David

You say that you are 82. From your photo dressed in Edwardian style, you would be in your late 90s. You should cut the baloney and admit that you are not old - you are ancient.

David,

You need a new dictionary mate. Common usage admits several senses of the word "humble" your dictionary seems not to list. For example "A man of humble origins", "we humbly beseech your majesty" etc...

It seems also to omit the word "humiliation", which describes, much more precisely, John Howard's defeat in Bennelong than either of the two senses of humble you list, seeming to believe that it's more appropriate for you to use it to describe that defeat than for Julia Gillard to use it to describe her own time as Acting Prime-Minister.

Pity about the partisanship in those opening paragraphs - it put me off reading what might have been an otherwise interesting article.

Yes John Howard has been much more careful in his use of language

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/10/1097346684255.html

"Ladies and gentlemen and my fellow Australians, can I say first of all that I am truly humbled by this extraordinary expression of confidence in the leadership of this great nation by the coalition."

R0bert

My pet niggle is the gratuitous use of the words "industry" and "products".

It seems to me that around the time when Kennett was first elected, we Victorians experienced what I would call a softening up for what was to come. I refer to the privatisation of anything that wasn't nailed down - and even some things that were.

Around that time, banks, insurance and financial institutions began to refer to themselves as industries, not service institutions. Their deals became "products". They described their invisible, intangible boondoggles as though they were somehow made of stone and steel. We in turn were no longer customers, but "conshoomers". Oh how well I remember our lilliputian treasurer Alan Stockdale referring to me as a conshoomer. I knew at that moment that I had been demoted and devalued - made a mere entry in the ledger of Intangibles Incorporated NL. Nothing has changed under the leadership of John Brumby I might add. Same excrement - different bouquet.

Now we have the dysfunctional health "industry", gambling "industry", and the howlingly named hospitality "industry". How about a consultancy "industry"? Have they no sense of shame?

How dare they take the image of an artisan sweating over a hot lump of iron and apply that to the inferior act of toiling over a spreadsheet. Theft of the language was the first shot in the war for the unearned ownership of the world by people who barely have the ability to boil an egg.

When I am crowned Emporer Of The World, my first edict will be to restore the English language to it's former glory. Spin will be a crime punishable by death.

From my balcony window I will gloat, Saddam style, as all the assorted financiers and their spin doctors are assembled in the courtyard below to be summarily shot.

- so remember - Vote (1) for ME for a saner world.

This is not meant as an argument for spin, although it is too easily dragged into the service of one: there are many occasions when people say or write what they think the situation requires of them, rather than some more indidualised expressive communication. Winners being 'humbled' has become one of these. Another is almost anything a sports star says, breathless, in a post-match interview.

For loathers of platitude, it is easy to overlook the way public figures believe they are behaving ethically when they say these things. Their public comments are a central part of their jobs, and so they consciously try to take a workmanlike attitude to the things that need saying.

Those who don't -- the public figures who put expressive integrity first -- tend to get pinged for it very quickly. This just reinforces the sense that it is more professional, more ethical, more virtuous, to make whatever pronouncement the situation seems to call for.

I whole heartedly agree with Chris Shaw regarding the overt misuse of words such as industry. I would like to add to the list, tourism industry and of late we now have a retail industry. As soon as some endeavour can be called an industry they can start getting tax payer funded handouts to augment their losses - usually in the form of "traineeships". I mean, really, who needs a two year traineeship to operate a cash register.
I would also like to bring up another commonly abused word. ORGANIC is now used by all and sundry in an effort to bestow some credence of scientific authority upon whatever is being foisted upon an easily duped public.
I am personally sick to death of pseudo-intellectuals and second hand sales people misusing scientific terminology out of context to disguise what they are really saying, which in most instances is nothing at all.