Think of the parable of a frog in boiling water. That’s us dithering as the ‘unprecedented‘ weather becomes more extreme | Helen Pilcher

The Guardian UK Sunday 13 September 2026, 07:00 UTC By Helen Pilcher 1 min read

Key Points

The complacency is staggering: just another hot summer, a flooded street, a crop failure. We are accepting this extraordinary deterioration as normalRecently, I overheard a conversation in a cafe where someone described their toast as “awesome”. I felt myself bristle.

The complacency is staggering: just another hot summer, a flooded street, a crop failure. We are accepting this extraordinary deterioration as normal

Recently, I overheard a conversation in a cafe where someone described their toast as “awesome”. I felt myself bristle. Not because the toast wasn’t good – I didn’t taste it – but because I remember a time when “awesome” meant something that inspired awe: towering mountains, the vastness of the night sky, the haunting song of a humpback whale. Now it’s being used to describe breakfast.

“Fantastic” has met the same fate, shedding its fantastical origins to become a synonym for “great”. Meanwhile “literally” has been so thoroughly abused that it can now mean something that is, quite literally, not literal.

Helen Pilcher (PERSON)

Originally published by The Guardian UK Read original →

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