their careers with a single word famously begins with Gerald Ratner, who wiped half a billion off the value of his jewellery chain in 1991 by describing one of its offerings as ‘crap’. Then there was Bank of England deputy governor Ben Broadbent, whose chance of succeeding Mark Carney plunged after he picked ‘meno-pausal’ to describe an economy past its productive peak.