An Irishman's Diary

NEXT to “icon” and “iconic”, against which this column was forced to issue a fatwa last year, “passion” and “passionate” must be the most overused words of our age.

Once they were powerful terms, reserved only for special people or occasions. Used about Romeo and Juliet, say, or for defendants in murder cases, they suggested minds temporarily overthrown by love and its related disorders. But during the last decade or so, rampant devaluation has set in. And today, as a result, the terms have become the linguistic equivalent of the Zimbabwean dollar.

Sport is one of the worst offenders. In fact, the most egregious recent example I can think of was on last Sunday night's Match of the Day 2, when in post-match interviews the Newcastle manager Alan Pardew needed to apologise for an outburst during the game against his opposite number, Martin O'Neill.

Reacting to the award of a penalty, Pardew had behaved temporarily like a badly-brought-up 10-year-old And admitting as much, he immediately pleaded the P-word in mitigation. He was “passionate” about his job, he said, before suggesting that the Sunderland manager was “passionate” too.

The scene was thereby set for a potential balcony scene in the Newcastle boardroom. Alas, the star-crossed lovers were not to meet for the usual post-match drink: O’Neill’s passion instead causing him to embrace the Sunderland team bus and an early trip home.

Not that sport has any monopoly on this kind of thing. On the contrary, Pardew was only echoing a more general trend begun sometime towards the end of the 20th century, when the p-word was first co-opted into boardrooms to describe companies’ commitment to whatever line of work they did.

Soon, everyone was using it. If they weren’t feeling the passion, they were fuelling it. As for the adjective, Google the phrase “we’re passionate about”, and the search engine will throw up a bewildering range of prompts to finish the sentence. “Food”, “design”, “your health”, “creating beautiful hair”: the slogans go on and on, covering the entire spectrum of corporate activity.

Time was, determination or enthusiasm was enough to guarantee a successful career. Not any longer, obviously. Now, whether you’re a microbiologist or a bin-collector, passion is the entry-level requirement.

In fact, if your boss described you as being merely “enthusiastic” about work these days, you might well have reason to worry about your long-term job prospects. At best, it would sound like he was damning you with faint praise. At worst, he might be engaging in sarcasm.

THE CONCEPTof enthusiasm, by the way, is a good example of how words lose power over time. In ancient Greece, it had religious connotations, denoting a condition in which a person was considered divinely possessed. And as late as the 17th century, the more extreme Protestant sects – especially those supporting a republic during England's civil war – were said to be "enthusiastic".

It was around then that the word began to take on a pejorative connotation, referring to the sort of people who assumed (wrongly) that God spoke to them, especially if they were insisting on dragging His revealed opinion into political debate.

For a time, to be called “enthusiastic” meant you were opposed to reason and moderation. Then, presumably, the insult became overused. After that, the word settled into the mildly positive meaning it has today, when the noun “enthusiast” is typically prefaced with words like “gardening”, “golf”, or “stamp-collecting”.

The common factor is devotion to a harmless pursuit. There may also occasionally be a tacit suggestion that the person described has too much time on his hands. And amateurism is invariably implied.

Professionals are never mere enthusiasts: for them, as for modern company managers, passion is a minimum requirement.

Mind you, members of that great amateur organisation, the GAA, are fond of protesting their passionate natures too. The P-word is a regular feature of GAA promotions. So much so that I wonder why, facing disciplinary action after mass brawls, counties and players don’t automatically adopt the crime-of-passion defence. Maybe some do.

In any case, the corporatised P-word has trickled down to infect nearly every walk of life. You wouldn’t be surprised now if your dentist paused, mid-filling, to tell you he was passionate about your teeth. Or if another kind of health specialist, pulling on the rubber gloves and asking you to bend over, saw fit to mention his passion for proctology.

No doubt the P-word will go the same way as the E-one eventually. As it loses all meaning, somebody somewhere will decide that the ante must be upped again. Maybe then zealotry or fanaticism will make a comeback to describe the commitment of your bank or internet service provider for doing its job.

The tipping point, I predict, will be when parents give out to their children for domestic misdemeanours, only to be told, straight-faced: “Sorry, dad. It’s just that I’m passionate about destroying furniture.” This will happen, sooner or later, mark my words. After that, it may be time for corporate lexicographers to find a new favourite adjective.