THE LOOPHOLE-FRIENDLY ADVERB

What does ‘categorically’ mean? It must be a legal thing; it only ever seems to be used by people in trouble who feel the need to firmly deny something happened.

I guess categorical means ‘in a way that can be completely categorised’ - for example, a haddock is a category of fish, elephants fall into the category of large mammals, and politicians in a democracy categorically represent their constituents. Or at least, they’re supposed to.

Today, the Prime Minister ‘categorically’ denies knowing about a party that happened in the place he’s in charge of, at a time when such parties were made categorically illegal - lockdown, of course. It looks like there were several of these events over the course of the pandemic, and so the Prime Minister is probably trying to distance himself as categorically as possible from them all - even though he was actually present at at least two of them and there are photographs to prove it. Hmm.

Then there’s a much-entitled member of the Royal Family, Prince Andrew, who ‘categorically’ denies doing something far worse. I recently re-watched the interview he gave a couple of years ago, where he shook his head like a naughty little boy getting told off, and we all cringed behind the sofa while he feigned shock and furrowed his royal brow. Clearly he was trying his best to establish that he belonged to that world where he was ‘not the ‘party’ prince’… as though the assertion from his Mum’s fancy dining room would be enough to settle the matter, categorically.

It’s an interesting word then. It means ‘absolutely certain’, ‘100% true’, ‘beyond any question of any doubt’. It is categorical - written down in the Big Book of Categories, where That (they tell us) Should Be That.

But I’ve started to wonder why they can’t just say it like that; why do they feel the need to use the word categorical all the time?

Is it a slightly ambiguous term in legalese?  Is it a loophole-friendly adverb that somehow gives them wriggle-room in that inevitable law-court or independent investigation that's coming their way? Does it have protected status somehow?

That’s ironic isn’t it. A word that's traditionally used to communicate absolute certainty is the exact word that does the opposite when it has to. What other legal words are out there, used to communicate a certain truth to the public? Do these powerful party-goers get trained on how to use them? How is it that the language of the law (which matters a great deal when it comes to uncovering the truth) has diverted so far from the language of the public, that a word that we think means one thing, actually gives room for the opposite?

It’s not for me to say what actually happened in either case. In a sense, the legal process will determine the story, and the public figures at the centre of these situations know full-well how to play the game - of which stating something ‘categorically’ is merely a gambit. What I think, and find hugely interesting, is that while PMs and Princes might try it, our biology never lies - you can read some people like a book from just their body language, and, what's more, the words we choose tell a story all of their own. So it’s usually worth watching and listening.

Maybe I just wish I'd had it in my vocab when I was younger. I categorically deny stealing extra biscuits from the biscuit tin. I categorically deny sitting halfway up the stairs with the remote control and scaring my sister by messing around with the TV. I deny categorically clambering over the roundabout and playing on the garage rooftops with my friend Chris pretending we were Jedi!

Yeah. I think my Mum would have seen right through it.