Adam, a Speccie reader, asks about the familiar expression ‘face the music’ – meaning to face up to the consequences of one’s actions, to accept the inevitable without hesitation. The earliest recorded citation is from America, from 1852. On the face of it, it’s an odd expression. Whenever we’re enjoying music, we normally face it. We face the speakers of our stereo system, or we face the orchestra in a concert hall. So why this need to tell anyone, at any time, to ‘face the music’? That’s our normal posture in the presence of music, isn’t it? Can you imagine any fan going to a Taylor Swift concert and turning their back on the stage? Doesn’t happen. So, how do we make sense of this odd expression? My best guess is that it first meant not so much facing the unpleasant as facing the inevitable. Nowadays, our lives are filled with music – you can’t get into a lift or walk into a shopping centre without hearing music, and radio, television, and Spotify saturate our lives. But in the mid-nineteenth century music would have played a far smaller part in the lives of most people. Unless music was played ‘live’ (as we now say) you didn’t get to hear music. That made music rather more special. With the result that whenever you heard music– whether someone at a piano or a brass band marching down the street – you would inevitably turn towards it. That inevitability, I suggest, is the origin of the expression ‘face the music’. An inevitable response. Bear in mind that I am just guessing here! Can you come up with a better suggestion?

Dictionary.com has just added 327 new words. Here is a small sample of where they think our language is going:

‘Greedflation’ means the notion that all those rising prices are caused by greedy people, not by economic conditions. (The sort of belief that suits the hard left’s concern that no one who runs a business should ever be allowed to make a profit.)

‘Girl dinner’ means a meal for one, consisting of assorted snacks. Although why this is gender specific is unclear.

‘Climate breakdown’ supposedly means the effects of unchecked global warming. Another of those panic-stricken emotional expressions that assumes human beings have lost the ability to adapt to different weather conditions. It’s an infantile expression because humans can live everywhere from Siberia to the Sahara. The Dutch even live underwater (below sea level) protected by dykes.

‘Bed rotting’ means spending hours in bed each day – probably grazing on snacks while playing games on a smartphone. Such people used to be called ‘couch potatoes’ but it appears they’ve now drifted from the lounge room to the bedroom because they can’t be bothered to get up.

‘Range anxiety’ goes with owning an EV –worrying if the battery will last long enough to get you to your destination. (But that one is not new – it’s been around since 1997 and is already in most dictionaries.)

‘Keto flu’ means people who feel sick from going on a ‘ketogenic diet’ – which is ‘a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet that causes the breakdown of fats into ketone bodies, which consequently replace carbohydrates as the body’s main source of energy: used as a regimen for weight loss’. And it also makes you sick, hence ‘keto flu’ (‘characterised by fatigue, headaches, muscle soreness, etc, as the body adapts to using fat instead of carbohydrates for fuel’). Sounds to me like me yet another fad. Why not just eat a healthy, balanced diet… and eat less? That’s the secret of weight loss.

‘Sound bath’ means sustained listening to the pleasant sounds emanating from a collection of singing bowls, bells, chimes, etc, used to aid in relaxation or meditation and believed to help restore physical and mental wellness. In other words, it’s another ‘wellness’ fad to go alongside aromatherapy and all the rest. (And I’m sure someone, somewhere is making money out of this – the point of every new ‘wellness’ fad.)

A ‘shacket’ is some kind of new garment. The word is a blend of ‘shirt’ and ‘jacket’ – so I guess it’s a kind of shirt that sort of functions like a jacket? Dictionary.com says it is ‘a garment in the style of a button-down shirt, made of a thicker fabric and usually worn over other shirts.’ (Maybe I’d need to see one to understand what they really mean by that.)

‘Superfog’ – according to Dictonary.com – is a combination of fog and dense smoke that reduces visibility to less than three metres. But… but… a combination of smoke and fog has been called ‘smog’ since 1905. So why do we need this new expression?

If that is where our language is heading, I’m not impressed so far. How about you?