Better to grow something into a legend than state it is from the start 

There are some words I can’t stand and which are banned from my publication: ‘iconic’ is one; and ‘foodie’ is another. I know they slip through from time to time (well, foodie definitely does because there aren’t that many succinct synonyms) but on the whole, my team know better than to use them. I hate ‘over’ when the correct term is ‘more than’, and ‘the likes of’, too, because you can strike out those three words and the sentence is always smoother.

But am I too prescriptive, I wonder, and am I not keeping up with the changing way we view words?

If I see ‘iconic’ on a press release I still bristle, and I think it might be the hill I will die on. In its purest sense, an icon is a religious painting in the Russian Orthodox tradition, so a souffle or a burger sure ain’t that. But even in the looser sense of something famous, adored, without parallel – I’m not a fan.

Put simply, something’s really got to work very hard indeed and earn its place before it can be ‘fabled’ (my preferred term). A dish from Le Gavroche, perhaps, or Elizabeth David’s ‘An Omelette and a Glass of Wine’.

So my tiny plea is that those bombastic terms are used judiciously – better to grow something into a legend than state it is from the start (and open yourself to criticism).

But finally, I am no word guru. I’m thankful for the release this week which educated me to the existence of the portmanteau edimentals: plants that are ornamental and edible. It’s been around for ages but I hadn’t heard it… thanks to the publicist Elizabeth of Mar who contacted me about the book ‘A Floral Feast’ for that one.