Of all the things that keep you sleepless in this restive world, good money says that the “conditionalities” in Iraq are not among them. And yet that is precisely how Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, referred to the problems of the region last week.

Meanwhile, on Sky News, a pundit was speaking in “generalistic” terms, while back at the BBC a motive had turned into a “motivation”, the tax on a packet of fags became a “taxation” and a perfectly coherent formula was transformed into a “formulation”.

The joys of brevity are succumbing to an epidemic of needlessly elongating words, up to and including the point where either the longer construct is not synonymous with the shorter or even where it means nothing at all. Use is now, routinely, “usage”, link is “linkage” and the beautiful word grace is squished underfoot by the clumsier gargle of “graciousness”.

I swear, I recently heard talk of financial “riskage” (my spell-checker, by the way, is going nuts here) and the unstoppable rise of “-ologies” would make Maureen Lipman proud; readers, believe me on this, frying and boiling are methods of preparing your breakfast eggs — they are not “methodologies”.

We know where it comes from; we are copying the American assault upon the mother tongue, in much the same way that we have relinquished “before” to “ahead of” and, unforgivably, we are already allowing their atrocities of preposition, as “met John on Tuesday” slides remorselessly into “met with John Tuesday”. However, to adopt the stretching of words is worse still, in that Americans have an excuse for it that we do not.

In much of America the display of class is not evident in accent; a Texan oil magnate will share his accent with his yard man — remember J. R. Ewing? Thus, it has evolved that, in his desire to assert superiority upon opening his mouth, the American does it with vocabulary rather than brogue; it is the clever word, the unusual word or, failing all else, the long word that boasts the Daddy who paid the fees for the education that makes him “the better man”.

By comparison, the Briton with an urge to trumpet class has it so much easier. In place of mangling the content of sentences, we mangle form instead: prep and public schools might teach all manner of wisdom, but nothing ever quite as useful as schooling Henry Minor to pronounce “yes” as “ears”, so that he will be able to separate peers from lower orders, instantly and for ever.

We have no need, therefore, to show off in the American manner when our own is so adept — indeed, to use both to patronise common man smacks to me of greed.

Or should that be greediness?