In 1952, Milton A. Smith, assistant general counsel for the US Chamber of Commerce was presented with a plaque for coining a punchy new word.

He first used it in the Chambers’ Washington Report, criticising the Office of Price Stabilization for the bureaucratic language it used in a price order.

Milton had spent many frustrating hours trying to explain the order to his colleague, and eventually decided the maddening blend of “incomprehensibility, ambiguity, verbosity and complexity” needed a new word to describe it.

So he created one: …read more