The hits just keep on coming. We are truly living in a golden age of spiv-speak and shonky language. Here’s a few more entries to the Crikey Spiv-tionary, courtesy of our wonderful readers:
Sufficient substance: A malleable, gel-like state that can be molded to fit various situations. Example: the same relationship can in one telling be likely to lead to marriage and in another not have “sufficient substance to be made public”. Thanks for that one, Gladys Berejiklian.
Humbled, humbling, humble: As one of our readers puts it, “a performative public show of eating humble pie in an attempt to appear chastened after being caught committing dirty deeds. A self-interested display of bad faith, which the rich and powerful deploy in the hope that it will attract sympathy from the public and those calling them to account”. Example, Rupert Murdoch: “This is the most humble day of my life.”
A colourful racing identity: Not so much a phrase used by someone dodgy, our reader points out, but about someone dodgy. Example: “High-flying bookmaker George Freeman was the perfect embodiment of the moniker ‘colourful racing identity'”, “Colourful funeral for colourful racing identity Jack Sparrow“.
Thanks again to our readers — we’re receiving far more examples than we can fit in one volume, so please do be patient if we haven’t gotten to yours yet.
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