Mind Your Language | 27 September 2003

There are some things I shall never say. I don’t just mean toilet or cool. I mean things like train station and lifestyle. They are not part of my parole or idiolect. On lifestyle I have just discovered an historical oddity, but in passing I should like to remark that the previous default meaning (I take the metaphor from computing) for station was ‘railway station’ (unless the context suggested the rarer power station, station in life or station of the Cross). It was like tie, which ordinarily meant ‘necktie’. Thus any other kind of station (bus station) or tie (rail-tie, family tie, cup tie) had to be specified. The decay of the default meaning for station is a mystery, albeit of American origin. Lifestyle is particularly repulsive not merely because its general meaning is perfectly satisfactorily expressed by way of life, but more because of the unpleasantness of the people who urge a kind of autonomy or free choice of lifestyle.