Over the past few weeks I have been collecting media clichés – those empty, meaningless, padding words that have turned much political discourse into a mindless vacuum. Here is a small sample from my collection: ‘level playing field’; ‘wealth of experience’; ‘unsung heroes’; ‘rushed to the scene’; ‘concerned residents’; ‘freak accident’; ‘the bottom line is…’ (Jim Chalmers’ favourite); and ‘unacceptable’ (the limp lettuce response to savage antisemitism).

I invited readers of my website for contributions, and they came up with such classics as: ‘let me be clear’ (usually uttered by politicians who are obfuscating); ‘lived experience’; ‘unprecedented’; ‘world-class’; ‘game-changer’; ‘breakthrough’; and ‘climate crisis’ (used to describe weather behaving pretty much as it has always done). If you have your own contributions to this dark list please get in touch (my web address is at the bottom of this column).

 Speccie reader Rohan (not to be confused with Rowan – different bloke entirely) has asked me to explain two expressions: ‘minutes’ (of a meeting), and ‘forty winks’ (why forty? he asks). The ‘minutes’ of a meeting are, as we know, ‘a record or brief summary of the proceedings at a meeting’ (Oxford). As far as I can work out, these notes are called minutes because they are brief (the ‘minimum’ record of events).

‘Forty winks’ all hinges on the number forty. The ‘winks’ part is clear enough – closing the eyes for just a moment. But the addition of forty means ‘more than just a moment’. In the past, (and for many years) forty was used as a symbolic number for ‘quite a lot’. There was a time when we would have used 100 in the same way (but we live in inflationary times, so today it might be 1,000.) But back in medieval times forty was commonly used to mean ‘an imprecise number, but quite a lot’.