At this point in human development, I think we can look back on what we've achieved and agree that language is one of our better inventions – certainly better than Wi-Fi, the Dustbuster, “Britain’s Got No Talent” and Super Mario Galaxy.
Picture a world without language. Go on. No gossip. No chit-chat. No road signs. No newspapers. No theatre. No internet. The only forms of mass media entertainment available are slapstick and photography. But then, that's the beauty of language. It can change the way you see things without actually altering anything in the physical realm. It turns good into bad and bad into good and back again without anyone ever lifting a finger.
Take "fun-size" Mars bars. They're tiny. Gone, in just a single bite. So, they don't last as long as a regular chocolate bars, in fact as a taste experience they probably last for less longer than the average X-Factor winner’s career. And there’s another thing, with them being individually wrapped, they're fiddly as hell too. And pound for pound, they're actually more expensive than their standard counterparts. But, back in the mists of time, some marketing genius decided to label them as "fun-size". And it worked. These were dinky novelties you could eat !! Hooray for fun-size !!
But the magic of language didn't end there. As well as instantly transforming each and every shortcoming of these miniscule snacks into a thrilling bonus, the sly association of the word "fun" with the concept of "small helpings" had the side-effect of making regular-size chocolate bars seem less decadent, less naughty by comparison. If little ones were fun, regular ones were pedestrian slabs of edible workload. Sometime later, of course, “king-size” Mars bars hit the market, thus imbuing an act of calorific gluttony with an unwarranted air of imperial glamour. This was an imposing, statesmanlike snack to be reckoned with; a nougat mothership; the Mars bar of royalty, language had worked its magic once again.
Now, as a result of all of this, there are many silly, twee and unnecessary words in the English language. Tasty. Meal. Cuisine. Nourishing. I also have a bit of an aversion to the use of “home” instead of “house”. So if you were to ask me round to “your home for a nourishing bowl of pasta”, I would almost certainly glare rather angrily at you until you decided to go away.
But the worst word. The worst noise. The screech of Lady Gaga’s fingernails down the biggest blackboard in the world, the squeak of polystyrene on polystyrene, the cry of a baby when you’re hungover … is 'beverage'. Apparently they used to have “bever” days at Eton when extra beer was brought in for the boys. And this almost certainly comes from some obscure Latin expression that only Albert Einstein would understand.
And therein lies the problem. People who work on planes and in hotels have got it into their heads that the word "beverage", with its Etonian and Latin overtones, is somehow posh and therefore the right word to use when addressing a customer. Even when said customer is wearing ripped stonewashed jeans and a t-shirt with more holes than the plot of the last Star Trek movie. And why is a bowl of pasta more appealing than a plate or a dish of pasta ?? And why not simply say pasta ?? Because don’t worry, I’ll presume it’ll come on some form of crockery, in the same way that I’ll presume, if you have a kettle in your kitchen, you might have some coffee granules and tea bags in there as well.
Now I’m not trying to give the impression that I’m in favour of one of those “Campaigns for Plain English”, because I know how important it is that our language evolves, but just to illustrate how much of a rain check we need here, I’ll leave you with the best example I know of this nonsense.
It was a rack of papers in a hotel foyer, over which there was a sign:
"NEWSPAPERS FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE"
All they had left was a solitary copy of The Daily Mail, so it wasn’t even technically correct.