Dot Wordsworth

How ‘de-escalate’ escalated

It was partly our fault

[Getty Images/Shutterstock/iStock/Alamy] 
issue 15 March 2014

‘What we want to see,’ David Cameron said last week, ‘is a de-escalation.’ Or, as the Tanaiste of Ireland put it: ‘If the Russian authorities do not de-escalate this crisis, the EU will take consequential action.’ In other words: make it less serious, or we’ll take it very seriously.

De-escalate sounds a nasty new word.

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