Madam, – Donal Kennedy finds the word "ongoing" repulsive (February 18th), but he is not strictly correct in calling it a neologism. It can be found in Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionaryfrom 1913, though not in the 1828 edition. The Online Etymological Dictionary notes 1877 as the year of its first recorded use.
Maybe the word was imported from America, but it is nevertheless oldspeak rather than newspeak.
To my ears it sits comfortably among other preposition-suffix adjectival combinations, such as “outgoing”, “incoming”, “upcoming”, etc.
As regards the supposed erasure of the word “continuing” from the print media, a search of The Irish Times online edition for February 18th reveals it was used 14 times, while “ongoing” was used six times, one of these incidences being its use in Mr Kennedy’s letter. – Yours, etc,