Growing nowhere: a rant.

My dad used to grow vegetables. Yes, I grew up on home-grown produce, and very good it was too. (I've tried to follow in Dad's footsteps, but mostly my efforts have turned out to be an elaborate and expensive slug-rearing exercise.)

Okay. What else grows, apart from vegetables and children?

Hair. Toe nails. Problems (as in I regarded my growing problems with horror); success (the growing success of the mine meant that soon it was employing seven dwarves); size (the number of ants in my sandwich is growing rapidly); friendship (we grew together  because of our shared love of barbed wire and antique underpants); and, lastly, feelings (I am growing morose).

Now, the reason I am growing morose is that, as if that's not a lot of work for one small word, grow, to do, the poor thing is being  brought in to do other jobs it can't quite manage.

Like this:

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(I'm afraid this is from a UK Government website.)


Look, you can't grow a business. No, really, you can't. A business can grow, but you can't grow it. Yes, I know what you mean, so I agree that it shouldn't matter, but, consider, there's always a chance your customers won't care to do business with language-manglers. Some customers don't.

Neither can you grow economics. In this case not only do I have no idea at all what the expression means, but I rather doubt anyone else does, either.

In the first case the word that's needed is develop. (In the second case, of course, I haven't a clue which word people need.)

Develop. Develop. It's not the loveliest word in the dictionary, but it doesn't deserve to disappear altogether.

And you wouldn't want me to develop a sense of despair, would you.

Word To Use Today: develop. This word comes from the Old French desveloper, to unwrap.