officialese

In his first months in office, Biden has already signaled his desire to return the Asia-Pacific — or Indo-Pacific, as has become more common in officialese — to the top of the U.S. foreign policy agenda.

There has long been a provision in immigration law designed to weed out applicants for citizenship who are likely to become dependent on the state — to become “public charges,” in officialese.

There’s even a Plain English Campaign that does its nut, year-round and vocationally, about examples of baffling officialese, pompous lawyer-speak and soul-shrivelling business jargon.

In officialese the lifts are referred to as Personenumlaufaufzüge – people circulation lifts – while a popular bureaucrats’ nickname for them is Beamtenbagger or “civil servant excavator”.

I could keep giving example after example of clunky Indian officialese, but then this piece would start sounding like the prime minister’s Independence Day speech at Red Fort.