Calvin Talk

A Tory politician spoke of some bit of mild malfeasance as an occasion when 'Learnings' were to be had. This the reverse of Calvin's Verbing Nouns: it's a case of Nouning Verbs. A somewhat related case. a somewhat odd case, comes from of all people Richie Sunak, who spoke of his policy giving the green light to oil extraction as being 'pragmaticker' in comparison with the alternative. This is a case of making a preposition out of an adjective, a relation out of a property. 

A Familiar Dodge

The tendency amongst the great & the powerful is very familiar -- but nonetheless maddening -- of reacting to having been caught in an act of serious impropriety with 'We got it wrong!', 'Mistakes were made! etc. The interviewee admits wrongdoing, but counts on the ambiguity created in the interviewer's mind -- an ambiguity between mere mistakes, like missing a three-inch putt in golf, and acts for the which criticism would be much graver, would be moral -- and hopes the conversation will move on. It almost always does. Is there a journalist who makes a habit of stopping the interviewee and asking if the wrongness were of ethics rather than mere skill? A fraudster who says 'I got it wrong!' is not genuinely admitting the nature of his crime. Perhaps Nick Robinson, Andrew Neil or James O'Brien, calls this out.

A recent example from the US of A: 

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas reported three 2022 trips on the private jet of a Texas billionaire in a financial disclosure form released Thursday, and for the first time detailed the businessman’s purchase of three properties from the justice’s family years earlier,” the Washington Post reports.

Thomas also acknowledged 'mistakes' in past reports, involving bank accounts, a life insurance policy and the name of his wife’s real estate company.

This is related to the famous 'Non-apology apology'.  Not 'I'm sorry', but 'If you took offense then I'm sorry'. or 'I'm sorry for any offense I caused'; often with the tacit or implied sub-text, 'I didn't mean it'. One says 'sorry' only in the sense of being sorry at the situation in Afghanistan, not of acknowledging any personal responsibility. Indeed it is not an apology, but only a conditional apology, which in my book is not, not even where the condition is satisfied, an apology at all.  It often borders on 'victim blaming': [unspoken] 'If you looked upon my actions as racist/bullying/whatever, the fault lies with your perception, mate'. 

Over and Under

It is difficult to underplay the seriousness of the charges leveled at him. (Andrew Buncombe)

Ordinarily, to get mixed up when employing such forms of speech is eminently forgivable, but not when it's a journalist, for Pete's sake!  

This sort of thing is not far from saying 'I could care less', 'could of', or 'intensive purposes'.