bet you have a word, phrase or image, during the pandemic, that is trotted out ad nauseam and does nothing to ease your blood pressure. (We will gloss over early-period Boris Johnson and his quite hopeless road maps, etc.) Instead, let us consider the phrase “jabs in the arm”. On Thursday, I heard this uttered three times on news programmes. What I think the reporters were trying to say was “inoculated”. Needless dressing-up masquerading as reporting simply doesn’t cut the mustard. “Hospital settings” can be added to that, which last week, and the week before, and the week before that, has been a noisome presence. I think the word “hospitals” covers all bases. And too many are the incidences of “skyrocket”. I can only imagine that the normal trajectory of a rocket must be turbocharged to add dramatic tension. Rest assured, talking heads, it doesn’t. I’ve already railed in this column about cohorts and vectors, but here’s another one, courtesy of Jon Snow last week, when talking to David Attenborough - “quadrant”. What a quadrant has to do with the natural world is quite beyond me, but I’m sure it was meant to add gravitas. It didn’t, Jon, and please stop looking so smug when you announce that you’ve had your first “jab in the arm”. It’s neither pretty nor grown-up. Now, I know Ursula von der Leyen hasn’t covered herself in glory, but what should we make of the following? According to one diplomat: “She needs to go. Now. She told fucking no one. After four years of tedious skulduggery over the backstop. Surely the commission could have thought of the optics.” Hardly diplomatic language. And what are optics in this situation? It just made me think of pubs. Oh happy days. • Jonathan Bouquet is an Observer columnist