Simon Spillett

Am I alone in being sick to the eye teeth of the current colloquial misuse of the word random?

Maybe it's my age? I'd prefer to think it's my horrified concern at a younger generations quick and painful transformation of the English language into a bastardised mutation based on whatever American TV shows that are foisted upon them.

My dictionary defines random as "haphazard: without aim or purpose. a. made, done, etc. at random".

It's a noun. Therefore sentences like "It was so random" (God, how many times have I overheard that recently?) and so on are as technically incorrect as they are grating.

I had the same sensation when, as a teenager in the late 1980s, the word wicked started to be applied to anything seen as good, cool, impressive or fashionable. It didn't stop me using it though, although in mitigation I might add that at the time I had then only just shed my one and only mullet and still wore white socks with my black leather school shoes. So from one former philistine to any (random) number of potential others, please, let's call time on this one.