Mea Culpa: Gardening leave

Susanna Richards has been weeding The Independent’s flower beds

‘A weed is just a plant in the wrong place.’ Well, quite. Now off you go (Getty)

I am off this week, not that you’d know it, but reportedly, we have used the word “reportedly” 286 times in the past seven days at the time of writing. It is a relatively new word that, a bit like bindweed, has taken hold in a way that makes it almost impossible to eradicate. All you can do is potter and snip, endlessly, and occasionally have a right good go at it on your hands and knees in the bushes. At that point, you think you’ve got it all out, but by the following week it’s back and twice as prevalent.

So what’s wrong with it? Well, nothing, as such. There are other words with a similar form that go unnoticed – admittedly – the form in question being an adverb made from a past participle instead of an adjective. They’re not really like other adverbs, because rather than modifying the verb they are used with, they modify the statement as a whole. But they do have a purpose, and many have been in use for a very long time.

The problem arises with the introduction of a more recent one. The addition of a suffix to a word that is more commonly used without gives the impression of informality, perhaps even laziness. You could append the same two letters to any number of passive-voice verbs, in theory, though it would feel quite improper: “Their actions were concludedly a breach of the law”; “The conclusion was statedly errant”.