I still haven’t got over aspiration nation, the Chancellor’s watchword in this month’s Budget, which now seems a long time ago. Why is it so annoying?
One aspect is the rhyme. It stops short of being a repetition, like Humbert Humbert, but settles for a jingle, like Gilbert the Filbert. Another annoyance is the jamming together of two nouns. I can see that aspiring nation would have a different meaning, as would aspirant nation, but aspirational nation is more like it.
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James Delingpole
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No doubt the clangour was intentional. There are plenty of precedents. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (a US organisation) has a website called Calculation Nation. Someone in America runs a blog called Information Nation with the subtitle: ‘It rhymes so you know it must be clever.’
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