QUENTIN LETTS: Language at work has become a minefield. Has it all gone too far?

Now in my seventh decade, I work in an office with people half my age.

When I recently told one that I had a bottle of Cinzano older than him, he replied: ‘What’s Cinzano?’

For all I know, my young and charming workmates may call me ‘Grandpa’ behind my back and consider me — guilty as charged — a wheezing relic.

But doing so might incur the disapproval of employment judge Patrick Quill. Judge Quill recently heard the case of a Kent nursing assistant in her 60s who claimed to have been a victim of discrimination.

She alleged that a younger worker had said ‘back in your day’ to her.

Her claim failed, but the judge found that this could constitute harassment to older workmates in some circumstances. It was “an unwelcome and barbed highlighting of the age difference”.

Many of us regard age differences as a natural and interesting fact of life. Youngsters learn from us, and we from them.

But Judge Quill’s employment tribunal is a reminder that language at work has become a minefield and that difference of any sort can be an opportunity to flex grievances.

Lawyers and litigants seem hellbent on making office chat a thing of the past. Innocent phrases are being put up against a wall and frisked.

Our country’s greatest gift to the world, English, is being pulled into the red lane by linguistic customs inspectors and having its baggage checked for planted political contraband.

These joyless commissars are tarnishing words with which, for generations, we have joshed our way through the working week. It has the insidious effect of making us wary of one another, mistrusting cuckolding camaraderie.

“Back in your day” is the least of it.

Call a colleague “love” and you may be pitched out of your job faster than a boulder catapulted over Jerusalem’s walls during the Crusades. The Press canteen in Westminster, where I work, is run by two friendly tea ladies called Mabel and Cat.

Sometimes I find myself saying “Thank you, dear” and then kicking myself in case a politically correct sneak reports me for sexism.

But why should I not call Mabel and Cat “dear”? I have known them for years and am fond of them. yet in the hands of an employment lawyer that could be turned into workplace abuse.

I also sometimes accidentally call young colleagues “darling” because they are roughly the same age as my daughters and I forget where I am.

So far they have been merciful and not reported me to Judge Quill, but it may only be a matter of time before I am up in front of the revolutionary courts on charges of sexism and en route to the guillotine in a tumbril. It’s hard to keep up with what can and can not be said.

Fashionable agonising over the slave trade has put several old sayings beyond the pale.

Before any nincompoop accuses me of being a member of the Ku Klux Klan, let me point out that “beyond the pale” has nothing to do with skin colour but derives from ‘beyond the palisades’. Next time you blag your way through a meeting, don’t say “Well, that was a cakewalk”. According to the Harvard Business Review, a cakewalk was a dance that slaves were obliged to perform for the amusement of plantation owners. “Sold down the river” is another one to avoid, as, most unfairly, is “picnic”.

The Words Matter taskforce of the University of Michigan’s information and technology services department came up with the theory that “picnic” originated from 19th-century lynchings in the U.S. Total baloney.

The French were saying “pique-nique” long before America was discovered. On television a year or so ago I used the noun “tramp” and fainthearts on social media called me a brute.

They thought it was disrespectful to “homeless people”. Hang on, “homeless person” has itself been criticised by Left-wing neck-clutchers.

So-called experts at Brandeis University, Massachusetts, produced an “oppressive words list” and claimed that it was less hurtful to say ‘person experiencing housing insecurity’. The real victim here is directness or, at the risk of sounding pompous, the truth.

Language censors do not like clarity because it allows less space for special pleading. Other “oppressive” phrases on that list included “take a shot at it”, which might trigger victims of gun crime. Then we are told that ‘trigger’ and ‘trigger warning’ are themselves trigger words — oops! — for gun crime survivors. Not that “survivor” may be bandied about without proper consideration.

Some survivors do not feel empowered and prefer to be ‘victims’. Universities pump out much of this nonsense. The University of Kent last year told students to avoid using the terms “Christian name”, “surname” and “last name”.

“Christian name” is a no-no because, obviously, we must disown our religious heritage and grovel before the gods of multiculturalism and self-hatred.

“Surname” is dodgy because it might have come from “sire-name” or “father-name” and that would be hierarchical and sexist.

“Last name” was unacceptable because, in some Asian cultures, they put their family names first. Incidentally, the expression ‘long time no see’ might also land you in trouble because there is a theory that it mocks the English accents of Chinese people. My daughter-in-law is from Chengdu.

She would find this comical. And weak. Charities also produce this stuff partly as a way of justifying themselves. Peta, an animal-rights outfit, published a list of phrases that “perpetuate violence towards animals”. “Bring home the bacon” was one.

Poor little piggies! “Let the cat out of the bag”, “open a can of worms” and “hold your horses” were others that could “normalise abuse”. “More than one way to skin a cat,” had them reaching for the sal volatile.

Peta does not even allow “cry over spilled milk” because, hey, some people here might be vegan.

Tempted to ask a workmate to “cheer up, Mavis?”

Tread with caution, mes amis. Militant feminists will say you are pushing a trope about women being humourless. Likewise “bossy” or “hysterical” are deemed sexist because they “are never applied to men”. One of the bossiest people I knew was a Cirencester traffic warden called Mr Heaven. He certainly did not identify as a woman.

Recently it has been put about that ‘uppity’ is a racist term. Complete cobblers. Uppity is a fine old word for unjustified pomposity.

There’s a lot of it about. We need to use such words more, not less. Instead, the boot comes down and our vocabularies are plundered and freedom of expression is curtailed and the only people who win are those who make a career out of encouraging neurosis and tending to all this wetness.

“You’re nuts,” we might say to an old work chum, moments before human resources (‘personnel’, as was) hauls us off for a lecture about mental health.

Don’t call anyone an addict. It “might equate a person’s identity with their disease” and then they’ll only need counselling, probably paid for by the state. Instead of “drug addict”, or in my case “Cheddar biscuits addict”, you should now say “someone with a substance abuse disorder”. “Opposite sex” will allegedly upset those who “do not identify as male or female and see gender as a continuum rather than a binary construct”.

Keep up at the back, please. You shouldn’t even say “the bank of Mum and Dad” because some people don’t have parents, and they might start leaking like punctured hoses about that.

“Parents” are better referred to as “caregivers”.

Alternatively, we could just ignore the likes of Judge Quill and continue to frolic under God’s sun, speaking English with the rude relish and flair and freedom that has made Britain the most linguistically interesting place in the world.