Seeking an alternative for ‘significant other’

Press, 16 February 1980, Page 14

Seeking an alternative for ‘significant other’

By

PHILIP HOWARD

of ‘The Times’, London

through N.Z.P.A.

It- is not often that we have reason to complain of a deficiency of vocabulary in English. Usually our prolix language coins new words as fast as new needs arise, and often faster. 1

But we still badly need a suitable word for those who are living together without benefit of clergy or registry office.

Although the need has been apparent for some years, none of the words we have come up. with so far are satisfactory, some ‘ eing unduly bureaucratic, and others intolerably twee. In the first category, the social services correspondent of “The Times” has toyed with cohabitee, which is ugly, as well as irregularly formed.

The regular cohabitant is still a mouthful. It might pass in written bureaucratese, but not in conversation: “Have you met my cohabitant?” American • organisations, trying hard not to discriminate against unmarried couples, have tried to introduce meaningful associate, special friend, domestic associate, current companion, and one designated “significant other person.”

These have led to a shudder of whimsies, with people introducing each other at parties as “my significant other.”

All these phrases deserve to be given thumbs down for being ponderous, euphemistic, redolent of sociologese, or all three. The Department of Health and Social Security has begun to recognise its linguistic deficiency. In its. latest circular on the cohabitant rule it settles for “those who are living together as man and wife," which is circumlocutory, has no singular, and is no good for ev yday use. In addition extreme feminists object to the phrase on the grounds that it should be either “husband and wife,” or “man and woman” (and why does the man automatically come first, you swine?)

I do not care for Uraw (unrelated adult woman), which has been tried by the California State Welfare Department. You can. work out the male equivalent for yourselves. Poosslq (person of the opposite sex sharing living quarters), used by the United States Census Bureau, does come trippingly on the tongue, rather pompously round the tonsils. The best of the official terms introduced so far is companion, • borrowed from the French and Cuban use of their equivalent words. Several airlines have introduced companion fares to allow couples to. travel at reduced cost instead of mate rates. Turning to the informal

coinages, boo to friend, boyfriend, girl-friend, and chum, for being coy euphemisms and muddying the established meanings of those words.

They also sound arch when applied to mature unmarried lovers together. Consort is stuffy, and in the United Kingdom has the ring of royalty. And thumbs down to such coinages as mate partner, housemate, chambermate, and live-in friend.

Marvining and marviniz; ing were topical jokes that are now stale. ■Unimer, derived from the embarrassed resolution of the verbal dilemma by a mother introducing her daughter’s co-habitant, “. . . And this is Oliver, my daughter’s um er . . .”, is not a serious proposal. The best of the informals used at present in England is my lady, which is quite charming, since in most other contexts lady now sounds snobbish. But it leaves the lady without any satisfactory name for her partner. My man sounds like Jane calling for Tarzan: my fellow sounds twee and American.

Lover and mistress, though fine old worlds, do not convey the meaning that anybody is living with anybody else: au contraire. At present the most straightforward way of describing the relationship is to say: “We live together.” We badly need a noun for contexts where a clause will not fit. It is remarkable that none of the words we have tried so far quite hit’s the bull.