Taking issue again

An epidemic of issues is invading the English language. It started as management jargon, but is now infecting the speech of newsreaders and journalists and real people.

I have written about issues before in The Merry Pedant website:

“Re person found dead: “He had some mental health issues”. BBC News, March 08.

“Should we say that a man who loses a leg has ‘a mobility issue’ ? Maybe if you scratch your hand on a bramble you have ‘a cutaneous trauma issue’. Take care: issues may be infectious. Gargle with TCP in case you develop a throat issue.

“The misuse of the word ‘issue’ is, like a fungus, extending its mycelia throughout the linguistic fabric of English-speaking society. The term ‘issue’ has itself become an ‘issue’. Let us issue forth to combat it, and if we come across it in a situation where it shouldn’t be, issue it with a parking ticket. Let us invite the editors of The Lancet to insist (in their next issue) that the word be forbidden (except of course, for ‘issues of blood’ which have a biblical precedent) to be recognised in the medical and psychological lexicon.

“Do you have an issue with that ? Ugh !”

We have since heard that a person who died of an infection was already suffering from ‘underlying health issues’.

The word ‘issue’ entered Middle English as an Old French derivation from Latin ‘exitus’, meaning, as you might guess, a ‘way out’. The issue of a law case or a parliamentary debate is strictly speaking ‘what emerges’, the end result rather than the matter itself. Think of the abstract term ‘issue’ as meaning ‘a solution that we are seeking’; the hoped-for answer to a problem rather than the problem itself.

Taking issue again