QUESTIONS NOBODY IS ASKING: Is it offensive to call someone ‘middle-aged?’

A new victimhood group has just dropped: middle-aged people. Yes, according to language guides published by Bristol and York St John universities, it isn’t just ‘BAME’ or ‘BIPOC’ or ‘LGBTQIA+’ folk who must be protected from words that are too old-fashioned or insufficiently ungainly to be uttered in public. Apparently, those on the downward slope to 50 desperately need this kind of obsessive, paternalistic speech-policing, too.

According to these style guides, unearthed by the Sun, ‘middle-aged’ is basically the n-word for men greying around the temples and decked out in Superdry. ‘Language is a powerful tool. It can empower and be a force for change, but it can also offend, marginalise, trivialise, and perpetuate harmful attitudes and stereotypes’, proclaims York St John, before sternly instructing readers to say ‘Gareth is 49’ rather than ‘Gareth is middle-aged’. Apparently, OAP is out-of-order, too. ‘People of pensionable age’ is much better, says the guide. (Personally, I prefer the more elegant People of Age.)

Not to be outdone, Bristol’s guide suggests we should also ‘avoid using euphemisms or patronising language to describe older people’, including ‘silver surfer’ or ‘of a certain age’. In fact, we should forgo generational labels entirely, because ‘Generation X’, ‘Baby Boomers’, ‘Millennials’, etc, ‘can reinforce negative stereotypes’ – presumably about those snowflake Millennials, rich, racist Boomers and insufferably cynical Gen Xers.

“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well…Don’t you see the beauty of that, Winston?”