Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language: On behalf of

Someone, so the Times reported, was asked about young people being unemployed.

issue 23 April 2011

Someone, so the Times reported, was asked about young people being unemployed. ‘The problem is not the lack of jobs,’ came the reply, ‘but a lack of determination on behalf of young jobseekers.’ What he meant was ‘on the part of young jobseekers’. It was they who lacked determination, not anyone else on their behalf.

This strange use of behalf has become so widespread that it is impossible to tell, out of context, what a speaker means. The new sense is ousting the old, just as bad money drives out good, as Gresham’s Law declares. The only difficulty is that perhaps the old money was never quite as good as it seemed.

There was a phrase, 100 years ago, in behalf of, meaning ‘in the interest of, for the benefit of’. This meaning, it seems to me, survives in one sense of on behalf of.

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