THE British Potato Council wants the expression ‘couch potato’ stripped from the Oxford English Dictionary and be replaced in everyday speech with the term ‘couch slouch.’ On June 20, the farmers’ chant of ‘Couch Potato Out. Couch Slouch In’ filled the air`A0outside the`A0Oxford English Dictionary office.

According to the OED, the term ‘couch potato’ started life as American slang and means ‘A person who spends leisure time passively or idly sitting around, especially watching television or video tapes.’

Whether the campaign succeeds or not is a different story altogether, but such campaigns are good for any language because the hot air generated creates interesting structures, like celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson’s defence of the potato: "Life without potato is like a sandwich without a filling." Movements like this one are good for the growth of a language as well because they prompt people to think deeply about society, language and meaning, especially in terms of positive and negative connotation. This kind of brainstorming can lead to neologisms as well, like the proposed ‘couch slouch’.

John Simpson, chief editor of the OED, said the term couch potato was first included in 1993. He said: "When people blame words they are actually blaming the society that uses them. Dictionaries just reflect the words that society uses." Simpson said words are never taken out of the full-length dictionary, which includes about 650,000 words contained in 20 volumes. But little-used words are removed from the smaller dictionaries to make way for newer ones. "If society stops using words then they get taken out of the smaller dictionaries," he added, "but the OED is a record of the English language from the earliest days. If something’s in there, it remains as part of the patchwork of the English language." The first known recorded use of the expression "couch potato" was in a 1979 Los Angeles Times article.

Imagine the lexical chaos if, in the same vein, politicians banned ‘secular’, bureaucrats banned ‘red tape’, animal-rights activists banned ‘stubborn as a mule’ and cardiologists banned all figurative expressions like heartbroken and heartless!