What times, what times. It makes one quite nostalgic for the halcyon days of yore – the clodhopping progress to Brexit, the burning question of who wears the trousers in the Sussex household (it’s all right, Harry, you can get off your knees now, she’s gone for the moment), the dropsy-ridden Labour leadership contest and the vexing question of Rebecca Long-Bailey’s hyphen.
So what a delight to read the following headline: “Oil traders do the contango in search of quick profits.” Forget the standoff between Russia and Saudi Arabia; what a delightful image this conjures: oil traders, roses firmly clenched between their teeth, whirling each other round the dancefloor even as the price of oil tanks.
Better still, this quite new word to me even has a sensible definition. According to the article, contango means that “sharp traders can buy oil now, sell it on the forward market and store it in a tanker for several months”. I daresay some would consider this sharp practice, but would you expect anything other in the City? I think it a fine word, perfectly useless in everyday life, but I’m glad to have met it.
Less welcome is the intrusion of “crater”. Fine when applied properly, but consider this from Martin Sorrell, former head of the advertising agency WPP: “WPP is cratered.” Or this from a news report: “As governments close borders, cancel sports and entertainment events and encourage home working to combat coronavirus… demand is set to crater further.” Please, please, please, let nouns be nouns and verbs be verbs.
And so to North Korea and its latest firing of ballistic missiles and a report from the Korean Central News Agency: “The brave artillerymen on the front, who have sharply whetted the bayonet for the revolution with the high spirit of annihilating the enemy… opened fire all at once.” With the world in crisis, such inflammatory talk does little to assuage the collective fear.
•Jonathan Bouquet is an Observer columnist
