Nothing grates on me more than seeing an apostrophe in the wrong place, a misspelling on a menu, or its and it’s mixed up.
In a Sydney wine bar this weekend, I ended up getting my red pen out on their wine list, which included Chardnonnay, Reisling and Semillion to name but a few.
I remember a very dark day back in 2007 when ginormous – a concoction of gigantic and enormous – entered the dictionary. At the time, the president of dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster, said: “There will be linguistic conservatives who will turn their nose up at a word like ‘ginormous.’” Which makes me a linguistic conservative, it seems.
Today marked another dark day for the English language. It was the day the word “masstige” – a blend of mass and prestige – entered into my consciousness. It reared its ugly head in Australian wine company Treasury’s annual report. Things look good for the company, which has struggled so badly over the last 5 years – net profit leapt 40 percent. In the Asian market, earnings increased more than 40 percent.
But it was not the minutiae of EBITs and cashflow that gave me a headache, it was this new adjective. It first appeared on page three of the 34 page report: “Vintage 2011 in Australia and California negatively impacted by weather, resulting in reduced availability of Luxury and Masstige wines and higher costs.” It appeared again 15 times throughout the document.
Has the marketing department just made this word up?
Well, it’s not in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, which is a relief – but that’s no guarantee it won’t be in the near future. However Dictionary.com must be more linguistically liberal as it does have a definition of masstige: “noting or pertaining to goods that are perceived to have prestige or high style but are affordable for a wide range of customers:”
Treasury defines it as a wine that costs A$10-20 and brands Wolf Blass and Lindeman’s are lined up for a bit of masstige action. In fact, the wine giant has adopted a strategy to produce more luxury and masstige wine across the board through “Project Uplift”, which sounds like it belongs in a cosmetic surgery rather than a wine company.
Treasury’s portfolio includes brands such as Beringer, Wolf Blass, Rosemount, Lindeman’s and Penfolds, It revealed that it plans to offer more premium wines, following the Shanghai launch in November of its Bin 620 shiraz and cabernet sauvignon blend, which carries a A$1,000-a-bottle price tag. More recently, Penfolds launched a $168,000 wine, complete with bespoke cabinet. I think that puts it out of the masstige market.
