‘Why doesn’t anyone do what you ask them to?’ enquired my husband, who is something of an expert on the subject, I should have thought. He was referring to a plea I made three years ago to people I’ve never met to stop sending emails that begin: ‘I am reaching out to you.’

But it has grown worse. Using the expression makes it sound as though the emailer is deranged. Reach out has for more than a century meant ‘to offer sympathy, support or assistance’ to people. Correlatively it can mean to seek those things.

As Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer has acquired the habit of issuing a Christmas message. For 2025 he said: ‘At this time of the year, which celebrates love and abundance, loss or hardship can feel even more acute. Reach out. It can make a huge difference.’ Perhaps so, but he did not mean ‘send an unsolicited email plugging a commercial product’.

The touchy-feely meaning of reach out made a statement by John Phelan, the US Navy Secretary, sound all the funnier. Commenting on Donald Trump’s planned battleship, he said: ‘This ship isn’t just to swat the arrows. It is going to reach out and kill the archers.’

The phrase also popped up in the case of a man threatened with a fine for displaying a 20ft golden nude statue in his garden. A spokesman for Wigan Council said: ‘We have contacted the owner to explain the requirements for permission and will reach out again if necessary to better understand his intentions for the statue going forward.’ The spokesman seemed to be playing officialese bingo, adding to better understand (a pompous split infinitive) and an unwanted going forward almost as an afterthought. Perhaps because its meaning is unspecific, reach out appeals to horoscope columnists. Its vagueness makes it impossible to know what a spokesman for the Duchess of Sussex meant by: ‘I can confirm she has reached out to her father.’ Does it mean that she visited his hospital bedside, or that she rang a telephone number that wasn’t answered?