THE NAMING OF PARTS

Time was when inventors made a rough stab at communicating what their gadget did, sometimes in plain English, as in say 'vacuum cleaner', sometimes by recourse to Latin and Greek. Tele phone to transport sound. Tele vision to transport pictures. Nowadays, you’re surrounded by things whose names give no clue to their function: iPOD, bluetooth, the verb to google. And there’ll be more. Young men’ll be braying into their mobile phones, going “Hi, yeah. We’ve just got yak-butter.” You’ll hear two guys in the office going, “Does your pinnacle have sex-fiend? Mine does two thousands corbetts a second.” The Future’ll be a bit like having had a stroke. Everyone under thirty will be talking complete cock.