‘Heart of Oak are our ships, Jolly Tars are our men,’ shouted my husband unconvincingly. He has taken to doing this every time someone on air says robust, and that is pretty often.
On this occasion it was someone from the Arts Council rambling on about business plans and governance being robust enough to ensure that organisations are sustainable. Anything else might have been adjudged robust: Mrs Merkel, examination procedures, animal welfare rules, IT systems. It’s an all-purpose word of approval and thus often on the lips of politicians. The overuse of robust robs their speech of all conviction and drives listeners to distraction, even if few are provoked into singing to William Boyce’s stirring tune, like my husband.
Robustness was once a sort of rugby-playing quality. Robust people were outdoor types, robust wines full-bodied. Then, in the 1950s, statisticians began to employ it of tests that were insensitive to extraneous factors.
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