When ‘lie’ was banned by the Speaker of the House as unparliamentary language, I wondered if it was time to revive Churchill’s delightful expression ‘terminological inexactitude’. When Albanese repeatedly (fifty times!) promised not to touch negative gearing or capital gains tax he was not lying – he was just uttering a ‘terminological inexactitude’. Even the Hon. Milton Dick might find it hard to rule against that from the Speaker’s chair. I think it might become what joke writers call ‘a running gag’ for the opposition to shout across the house from time to time. But there is a fly in the ointment. We have all thought (for many years) that ‘terminological inexactitude’ was Churchill’s joke replacement for ‘lie’. But in its original context that’s not exactly what it meant. In 1906 there was a debate in the British parliament about the status of Chinese workers in South Africa. They had been referred to as being ‘in slavery’. Churchill, as Under-Secretary at the Colonial Office, pointed out that these workers had entered into employment voluntarily and for a limited period, that they received wages, that they could not be bought and sold, and that they could buy their way out of their employment contract. He concluded that calling this slavery was a ‘terminological inexactitude’. He seems to have meant something closer to ‘a vague expression’ or ‘imprecise language’ rather than ‘a lie’. He was almost immediately misunderstood. Joseph Chamberlain stood up in the House and said the Churchill had used eleven syllables, when one syllable – a good old, Anglo-Saxon word he said – would have served: the word ‘lie’.

And I think that Chamberlain’s interpretation is good enough for us! So, go for it Angus and team – start tossing ‘terminological inexactitude’ around the chamber, until those on the benches opposite go red with fury!

Speccie reader Narelle asks if the expression ‘Arthur or Martha’ is part of the muddled (her word, not mine) trans movement. No, Narelle, it’s not. It just means being in a state of confusion. This is an Australian coinage that first appeared in print in Ezra Norton’s Truth newspaper in 1948. It turned up in a sports report that said, ‘Players were all over the place like Brown’s cows and most didn’t know whether they were Arthur or Martha’. Its combination with another cliché of disorganisation (‘Brown’s cows’) shows that all it means is a state of general confusion. And it’s likely this phrase was part of the spoken language from some time before it was picked up by a sports journalist. But its meaning (‘a state of general confusion’) certainly seems to cover the more belligerent end of the trans movement.