If 2006 was the year of issues, when the word problem gave way to ‘issues around’ things, then 2007 looks as if it will be the year of challenge. Dreary management-speak types have long invited workers to see negative problems as positive challenges. All that this has meant is that the new word challenge has taken on the connotations of the old word problem, just as lavatory air-fresheners take on the unpleasant associations of the smells they replace.
Challenge was a word ripe for exploitation in this way. It derives perhaps surprisingly from the Latin calumnia, meaning ‘trickery, misrepresentation, false accusation’. The main current meanings date from the 13th or 14th centuries: a call to account, as by a sentry; an objection to a juryman (first recorded in law French in 1292); a summons to a trial or to combat.
The metaphorical range has been extended in our generation.
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