A word hound from Leeds has sent me a basketful of unconsidered truffles. ‘Are you aware of the increasing use of the word über,’ asks Mr Donald Adams, ‘with or without the umlaut which it should have in German?’
Well, I had come across it, but I had not quite realised what an infestation it had become. Anthony d’Offay, according to Grayson Perry in the Times, is an ‘übergallerist’; in the same newspaper John Hutton is an ‘über-Blairite minister’; Jane Shilling refers to an ‘über-facial’; in the Observer a feature on the pop singers All Saints is headed ‘From alpha bitches to über mums’, and, with reference to a real truffle weighing 3lb, a brief news item is wittily headed ‘Übertuber’. There are many more.
Mr Adams detects ‘more than a hint of pretentiousness’. I suppose the intention is humorous, but I fear the effect is ünter-mined by über-use.
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